Security K – GDI 2013
Neg
Shell
1NC Shell
Latin American engagement is a means for the US to accomplish its imperial objectives
Young 11 -- political organizer for Organization for a Free Society and PhD candidate in history at Stony Brook
University (Kevin, 1/13/2011, "Two, Three, Many Colombias: The Logic and Consequences of the US Vision for
Latin America," http://www.zcommunications.org/two-three-many-colombias-by-kevin-young)
Against what were these programs designed to defend? Declassified State Department correspondence provides clear answers. To take one
example, officials worried that the 1952 Bolivian Revolution “might set off a chain reaction in Latin America” if not
steered down a “moderate” path. Later, after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, US planners noted with alarm that the
continent’s “poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for
a decent living.” The successful revolt in Cuba had convinced many onlookers “that the Latin American states can be
masters of their own destinies” rather than remaining dependent on foreign masters . In 1961 a top Kennedy adviser,
Arthur Schlesinger, expressed concern about “the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into one’s own hand[s].” Rather than acting
independently of the US, Latin Americans were supposed to let the US guide them down a constructive path toward a
“middle-class revolution,” as opposed to a “workers-and-peasants” one [25]. The imperative of stifling independent nationalism and
development, and punishing those who entertained such fantasies, goes far back in US imperial history; such imperatives were
prominent, for example, in the correspondence of the nineteenth-century military commanders who sought to exterminate all Native Americans
who refused to be confined on concentration-camp-style reservations [26]. The biggest problem with this defiance was the threat it
posed to US elites’ control over strategic natural resources and labor and the maintenance of exploitative terms of trade.
The dual threats of “statism and nationalism,” about which the 1958 Intelligence Estimate warned, derived from the desire of Latin Americans to
have more control over their national economic resources. “Latin Americans,” according to State Department adviser Laurence Duggan, had
become “convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country’s resources should be the people of that country.” But that
conviction was in conflict with certain US interests. As the US Ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Bonsal, wrote to his boss that same year,
“This problem of maintaining the position of American oil companies in Bolivia and in other parts of South America is, as you are undoubtedly
more aware than I am, one of the most important with which we are faced.” The problem, Bonsal said, resulted in large part from of Latin
Americans’ distrust of foreign governments and corporations: “The fact is that it has been a tremendous task to overcome the belief of many
people here that in the exploitation of Bolivia’s oil resources, Bolivian national interest would be neglected or, at least, be placed in a subordinate
position.” Similar problems plagued US policymakers elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East [27]. Much of the need for militarization
arose from these realities. The so-called internal security programs began popping up, including in Colombia, at about the same
time that Ambassador Bonsal was writing in 1958 [28]. Leading Cold War architect George Kennan had articulated the problem a decade earlier:
We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population . This disparity is particularly great as between
ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period
is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive
detriment to our national security. [29] Later US officials were just as blunt about the need for militarization. According to General
Maxwell Taylor, one of the prime perpetrators of the Vietnam War, “As the leading affluent ‘have’ power, we may expect to have to fight for our
national valuables against envious ‘have-nots.’” And as Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, explained in 1980 while arguing for
the increased use of “rapid deployment forces”: “Turbulence, the threat of violence and the use of force remain widespread. [These problems]
have many and varied causes, [among which is the wealthier nations’ failure] to provide for the basic needs of people and narrow the explosive
disparity between wealth and hunger” [30]. Recent discussion in US government circles contains echoes of these statements.
Control over Latin American resources, particularly oil, remains a top priority today. In 2008 a Council on Foreign Relations Task
Force argued that “ Latin America has never mattered more for the United States .” Among a handful of reasons why, the first
mentioned was that “[t]he region is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States” [31]. The promotion of “free trade”—
understood in its technical sense, as policies that redirect public wealth into the hands of private corporations, sacrificing human and
environmental welfare in the process—remains central to the US strategy. Yet this effort must overcome the usual obstacles,
namely the resistance on the part of Latin American populations. A 2008 report by the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) noted the
threat posed by “a small group of radical populist governments” that “emphasize economic nationalism at the expense of market-based
approaches,” thus “directly clash[ing] with US initiatives.” Unfortunately, the report said, this “competing vision” is quite popular in the region,
where “high levels of poverty and striking income inequalities will continue to create a potentially receptive audience for radical populism’s
message.” The 2010 DNI report from the Obama appointee repeats these basic concerns: governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador are
“opposing US policies and interests in the region” by advancing “statist” alternatives to “market capitalism.” And as other establishment analysts
have recently pointed out, “distrust of Washington’s motives still runs deep in the region” [32]. Hillary Clinton herself has been one of the most
candid voices in the Obama administration with respect to US objectives in Latin America. This past March she blasted the Venezuelan
government of Hugo Chávez, demanding that Venezuela “restore private property and return to a free market economy.” She has also advocated
the easing of restrictions on travel to Cuba so that Cuban Americans would serve as “ambassadors…for a free market economy.” Clinton has
contrasted the Venezuelan “dictator” with other regional governments, saying that “[w]e wish Venezuela were looking more to its south and
looking at Brazil and looking at Chile” [33]. The promotion of “moderate” political alternatives to the current regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia
has been a consistent focus of US policy in recent years. In Bolivia, for example, declassified US Embassy documents have revealed the work of
USAID in funding opposition political parties in order to “serve as a counterweight to the radical MAS [the party of President Evo Morales] or its
successors,” and “strengthening grassroots organizations in order to confront the MAS.” Recent revelations about the extent of US monetary
assistance to opposition groups and media outlets in Venezuela—to the tune of $40 million per year—have further highlighted this strategy. State
Department officials have also publicly advocated the strategy of dividing the “radical” from the “moderate” left, in order to form a
“counterweight to governments like those currently in power in Venezuela and Bolivia which pursue policies which do not serve the interests of
their people or the region.” Further confirmation of this strategy comes from the US diplomatic files recently released by Wikileaks, some of
which offer evidence of US efforts to undermine or overthrow Hugo Chávez [34]. These statements and documents provide a fairly coherent
picture of US priorities in Latin America: promote US-friendly political regimes while steering Latin American
economies along an essentially neoliberal path (reducing or eliminating the social safety net, easing regulations on foreign corporations,
prioritizing raw material exports, dismantling protections for national industry, etc.). The formulas of neoliberalism and the
promotion of obedient client democracies are closely interlinked. And the more explicit statements of Clinton and others, rather than
the more conciliatory speeches by Obama himself, seem to reflect the underlying logic behind the current administration’s policy in the
region, which continues to reward regimes like those in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico that unabashedly favor corporate investors
over human rights while seeking to undermine those in countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba [35].
Security politics cause global destruction
Der Derian 98 (James, Professor of Political Science – University of Massachusetts, On Security, Ed. Lipschutz, p.
24-25)
No other concept in international relations packs the metaphysical punch, nor commands the disciplinary power of
"security." In its name, peoples have alienated their fears, rights and powers to gods, emperors, and most recently, sovereign
states, all to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of nature--as well as from other gods, emperors, and sovereign states. In its
name, w eapons of mass d estruction have been developed which have transfigured national interest into a security
dilemma based on a suicide pact . And, less often noted in international relations, in its name billions have been made and millions
killed while scientific knowledge has been furthered and intellectual dissent muted. We have inherited an ontotheology of
security, that is, an a priori argument that proves the existence and necessity of only one form of security because
there currently happens to be a widespread, metaphysical belief in it . Indeed, within the concept of security lurks the
entire history of western metaphysics, which was best described by Derrida "as a series of substitutions of center for center" in a
perpetual search for the "transcendental signified." Continues... 7 In this case, Walt cites IR scholar Robert Keohane on the hazards of
"reflectivism," to warn off anyone who by inclination or error might wander into the foreign camp: "As Robert Keohane has noted, until these
writers `have delineated . . . a research program and shown . . . that it can illuminate important issues in world politics, they will remain on the
margins of the field.' " 8 By the end of the essay, one is left with the suspicion that the rapid changes in world politics have triggered a "security
crisis" in security studies that requires extensive theoretical damage control. What if we leave the desire for mastery to the insecure
and instead imagine a new dialogue of security, not in the pursuit of a utopian end but in recognition of the world as it is,
other than us ? What might such a dialogue sound like? Any attempt at an answer requires a genealogy: to understand the discursive power of the
concept, to remember its forgotten meanings, to assess its economy of use in the present, to reinterpret--and possibly construct through the
reinterpretation--a late modern security comfortable with a plurality of centers, multiple meanings, and fluid identities. The steps I take here in
this direction are tentative and preliminary. I first undertake a brief history of the concept itself. Second, I present the "originary" form of security
that has so dominated our conception of international relations, the Hobbesian episteme of realism. Third, I consider the impact of two major
challenges to the Hobbesian episteme, that of Marx and Nietzsche. And finally, I suggest that Baudrillard provides the best, if most nullifying,
analysis of security in late modernity. In short, I retell the story of realism as an historic encounter of fear and danger with power and order that
produced four realist forms of security: epistemic, social, interpretive, and hyperreal. To preempt a predictable criticism, I wish to make it clear
that I am not in search of an "alternative security." An easy defense is to invoke Heidegger, who declared that "questioning is the piety
of thought." Foucault, however, gives the more powerful reason for a genealogy of security: I am not looking for an alternative; you can't find the
solution of a problem in the solution of another problem raised at another moment by other people. You see, what I want to do is not the history
of solutions, and that's the reason why I don't accept the word alternative. My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is
dangerous , then we always have something to do. The hope is that in the interpretation of the most pressing dangers of late
modernity we might be able to construct a form of security based on the appreciation and articulation rather than the
normalization or extirpation of difference . Nietzsche transvalues both Hobbes's and Marx's interpretations of security through a genealogy
of modes of being. His method is not to uncover some deep meaning or value for security, but to destabilize the intolerable fictional
identities of the past which have been created out of fear, and to affirm the creative differences which might yield new values for the
future. Originating in the paradoxical relationship of a contingent life and a certain death, the history of security reads for Nietzsche as an
abnegation, a resentment and, finally, a transcendence of this paradox. In brief, the history is one of individuals seeking an impossible security
from the most radical "other" of life, the terror of death which, once generalized and nationalized, triggers a futile cycle of collective
identities seeking security from alien others--who are seeking similarly impossible guarantees. It is a story of
differences taking on the otherness of death, and identities calcifying into a fearful sameness .
The alternative is to reject dominant security discourse – no one policy solves every problem – good theory
now drives better policies later
Bruce 96 (Robert, Associate Professor in Social Science – Curtin University and Graeme Cheeseman, Senior
Lecturer – University of New South Wales, Discourses of Danger and Dread Frontiers, p. 5-9)
This goal is pursued in ways which are still unconventional in the intellectual milieu of international relations in Australia, even though they are gaining influence
worldwide as traditional modes of theory and practice are rendered inadequate by global trends that defy comprehension, let alone policy. The
inability to
give meaning to global changes reflects partly the enclosed, elitist world of professional security analysts and bureaucratic
experts, where entry is gained by learning and accepting to speak a particular, exclusionary language. The contributors to this book are
familiar with the discourse, but accord no privileged place to its ‘knowledge form as reality’ in debates on defence and security. Indeed, they believe that debate
will be furthered only through a long overdue critical re-evaluation of elite perspectives. Pluralistic, democratically-oriented
perspectives on Australia’s identity are both required and essential if Australia’s thinking on defence and security is to be invigorated. This is not a
conventional policy book; nor should it be, in the sense of offering policy-makers and their academic counterparts sets of neat alternative
solutions, in familiar language and format, to problems they pose. This expectation is in itself a considerable part of the problem to
be analysed. It is, however, a book about policy, one that questions how problems are framed by policy-makers. It challenges the proposition that
irreducible bodies of real knowledge on defence and security exist independently of their ‘context in the world’, and it demonstrates how security
policy is articulated authoritatively by the elite keepers of that knowledge, experts trained to recognize enduring, universal wisdom. All others, from this
perspective, must accept such wisdom or remain outside the expert domain, tainted by their inability to comply with the ‘rightness’ of the official line. But it is
precisely the official line, or at least its image of the world, that needs to be problematised. If the critic responds directly to the demand for policy alternatives, without
addressing this image, he or she is tacitly endorsing it. Before
engaging in the policy debate the critics need to reframe the basic terms of
reference. This book, then, reflects and underlines the importance of Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said’s ‘critical intellectuals’.15 The demand, tacit or otherwise,
that the policy-maker’s frame of reference be accepted as the only basis for discussion and analysis ignores a three thousand year old tradition commonly associated
with Socrates and purportedly integral to the Western tradition of democratic dialogue. More immediately, it ignores post-seventeenth century democratic traditions
which insist that a good society must have within it some way of critically assessing its knowledge and the decisions based upon that knowledge which impact upon
citizens of such a society. This is a tradition with a slightly different connotation in contemporary liberal democracies which, during the Cold War, were proclaimed
different and superior to the totalitarian enemy precisely because there were institutional checks and balances upon power. In short, one of the major differences
between ‘open societies’ and their (closed) counterparts behind the Iron Curtain was that the former encouraged the critical testing of the knowledge and decisions of
the powerful and assessing them against liberal democratic principles. The latter tolerated criticism only on rare and limited occasions. For some, this represented the
triumph of rational-scientific methods of inquiry and techniques of falsification. For others, especially since positivism
and rationalism have lost much
of their allure, it meant that for society to become open and liberal, sectors of the population must be independent of the state and free to question its knowledge
and power. Though we do not expect this position to be accepted by every reader, contributors to this book believe that critical dialogue is long overdue in Australia
security community continues to invoke closed monological
narratives on defence and security. This book also questions the distinctions between policy practice and academic theory that
inform conventional accounts of Australian security. One of its major concerns, particularly in chapters 1 and 2, is to illustrate how theory is integral to the
practice of security analysis and policy prescription. The book also calls on policy-makers, academics and students of defence and security
to think critically about what they are reading, writing and saying; to begin to ask, of their work and study, difficult and searching questions raised in other
disciplines; to recognise, no matter how uncomfortable it feels, that what is involved in theory and practice is not the ability to identify a
replacement for failed models, but a realisation that terms and concepts – state sovereignty, balance of power, security, and so on – are
contested and problematic, and that the world is indeterminate, always becoming what is written about it. Critical analysis
which shows how particular kinds of theoretical presumptions can effectively exclude vital areas of political life from analysis has
direct practical implications for policy-makers, academics and citizens who face the daunting task of steering Australia through some potentially
and needs to be listened to. For all its liberal democratic trappings, Australia’s
choppy international waters over the next few years. There is also much of interest in the chapters for those struggling to give meaning to a world where so much that
has long been taken for granted now demands imaginative, incisive reappraisal. The contributors, too, have struggled to find meaning, often despairing at the terrible
will find no single, fully formed panacea for the world’s ills in general, or
are none. Every chapter, however, in its own way, offers something more than is found in orthodox literature, often by
exposing ritualistic Cold War defence and security mind-sets that are dressed up as new thinking. Chapters 7 and 9, for example, present
human costs of international violence. This is why readers
Australia’s security in particular. There
alternative ways of engaging in security and defence practice. Others (chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8) seek to alert policy-makers, academics and students to alternative
theoretical possibilities which might better serve an Australian community pursuing security and prosperity in an uncertain world. All chapters confront the policy
community and its counterparts in the academy with a deep awareness of the intellectual and material constraints imposed by dominant traditions of realism, but they
avoid dismissive and exclusionary terms which often in the past characterized exchanges between policy-makers and their critics. This is because, as noted earlier,
attention needs to be paid to the words and the thought processes of those being criticized. A close reading of this kind draws
attention to underlying assumptions, showing they need to be recognized and questioned. A sense of doubt (in place of confident
certainty) is a necessary prelude to a genuine search for alternative policies. First comes an awareness of the need for
new perspectives, then specific policies may follow. As Jim George argues in the following chapter, we need to look not so much
at contending policies as they are made for us but at challenging ‘the discursive process which gives [favoured interpretations
of “reality”] their meaning and which direct [Australia’s] policy/analytical/military responses’. This process is not restricted to the small, official defence
and security establishment huddled around the US-Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It also encompasses much of Australia’s academic defence and security
community located primarily though not exclusively within the Australian National University and the University College of the University of New South Wales.
These discursive processes are examined in detail in subsequent chapters as authors attempt to make sense of a politics of exclusion and closure which exercises
disciplinary power over Australia’s security community. They also question the discourse of ‘regional security’, ‘security cooperation’, ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘alliance
politics’ that are central to Australia’s official and academic security agenda in the 1990s. This is seen as an important task especially when, as is revealed, the
disciplines of International Relations and Strategic Studies are under challenge from critical and theoretical debates ranging across the social sciences and humanities;
debates that are nowhere to be found in Australian defence and security studies. The chapters graphically illustrate how Australia’s public policies on defence and
security are informed, underpinned and legitimised by a narrowly-based intellectual enterprise which draws strength from contested concepts of realism and
liberalism, which in turn seek legitimacy through policy-making processes. Contributors ask whether Australia’s policy-makers and their academic advisors are
unaware of broader intellectual debates, or resistant to them, or choose not to understand them, and why?
2NC Overview
K outweighs the case –
--Magnitude – war and genocide is inevitable under the logic of security. The assumption that something is
vital to national security, and threats to both national security and access to supply is the root cause of global
war – that’s Der Derian. Its try-or-die – voting Aff makes global wars structurally inevitable.
--Turns case –
.
--Alt solves the case – rejecting dominant representations challenges the root cause of violent identity
construction – undermining the sole reason for war. It’s a pre-requisite to better policy-making –it’s a matter
of sequencing – good theory now causes better action later – that’s Bruce..
Tricks
Case is a Lie
The Aff is epistemologically bankrupt. Their evidence is manufactured and distorted by the threat industry.
Pieterse 7 (Jan, Professor of Sociology – University of Illinois (Urbana), “Political and Economic Brinkmanship”,
Review of International Political Economy, 14(3), p. 473)
Brinkmanship and producing instability carry several meanings. The American military spends 48% of world military spending (2005) and
represents a vast, virtually continuously growing establishment that is a world in itself with its own lingo, its own reasons, internecine
battles and projects. That this large security establishment is a bipartisan project makes it politically relatively immune. That
for security reasons it is an insular world shelters it from scrutiny. For reasons of ‘deniability’ the president is insulated from certain operations
(Risen, 2006). That it is a completely hierarchical world onto itself makes it relatively unaccountable . Hence, to quote
Rumsfeld, ‘stuff happens’. In part this is the familiar theme of the Praetorian Guard and the shadow state (Stockwell, 1991). It includes a military
on the go, a military that seeks career advancement through role expansion, seeks expansion through threat inflation , and
in inflated threats finds rationales for ruthless action and is thus subject to feedback from its own echo chambers .
Misinformation broadcast by part of the intelligence apparatus blows back to other security circles where it may be taken for
real (Johnson, 2000). Inhabiting a hall of mirrors this apparatus operates in a perpetual state of self hypnosis with, since it
concerns classified information and covert ops, limited checks on its functioning.
Root Cause
Enframing of security makes macro-political violence inevitable
Burke 7 – Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales
(Anthony, Theory & Event, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason,”
Project MUSE)
threats, insecurities
and political manipulation, or the play of institutional, economic or political interests (the 'military-industrial complex'). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be discounted, but they flow
over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only come to form a powerful structure of common sense but
the apparently solid ground of the real itself. In this light, the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-making and
justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are more than merely arguments, rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly they mobilise forms of
knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media, citizens, bureaucracies and military forces
with organising systems of belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than that. They are truthsystems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in modernity: ontologies, statements about truth
and being which claim a rarefied privilege to state what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I am
thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement about the nature and ideality of being (in this case political being, that of the
nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and
application of strategic knowledge for the use of armed force, and the creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security
and national survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or positivistic inquiry into the
fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of things inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential
attributes'.17 In contrast, drawing on Foucauldian theorising about truth and power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a claim to
the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity, existence and action; one that is not essential or
timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and conflictual
socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'18 in its most sweeping and powerful form. I see such a drive for ontological
certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it takes the form of the existential and rationalist ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and
exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that confines
it within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in
the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation with violence: the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual
structure that generates violence. Here we are witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an
ontology of violence (the national security state). When we consider their relation to war, the two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and
doubly in combination) tends both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in scale and duration, or in unintended
effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost
and with limited impact -- it permeates being. This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger), showing how they
crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz. This creates both a profound ethical and
pragmatic problem. The ethical problem arises because of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image
of technology and being in which humans are merely utilitarian instruments for use, control and destruction, and
force -- in the words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the linear system
of effects imagined in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon
itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction. In the era of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt
This essay develops a theory about the causes of war -- and thus aims to generate lines of action and critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based either on a given sequence of events,
(that violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn against those that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are
made to coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21 What I am trying to
describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by security,
statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of
knowledge with particular systemic roles and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity.
Positivistic or scientific claims to epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and
political action, which in turn support larger ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a
common horizon of certainty that is one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more
totalising and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being) has analytical
The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy doctrine) claims
positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a
desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national existence, security, or order . However in practice, technique quickly passes
into ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence which
itself admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict, and the
resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy
claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for an ultimate purpose (securing being)
value, it tends to break down in action.
that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a technique not merely becomes an instrument of state power but
ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have
no essence or integrity outside their value as objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology
immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis
generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized manoeuvres in
the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the
"deterrent power" that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that
these dual ontologies of war link being, means, events and decisions into a single, unbroken chain whose very
process of construction cannot be examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S.
neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in his 2002 West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached from strong
ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war on terror'.24 Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that
obsessive ontological commitments have led to especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25 However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to disentangle strategic from existential
without interrogating more deeply how they form a conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's
thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will continue to
be made. The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the national security state and the
violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out
every other possibility of revealing being', how can they be escaped? 26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is there any scope for
agency and resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the political -- needs to be respected and understood. However, we are far from
powerless in the face of them. The need is to critique dominant images of political being and dominant ways of
securing that being at the same time, and to act and choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global rule of the political. Friend and Enemy:
reason, and to open up choice in that way. However
Violent Ontologies of the Nation-State In his Politics Among Nations Hans Morgenthau stated that 'the national interest of a peace-loving nation can only be defined in terms of national security, which is the irreducible minimum that
diplomacy must defend with adequate power and without compromise'. While Morgenthau defined security relatively narrowly -- as the 'integrity of the national territory and its institutions' -- in a context where security was in
practice defined expansively, as synonymous with a state's broadest geopolitical and economic 'interests', what was revealing about his formulation was not merely the ontological centrality it had, but the sense of urgency and priority
he accorded to it: it must be defended 'without compromise'.27 Morgenthau was a thoughtful and complex thinker, and understood well the complexities and dangers of using armed force. However his formulation reflected an
security was conceived in modern political thought as an
existential condition -- a sine qua non of life and sovereign political existence -- and then married to war and
instrumental action, it provides a basic underpinning for either the limitless resort to strategic violence without
effective constraint, or the perseverance of limited war (with its inherent tendencies to escalation) as a permanent feature of
politics. While he was no militarist, Morgenthau did say elsewhere (in, of all places, a far-reaching critique of nuclear strategy) that the 'quantitative and qualitative competition for conventional weapons is a rational instrument
influential view about the significance of the political good termed 'security'. When this is combined with the way in which
of international politics'.28 The conceptual template for such an image of national security state can be found in the work of Thomas Hobbes, with his influential conception of the political community as a tight unity of sovereign and
people in which their bodies meld with his own to form a 'Leviathan', and which must be defended from enemies within and without. His image of effective security and sovereignty was one that was intolerant of internal difference
and dissent, legitimating a strong state with coercive and exceptional powers to preserve order and sameness. This was a vision not merely of political order but of existential identity, set off against a range of existential others who
were sources of threat, backwardness, instability or incongruity.29 It also, in a way set out with frightening clarity by the theorist Carl Schmitt and the philosopher Georg Hegel, exchanged internal unity, identity and harmony for
permanent alienation from other such communities (states). Hegel presaged Schmitt's thought with his argument that individuality and the state are single moments of 'mind in its freedom' which 'has an infinitely negative relation to
itself, and hence its essential character from its own point of view is its singleness': Individuality is awareness of one's existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states,
each of which is autonomous vis-a-vis the others...this negative relation of the state to itself is embodied in the world as the relation of one state to another and as if the negative were something external.30 Schmitt is important both
for understanding the way in which such alienation is seen as a definitive way of imagining and limiting political communities, and for understanding how such a rigid delineation is linked to the inevitability and perpetuation of war.
Schmitt argued that the existence of a state 'presupposes the political', which must be understood through 'the specific political distinction...between friend and enemy'. The enemy is 'the other, the stranger; and it sufficient for his
nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in an extreme case conflicts with him are possible'.31 The figure of the enemy is constitutive of the state as 'the specific entity of a
people'.32 Without it society is not political and a people cannot be said to exist: Only the actual participants can correctly recognise, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict...to judge
whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence.33 Schmitt links this stark ontology to war when he states that the political is
only authentic 'when a fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to the whole nation,
becomes public by virtue of such a relationship...in its entirety the state as an organised political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction'.34 War, in short, is an existential condition: the entire life of a human being is a
struggle and every human being is symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is
the existential negation of the enemy.35 Schmitt claims that his theory is not biased towards war as a choice ('It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but devastating war and every political deed a military action...it
When such a theory takes the form of a social discourse
(which it does in a general form) such an ontology can only support , as a kind of originary ground, the basic Clausewitzian assumption that
war can be a rational way of resolving political conflicts -- because the import of Schmitt's argument is that such 'political' conflicts are ultimately expressed through the
neither favours war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism') but it is hard to accept his caveat at face value.36
possibility of war. As he says: 'to the enemy concept belongs the ever-present possibility of combat'.37 Where Schmitt meets Clausewitz, as I explain further below, the existential and rationalistic ontologies of war join into a closed
This closed circle of existential and strategic reason generates a number of dangers. Firstly, the
emergence of conflict can generate military action almost automatically simply because the world is conceived in
terms of the distinction between friend and enemy; because the very existence of the other constitutes an
unacceptable threat, rather than a chain of actions, judgements and decisions. (As the Israelis insisted of Hezbollah, they 'deny our right to exist'.) This effaces agency, causality
and responsibility from policy and political discourse: our actions can be conceived as independent of the
conflict or quarantined from critical enquiry, as necessities that achieve an instrumental purpose but do not
contribute to a new and unpredictable causal chain. Similarly the Clausewitzian idea of force -- which, by transporting a Newtonian category from the natural into the
social sciences, assumes the very effect it seeks -- further encourages the resort to military violence. We ignore the complex history of a
conflict, and thus the alternative paths to its resolution that such historical analysis might provide, by
portraying conflict as fundamental and existential in nature; as possibly containable or exploitable, but
always irresolvable. Dominant portrayals of the war on terror, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, are arguably examples of such ontologies in action. Secondly, the militaristic force of such an ontology is visible, in
circle of mutual support and justification.
Schmitt, in the absolute sense of vulnerability whereby a people can judge whether their 'adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life'.38 Evoking the kind of thinking that would become controversial in the Bush doctrine,
Hegel similarly argues that: ...a state may regard its infinity and honour as at stake in each of its concerns, however minute, and it is all the more inclined to susceptibility to injury the more its strong individuality is impelled as a result
of long domestic peace to seek and create a sphere of activity abroad. ....the state is in essence mind and therefore cannot be prepared to stop at just taking notice of an injury after it has actually occurred. On the contrary, there arises
Identity, even more than physical security or autonomy, is put at stake in such
thinking and can be defended and redeemed through warfare (or, when taken to a further extreme of an absolute demonisation and dehumanisation of the other, by mass
in addition as a cause of strife the idea of such an injury...39
killing, 'ethnic cleansing' or genocide). However anathema to a classical realist like Morgenthau, for whom prudence was a core political virtue, these have been influential ways of defining national security and defence during the
twentieth century and persists into the twenty-first. They infused Cold War strategy in the United States (with the key policy document NSC68 stating that 'the Soviet-led assault on free institutions is worldwide now, and ... a defeat of
free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere')40 and frames dominant Western responses to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and like groups (as Tony Blair admitted in 2006, 'We could have chosen security as the battleground. But
we didn't. We chose values.')41 It has also become influential, in a particularly tragic and destructive way, in Israel, where memories of the Holocaust and (all too common) statements by Muslim and Arab leaders rejecting Israel's
existence are mobilised by conservatives to justify military adventurism and a rejectionist policy towards the Palestinians. On the reverse side of such ontologies of national insecurity we find pride and hubris, the belief that martial
preparedness and action are vital or healthy for the existence of a people. Clausewitz's thought is thoroughly imbued with this conviction. For example, his definition of war as an act of policy does not refer merely to the policy of
cabinets, but expresses the objectives and will of peoples: When whole communities go to war -- whole peoples, and especially civilized peoples -- the reason always lies in some political situation and the occasion is always due to
some political object. War, therefore, is an act of policy.42 Such a perspective prefigures Schmitt's definition of the 'political' (an earlier translation reads 'war, therefore, is a political act'), and thus creates an inherent tension between
its tendency to fuel the escalation of conflict and Clausewitz's declared aim, in defining war as policy, to prevent war becoming 'a complete, untrammelled, absolute manifestation of violence'.43 Likewise his argument that war is a
'trinity' of people (the source of 'primordial violence, hatred and enmity'), the military (who manage the 'play of chance and probability') and government (which achieve war's 'subordination as an instrument of policy, which makes it
subject to reason alone') merges the existential and rationalistic conceptions of war into a theoretical unity.44 The idea that national identities could be built and redeemed through war derived from the 'romantic counter-revolution' in
philosophy which opposed the cosmopolitanism of Kant with an emphasis on the absolute state -- as expressed by Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Bismarkian Realpolitik and politicians like Wilhelm Von Humbolt. Humbolt, a Prussian
minister of Education, wrote that war 'is one of the most wholesome manifestations that plays a role in the education of the human race', and urged the formation of a national army 'to inspire the citizen with the spirit of true war'. He
stated that war 'alone gives the total structure the strength and the diversity without which facility would be weakness and unity would be void'.45 In the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel made similar arguments that to for individuals
to find their essence 'Government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by war'.46 The historian Azar Gat points to the similarity of Clausewitz's arguments that 'a people and a nation can hope for a strong position in
the world only if national character and familiarity with war fortify each other by continual interaction' to Hegel's vision of the ethical good of war in his Philosophy of Right.47 Likewise Michael Shapiro sees Clausewitz and Hegel as
alike in seeing war 'as an ontological investment in both individual and national completion...Clausewitz figures war as passionate ontological commitment rather than cool political reason...war is a major aspect of being.'48 Hegel's
text argues that war is 'a work of freedom' in which 'the individual's substantive duty' merges with the 'independence and sovereignty of the state'.49 Through war, he argues, the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their
indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so the corruption in nations would be the product of a prolonged,
let alone 'perpetual' peace.50 Hegel indeed argues that 'sacrifice on behalf of the individuality of the state is a substantial tie between the state and all its members and so is a universal duty...if the state as such, if its autonomy, is in
jeopardy, all its citizens are duty bound to answer the summons to its defence'.51 Furthermore, this is not simply a duty, but a form of self-realisation in which the individual dissolves into the higher unity of the state: The intrinsic
worth of courage as a disposition of mind is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualise this end, and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality. This
form of experience thus contains the harshness of extreme contradictions: a self-sacrifice which yet is the real existence of one's freedom; the maximum self-subsistence of individuality, yet only a cog playing its part in the mechanism
of an external organisation; absolute obedience, renunciation of personal opinions and reasonings, in fact complete absence of mind, coupled with the most intense and comprehensive presence of mind and decision in the moment of
acting; the most hostile and so most personal action against individuals, coupled with an attitude of complete indifference or even liking towards them as individuals.52 A more frank statement of the potentially lethal consequences of
patriotism -- and its simultaneously physical and conceptual annihilation of the individual human being -- is rarely to be found, one that is repeated today in countless national discourses and the strategic world-view in general. (In
contrast, one of Kant's fundamental objections to war was that it involved using men 'as mere machines or instruments'.53) Yet however bizarre and contradictory Hegel's argument, it constitutes a powerful social ontology: an
the
nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core element of politics. It does not explain why so many policymakers
think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married to a more rationalistic form of strategic thought that claims to link
violent means to political ends predictably and controllably, and which, by doing so, combines military action and national
purposes into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire to decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it is helpful to
apparently irrefutable discourse of being. It actualises the convergence of war and the social contract in the form of the national security state. Strategic Reason and Scientific Truth By itself, such an account of
focus on the modernity of this ontology -- one that is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological progress, and in its insistence on imposing images of scientific truth from the physical
one of the reasons Clausewitz
was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed to have chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological
outlook associated with the industrial revolution'.54 Set into this epistemological matrix, modern politics and
government engages in a sweeping project of mastery and control in which all of the world's resources -- mineral,
animal, physical, human -- are made part of a machinic process of which war and violence are viewed as
normal features. These are the deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of the most revealing contemporary examples comes from the writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a
sciences (such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For example, the military theorist and historian Martin van Creveld has argued that
Harvard professor and later U.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. He wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945 U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the
ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in emerging countries'. This 'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of power in foreign
Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the United States, but
in a particular epistemology (theory of knowledge) . Kissinger asserted that the West is 'deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge
policy'.55
consists of recording and classifying data -- the more accurately the better'. This, he claimed, has since the Renaissance set the West apart from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that have escaped the early impact of
Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost entirely internal to the observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for control was beset by a corrosive
anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons proliferation and constant military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and militancy of new post-colonial states, order and mastery were harder to define
and impose. He worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had 'encouraged political multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is difficult to
achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience' (emphasis added). He mourned that 'the greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order'.57 Here were
the driving obsessions of the modern rational statesman based around a hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For the two decades after 1945, our international activities were based on the assumption that
technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct "operational" concept of international order has proved too
simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. Our deepest challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though overwhelming military
Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for order and certainty continually
confront chaos, resistance and uncertainty: clay that won't be worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that refuse to
surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons of the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words. Yet as his sinister, Orwellian
exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world' demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This is a vicious, historic irony: a desire to control nature,
technology, society and human beings that is continually frustrated, but never abandoned or rethought. By 1968 U.S.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the rationalist policymaker par excellence, had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not
prevail in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's refusal to accept this conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to condemn
hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of Cambodia to two more decades of horror and misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another
strength will remain with the two superpowers.58
Republican Administration crowned more than decade of failed and destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In this struggle with the lessons of Vietnam,
we are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a craving for order,
control and certainty in the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that
Kissinger's thinking -- and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was embedded in instrumental images of
technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of power and an image of social and political order . In his essay 'The
Government of Subject Races' Cromer envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as best achieved by a
central authority working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine' .60 Kissinger analogously invoked the
revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical transformation,
virtues of 'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that technological progress no longer brought untroubled control: the Westernising 'spread of technology and its associated
rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of reality'.61 We sense the rational policymaker's frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a machine, ordered by a form of power and governmental reason which
deploys machines and whose desires and processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine. Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a seat of power in the
West and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it from the East -- human material, material wealth, knowledge,
This desire for order in the shadow of
chaos and uncertainty -- the constant war with an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern
thought, and was a major impetus to the development of technological reason and its supporting theories of
knowledge. As Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the 'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern strategy, foreign policy and
Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the apparently stable soil of natural science, in the hope of finding immovable
and unchallengeable roots there. While this process has origins in ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the Renaissance. The key
figures in this process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a hunger for political and ontological certainty, a
positivist epistemology and a naïve faith in the goodness of invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order,
and with it a new human power over the world, through a new empirical methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the
senses and the understanding. With this method, he argued, we can 'derive hope from a purer alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted'.63 In a similar move, Descartes sought
to conjure certainty from uncertainty through the application of a new method that moved progressively out from a
few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a divinely granted faculty of judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics
formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos.64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that
what have you -- is processed by the machine, then converted into more power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance.62
scientists should privilege 'objective', quantifiable qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones ; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative
analysis could science attain certain knowledge of the world'.65 Such doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth were to have powerful echoes in the 20th Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis, game theory, cybernetics and
computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of matter and energy and applied the most advanced applications of
mathematics and computing to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a terrible irony: as even Morgenthau understood, the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the
control of the weapons themselves, into political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method not merely as way of achieving a purer access to truth and epistemological certainty, but as liberating a new
power that would enable the creation of a new kind of Man. He opened the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and human power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a firmer foundation,
and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative comparison between 'men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the
new Indies' -- one that echoes in advance Kissinger's distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of empirical science: anyone making this comparison, he remarked,
'will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man'.68 We may be forgiven for blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man' was indeed in the process of stealing a new fire from the heavens and seizing God's power over the
world for itself. Not only would the new empirical science lead to 'an improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation of the Fall of Adam: For man, by the
fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not become entirely and
utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, 'in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford
mankind in some degree his bread...69 There is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement -- one that, in many ways, came to characterise western modernity itself, and which is easily recognisable in a generation of
modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam was the Judeo-Christian West's primal creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship and ambivalence. Bacon forecast
here a return to Eden, but one of man's own making. This truly was the death of God, of putting man into God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of faith could disguise the awesome epistemological violence
which now subordinated creation to man. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As such, there is nothing but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most
what would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over
creation'? If the new method and invention brought modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation, communications, education and comfort, it also enabled the Armenian
genocide, the Holocaust and two world wars; napalm, the B52, the hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and
military strategy. Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching inventions -- radar, television, rocketry, computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national
security and militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass -- brought in their wake upheaval
and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery; navigation, slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new
empirical science would be ambivalence as much as certainty; degradation as much as enlightenment; the
destruction of nature as much as its utilisation. Doubts and Fears: Technology as Ontology If Bacon could not reasonably be expected to foresee many of these developments, the idea that
distinguished of human actions...inventions are a blessing and a benefit without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And
scientific and technological progress could be destructive did occur to him. However it was an anxiety he summarily dismissed: ...let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and sciences becoming depraved to malevolent or
luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good; talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches, light itself...Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that
after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion.71 By the mid-Twentieth Century,
, such fears could no longer
be so easily wished away, as the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer recognised. He said in a 1947 lecture: We felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting and
in the end in large measure achieving the realization of atomic weapons...In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no over-statement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they
empire over creation -- his discovery of the innermost secrets of
brought destruction and horror. Scientific powers
that had been consciously applied in the defence of life and in the hope of its betterment now threatened its total
and absolute destruction. This would not prevent a legion of scientists, soldiers and national security policymakers later attempting to apply Bacon's faith in invention and Descartes' faith in mathematics to
cannot lose.72 Adam had fallen once more, but into a world which refused to acknowledge its renewed intimacy with contingency and evil. Man's
matter and energy, of the fires that fuelled the stars -- had not 'enhanced human power and dignity' as Bacon claimed, but instead
make of the Bomb a rational weapon. Oppenheimer -- who resolutely opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb -- understood what the strategists could not: that the weapons resisted control, resisted utility, that 'with the release
of atomic energy quite revolutionary changes had occurred in the techniques of warfare'.73 Yet Bacon's legacy, one deeply imprinted on the strategists, was his view that truth and utility are 'perfectly identical'.74 In 1947
Oppenheimer had clung to the hope that 'knowledge is good...it seems hard to live any other way than thinking it was better to know something than not to know it; and the more you know, the better'; by 1960 he felt that 'terror
attaches to new knowledge. It has an unmooring quality; it finds men unprepared to deal with it.'75 Martin Heidegger questioned this mapping of natural science onto the social world in his essays on technology -- which, as 'machine',
has been so crucial to modern strategic and geopolitical thought as an image of perfect function and order and a powerful tool of intervention. He commented that, given that modern technology 'employs exact physical science...the
technology and its relation to science, society
and war cannot be reduced to a noiseless series of translations of science for politics, knowledge for force, or force
for good. Instead, Oppenheimer saw a process frustrated by roadblocks and ruptured by irony; in his view there was no smooth, unproblematic
translation of scientific truth into social truth, and technology was not its vehicle. Rather his comments raise profound and painful ethical questions that resonate with terror and uncertainty. Yet this has not
prevented technology becoming a potent object of desire, not merely as an instrument of power but as a promise and
conduit of certainty itself. In the minds of too many rational soldiers, strategists and policymakers, technology brings with it the truth of its
enabling science and spreads it over the world. It turns epistemological certainty into political certainty; it turns
control over 'facts' into control over the earth. Heidegger's insights into this phenomena I find especially telling and disturbing -- because they underline
the ontological force of the instrumental view of politics. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger's striking argument was that in the modernising
West technology is not merely a tool, a 'means to an end'. Rather technology has become a governing image of the
modern universe, one that has come to order, limit and define human existence as a 'calculable coherence of
forces' and a 'standing reserve' of energy . Heidegger wrote: 'the threat to man does not come in the first instance from the
potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence .'77
This process Heidegger calls 'Enframing' and through it the scientific mind demands that 'nature reports itself in
some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and remains orderable as a system of information'. Man is
not a being who makes and uses machines as means, choosing and limiting their impact on the world for his ends;
rather man has imagined the world as a machine and humanity everywhere becomes trapped within its logic. Man,
he writes, 'comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall...where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.
Meanwhile Man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.'78 Technological man not only becomes the name for a project of
lordship and mastery over the earth, but incorporates humanity within this project as a calculable resource. In
strategy, warfare and geopolitics human bodies, actions and aspirations are caught, transformed and
perverted by such calculating, enframing reason: human lives are reduced to tools, obstacles, useful or
obstinate matter. This tells us much about the enduring power of crude instrumental versions of strategic thought, which relate not merely to the actual use of force but to broader geopolitical strategies that see, as
limited war theorists like Robert Osgood did, force as an 'instrument of policy short of war'. It was from within this strategic ontology that figures like the Nobel prize-winning economist
Thomas Schelling theorised the strategic role of threats and coercive diplomacy, and spoke of strategy as 'the power to hurt'.79 In the 2006 Lebanon war we can
deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science'.76 Yet as the essays and speeches of Oppenheimer attest,
see such thinking in the remark of a U.S. analyst, a former Ambassador to Israel and Syria, who speculated that by targeting civilians and infrastructure Israel aimed 'to create enough pain on the ground so there would be a local
political reaction to Hezbollah's adventurism'.80 Similarly a retired Israeli army colonel told the Washington Post that 'Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy
price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-
the available critical, interpretive or
languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform or
refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question
land.'81 Conclusion: Violent Ontologies or Peaceful Choices? I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that
performative
here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought
and remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war
doctrines seek mainly to improve the accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart
from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82 In the case
of a theorist like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences
have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat and espouses a moral community that
stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires
the resort to war as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a
performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I suspect that
The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of
'human beings as we know them' -- which ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates
(indeed reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an ontology of being for one of
becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new possibilities through agonistic relation to others,
provides a less destructive and violent way of acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference .85 My argument here, whilst
normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and
rational instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and community -- my analysis
does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation. Neither the progressive flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an
international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the conceptual
and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come , against everything Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress,
modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not
simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing ...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility
even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the is.
that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic
the challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government,
technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our entire
space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -- militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert
intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive not merely from particular
choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical' discourses of
scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment images of being. Confined within such an
epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers' choices become necessities, their actions become
inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die . Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which
builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained
through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may
simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing
cascade of discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses,
however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does, admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it
is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are
utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark
ontology of the friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and
power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that
choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making
even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to
produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities .88) There seems no point in
following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique.
However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the
modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that
would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his
decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that,
faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that
policy choices could aim to bring into
cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the
space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a
very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the
choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully,
being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this
questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and autonomy? Do
they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and environmental price?
Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and
effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and
consequences which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and
more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and
violence? Will our thought?
Serial Policy Failure
Both their harm and solvency claims are false. Advantages are random factoids politically constructed to
make the plan appear to be a good idea. Solvency is a rigged game.
Dillon and Reid 2k (Michael, Professor of Politics – University of Lancaster, and Julian, Lecturer in International
Relations – King’s College, “Global Governance, Liberal Peace, and Complex Emergency”, Alternatives: Global,
Local, Political, January / March, 25(1))
More specifically, where there is a policy problematic there is expertise, and where there is expertise there, too, a policy problematic will emerge.
Such problematics are detailed and elaborated in terms of discrete forms of knowledge as well as interlocking policy domains. Policy
domains reify the problematization of life in certain ways by turning these epistemically and politically contestable orderings of
life into "problems" that require the continuous attention of policy science and the continuous resolutions of
policymakers. Policy "actors" develop and compete on the basis of the expertise that grows up around such problems or
clusters of problems and their client populations. Here, too, we may also discover what might be called "epistemic entrepreneurs." Albeit the
market for discourse is prescribed and policed in ways that Foucault indicated, bidding to formulate novel problematizations they
seek to "sell" these, or otherwise have them officially adopted. In principle, there is no limit to the ways in which the management of population
may be problematized. All aspects of human conduct, any encounter with life, is problematizable. Any problematization is capable of
becoming a policy problem. Governmentality thereby creates a market for policy, for science and for policy science,
in which problematizations go looking for policy sponsors while policy sponsors fiercely compete on behalf of their favored
problematizations. Reproblematization of problems is constrained by the institutional and ideological investments
surrounding accepted "problems," and by the sheer difficulty of challenging the inescapable ontological and
epistemological assumptions that go into their very formation. There is nothing so fiercely contested as an epistemological or
ontological assumption. And there is nothing so fiercely ridiculed as the suggestion that the real problem with
problematizations exists precisely at the level of such assumptions. Such "paralysis of analysis" is precisely what
policymakers seek to avoid since they are compelled constantly to respond to circumstances over which they
ordinarily have in fact both more and less control than they proclaim. What they do not have is precisely the control
that they want. Yet serial policy failure--the fate and the fuel of all policy--compels them into a continuous search for
the new analysis that will extract them from the aporias in which they constantly find themselves enmeshed.[ 35]
Serial policy failure is no simple shortcoming that science and policy--and policy science--will ultimately overcome.
Serial policy failure is rooted in the ontological and epistemological assumptions that fashion the ways in which
global governance encounters and problematizes life as a process of emergence through fitness landscapes that constantly adaptive
and changing ensembles have continuously to negotiate. As a particular kind of intervention into life, global governance promotes the very
changes and unintended outcomes that it then serially reproblematizes in terms of policy failure. Thus, global liberal governance is not
linear problem-solving process committed to the resolution of objective policy problems simply by bringing better
information and knowledge to bear upon them. A nonlinear economy of power/knowledge, it deliberately installs
socially specific and radically inequitable distributions of wealth, opportunity, and mortal danger both locally and
globally through the very detailed ways in which life is variously (policy) problematized by it.
a
Structural Violence
Nuclear extinction rhetoric guarantees structural violence – makes war inevitable
Martin 84 (Brian, research associate in the Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National University, and a member of
SANA, “Extinction Politics,” Scientists Against Nuclear Arms Newsletter, number 16, May, pp. 5-6, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/84sana1.html)
The peace movement also has denigrated the value of civil defence, apparently, in part, because a realistic examination of civil defence would
undermine beliefs about total annihilation. The many ways in which the effects of nuclear war are exaggerated and worst cases emphasized can
be explained as the result of a presupposition by antiwar scientists and activists that their political aims will be fulfilled when people are
convinced that there is a good chance of total disaster from nuclear war.[7] There are quite a number of reasons why people may find a belief in
extinction from nuclear war to be attractive.[8] Here I will only briefly comment on a few factors. The first is an implicit Western chauvinism
The effects of global nuclear war would mainly hit the population of the United States, Europe and the Soviet
Union. This is quite unlike the pattern of other major ongoing human disasters of starvation, disease, poverty and
political repression which mainly affect the poor, nonwhite populations of the Third World. The gospel of nuclear
extinction can be seen as a way by which a problem for the rich white Western societies is claimed to be a problem for
all the world. Symptomatic of this orientation is the belief that, without Western aid and trade, the economies and populations of
the Third World would face disaster. But this is only Western self-centredness. Actually, Third World populations would in
many ways be better off without the West: the pressure to grow cash crops of sugar, tobacco and so on would be reduced, and we would no
longer witness fresh fish being airfreighted from Bangladesh to Europe. A related factor linked with nuclear extinctionism is a belief
that nuclear war is the most pressing issue facing humans. I disagree, both morally and politically, with the stance that preventing
nuclear war has become the most important social issue for all humans. Surely, in the Third World, concern over the actuality of
massive suffering and millions of deaths resulting from poverty and exploitation can justifiably take precedence over
the possibility of a similar death toll from nuclear war . Nuclear war may be the greatest threat to the collective lives of those in the
rich, white Western societies but, for the poor, nonwhite Third World peoples, other issues are more pressing. In political terms, to give
precedence to nuclear war as an issue is to assume that nuclear war can be overcome in isolation from changes in
major social institutions, including the state, capitalism, state socialism and patriarchy. If war is deeply embedded in
such structures - as I would argue[9] - then to try to prevent war without making common cause with other social movements will not be
successful politically. This means that the antiwar movement needs to link its strategy and practice with other movements such as the feminist
movement, the workers' control movement and the environmental movement. A focus on nuclear extinction also encourages a focus
on appealing to elites as the means to stop nuclear war , since there seems no other means for quickly overcoming the danger. For
example, Carl Sagan, at the end of an article about nuclear winter in a popular magazine, advocates writing letters to the presidents of the United
States and of the Soviet Union.[10] But if war has deep institutional roots, then appealing to elites has no chance of success.
This has been amply illustrated by the continual failure of disarmament negotiations and appeals to elites over the past several decades. Just about
everyone, including generals and prime ministers, is opposed to nuclear war. The question is what to do about it. Many people have incorporated
doomsday ideas into their approaches. My argument here is that antiwar activists should become much more critical of the assumptions
underlying extinction politics.
Structural violence outweighs – kills more people
Gilligan 96 (James, Faculty – Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes, p. 191196)
You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcibly
and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterize their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families
and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by
without realizing that trying to understand them and their virulent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any
theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the
criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence of our
society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of
violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence of this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we
define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a
numerical or public health, or human, standpoint By “structural violence” I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who
occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess
deaths (or at least a demonstratably large portion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s
collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting
“structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of
individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural
violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously rather than
sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. Structural violence
operates more or less independently of individual acs; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose
decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may appear to have had other
(natural or violent) causes. Neither the existence, the scope and extent, nor the lethal power of structural violence can be discerned until we shift
our focus from a clinical or psychological perspective, which looks at one individual at a time, to the epidemiological perspective of public health
and preventative medicine. Examples are all around us. [Continues – Page 195] The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence
compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency
of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including
those caused by genocide---or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000 deaths), the
Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it
was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words, every
fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that
caused 232 deaths, and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi
genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating,
thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetuated on the week and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural
violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide
to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or behavioral—is more important,
dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.
VTL
-- Focus on body counts destroys the value to life. Only voting Neg produces meaningful existence.
Der Derian 98 (James, Professor of Political Science – University of Massachusetts, “The Value of Security:
Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard”, On Security, Ed. Lipschitz)
Conventions of security act to suppress rather than confront the fears endemic to life, for ". . . life itself is
essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation
and at least, at its mildest, exploitation--but why should one always use those words in which slanderous intent has been imprinted for ages." 35
Elsewhere Nietzsche establishes the pervasiveness of agonism in life: "life is a consequence of war, society itself a means to war." 36 But the
denial of this permanent condition, the effort to disguise it with a consensual rationality or to hide from it with a
fictional sovereignty, are all effects of this suppression of fear. The desire for security is manifested as a collective
resentment of difference--that which is not us, not certain, not predictable. Complicit with a negative will to power
is the fear-driven desire for protection from the unknown. Unlike the positive will to power, which produces an
aesthetic affirmation of difference, the search for truth produces a truncated life which conforms to the rationally knowable,
to the causally sustainable. In The Gay Science , Nietzsche asks of the reader: "Look, isn't our need for knowledge precisely this need for the
familiar, the will to uncover everything strange, unusual, and questionable, something that no longer disturbs us? Is it not the instinct of fear that
bids us to know? And is the jubilation of those who obtain knowledge not the jubilation over the restoration of a sense of security?" The fear of
the unknown and the desire for certainty combine to produce a domesticated life, in which causality and rationality
become the highest sign of a sovereign self, the surest protection against contingent forces. The fear of fate assures a belief
that everything reasonable is true, and everything true, reasonable. In short, the security imperative produces, and is sustained by,
the strategies of knowledge which seek to explain it. Nietzsche elucidates the nature of this generative relationship in The Twilight of
the Idols : The causal instinct is thus conditional upon, and excited by, the feeling of fear. The "why?" shall, if at all possible, not give the cause
for its own sake so much as for a particular kind of cause --a cause that is comforting, liberating and relieving. . . . That which is new and strange
and has not been experienced before, is excluded as a cause. Thus one not only searches for some kind of explanation, to serve as
a cause, but for a particularly selected and preferred kind of explanation--that which most quickly and frequently
abolished the feeling of the strange, new and hitherto unexperienced: the most habitual explanations. A safe life
requires safe truths. The strange and the alien remain unexamined, the unknown becomes identified as evil, and evil
provokes hostility--recycling the desire for security.
[CONTINUES]
The point of Nietzsche's critical genealogy is to show that the perilous conditions that created the security imperativ e--and the
western metaphysics that perpetuate it--have diminished if not disappeared; yet, the fear of life persists: "Our century denies this
perilousness, and does so with a good conscience: and yet it continues to drag along with it the old habits of Christian security, Christian
enjoyment, recreation and evaluation." 46 Nietzsche's worry is that the collective reaction against older, more primal fears has created
an even worse danger: the tyranny of the herd, the lowering of man, the apathy of the last man which controls through
conformity and rules through passivity. The security of the sovereign, rational self and state comes at the cost of
ambiguity, uncertainty, paradox--all that makes a free life worthwhile.
Coviello
Fear of apocalypse causes endless violence in the name of security
Coviello 00 (Peter, Professor of English and Acting Program Director of Africana Studies – Bowdoin College,
Queer Frontiers, p. 40-41)
Perhaps. But to claim that American culture is at present decisively postnuclear is not to say that the world we inhabit is in any way
postapocalyptic. Apocalypse, as I began by saying, changed-it did not go away. And here I want to hazard my second assertion: if, in the
nuclear age of yesteryear, apocalypse signified an event threatening everyone and everything with (in Jacques
Derrida's suitably menacing phrase) `remainderless and a-symbolic destruction,"6 then in the postnuclear world apocalypse is
an affair whose parameters are definitively local. In shape and in substance, apocalypse is defined now by the
affliction it brings somewhere else, always to an "other" people whose very presence might then be written as a
kind of dangerous contagion, threatening the safety and prosperity of a cherished "general population:' This fact
seems to me to stand behind Susan Sontag's incisive observation, from 1989, that, "Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not
`Apocalypse Now' but 'Apocalypse from Now On."" The decisive point here in the perpetuation of the threat of apocalypse (the
point Sontag goes on, at length, to miss) is that apocalypse is ever present because, as an element in a vast economy of
power, it is ever useful. That is, through the perpetual threat of destruction-through the constant reproduction of
the figure of apocalypse-agencies of power ensure their authority to act on and through the bodies of a particular
population. No one turns this point more persuasively than Michel Foucault, who in the final chapter of his first volume of The History of
Sexuality addresses himself to the problem of a power that is less repressive than productive, less life-threatening than, in his words, "lifeadministering:' Power, he contends, "exerts a positive influence on life . . . [and] endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it,
subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations:' In his brief comments on what he calls "the atomic situation;' however,
Foucault insists as well that the productiveness of modern power must not be mistaken for a uniform repudiation of violent or even lethal
means. For as "managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race," agencies of modern power presume to act
"on the behalf of the existence of everyone:' Whatsoever might be construed as a threat to life and survival in this
way serves to authorize any expression of force, no matter how invasive or, indeed, potentially annihilating. "If
genocide is indeed the dream of modern power;' Foucault writes, "this is not because of a recent return to the ancient
right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the largescale phenomena of population:'8 For a state that would arm itself not with the power to kill its population, but with a
more comprehensive power over the patterns and functioning of its collective life, the threat of an apocalyptic
demise, nuclear or otherwise, seems a civic initiative that can scarcely be done without.
Dillon
Calculability devalues life and make extermination possible
Dillon 99 (Michael, Professor of Politics and International Relations – University of Lancaster, “Another Justice”,
Political Theory, 27(2), April, p. 164-165)
Quite the reverse. The subject was never a firm foundation for justice, much less a hospitable vehicle for the reception of the call of another
Justice. It was never in possession of that self-possession which was supposed to secure the certainty of itself, of a self-possession that would
enable it ultimately to adjudicate everything. The very indexicality required of sovereign subjectivity gave rise rather to a
commensurability much more amenable to the expendability required of the political and material economies of mass
societies than it did to the singular, invaluable, and uncanny uniqueness of the self. The value of the subject became the standard
unit of currency for the political arithmetic of States and the political economies of capitalism. They trade in it still to
devastating global effect . The technologisation of the political has become manifest and global. Economies of evaluation
necessarily require calculability. Thus no valuation without mensuration and no mensuration without indexation. Once rendered
calculable, however, units of account are necessarily submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to devaluation.
Devaluation, logically, can extend to the point of counting as nothing . Hence, no mensuration without demensuration either.
There is nothing abstract about this: the declension of economies of value leads to the zero point of holocaust .
However liberating and emancipating systems of value-rights-may claim to be, for example, they run the risk of counting out the invaluable.
Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Herewith, then, the necessity of championing the invaluable itself. For we must
never forget that, “we are dealing always with whatever exceeds measure.” But how does that necessity present itself? Another Justice answers:
as the surplus of the duty to answer to the claim of Justice over rights. That duty, as with the advent of another Justice, is integral to the lack
constitutive of the human way of being.
Security imposes a calculative logic that destroys the value to life
Dillon 96 (Michael, Professor of Politics – University of Lancaster, Politics of Security, p. 26)
Everything, for example, has now become possible. But what human being seems most impelled to do with the power of its
actions is to turn itself into a species; not merely an animal species, nor even a species of currency or consumption (which amount to the same
thing), but a mere species of calculation. For only by reducing itself to an index of calculation does it seem capable of
constructing that oplitical arithmetic by which it can secure the security globalised Western thought insists upon, and which a
world made uncreasingly unpredictable by the very way human being acts into it now seem to require. Yet, the very rage for
calculability which securing security incites is precisely also what reduces human freedom, inducing either despair or the
surrender of what is human to the dehumanising calculative logic of what seems to be necessary to secure security. I think, then,
that Hannah Arendt was right when she saw late modern humankind caught in a dangerous world-destroying cleft between a belief that
everything is possible and a willingness to surender itself to so-called laws of necessity (calculability itself) which would make everything
possible. That it was, in short, characterized by a combination of reckless omnipotence and reckless despair. But I also think that things have
gone one stage further – the surrender to the necessity of realising everything that is possible- and that this found its paradigmatic
expression for example in the deterrent security policies of the Cold War; where everything up to and including selfimmolation not only became possible but actually necessary in the interests of (inter)national security. The logic persists in the
metaphysical core of modern politics- the axiom of Inter-state security relations, popularized for example, through strategic discourse- even if the
details have changed.
Blocks
Framework
-- Counter interpretation – aff must defend their discourse. The judge is an academic challengning the values
and assumptions of the 1AC.
-- Our form of education outweighs – we are educators not policy-makers – we all take government classes to
learn about the policy-making process – individuals must be able to point out the weak spot in dominant
narratives.
-- Cost-benefit analysis – aff gets strategic gains from reading hyperbolic impact scenarios -- cost is that they
should have to defend the desirability of how their represent those impacts.
-- Coherence – only incorporation of representations can make sense of political reality
Jourde 6 – Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.A., Political Science, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, B.Sc., Political Science, Université de Montréal (Cedric, 2006, “1995 Hegemony or Empire?:
The redefinition of US Power under George W Bush,” Ed. David and Grondin p. 182-3)
Relations between states are, at least in part, constructed upon representations. Representations are interpretative
prisms through which decision-makers make sense of a political reality, through which they define and assign a
subjective value to the other states and non-state actors of the international system, and through which they
determine what are significant international political issues.2 For instance, officials of a given state will represent other states as
'allies', 'rivals', or simply 'insignificant', thus assigning a subjective value to these states. Such subjective categorizations often derive from
representations of these states' domestic politics, which can for instance be perceived as 'unstable*, 'prosperous', or 'ethnically divided'. It must
be clear that representations are not objective or truthful depictions of reality; rather they are subjective and political
ways of seeing the world, making certain things 'seen' by and significant for an actor while making other things
'unseen' and 'insignificant'.3 In other words, they are founded on each actor's and group of actors' cognitive, cultural-social,
and emotional standpoints. Being fundamentally political, representations are the object of tense struggles and
tensions, as some actors or groups of actors can impose on others their own representations of the world, of what they
consider to be appropriate political orders, or appropriate economic relations, while others may in turn accept, subvert or contest these
representations. Representations of a foreign political reality influence how decision-making actors will act upon that
reality. In other words, as subjective and politically infused interpretations of reality, representations constrain and
enable the policies that decision-makers will adopt vis-a-vis other states; they limit the courses of action that are
politically thinkable and imaginable, making certain policies conceivable while relegating other policies to the realm
of the unthinkable.4 Accordingly, identifying how a state represents another state or non-state actor helps to understand
how and why certain foreign policies have been adopted while other policies have been excluded. To take a now
famous example, if a transnational organization is represented as a group of 'freedom fighters', such as the multi-national mujahideen in
Afghanistan in the 1980s, then military cooperation is conceivable with that organization; if on the other hand the same organization is
represented as a 'terrorist network', such as Al-Qaida, then military cooperation as a policy is simply not an option. In sum. the way in
which
one sees, interprets and imagines the 'other* delineates the course of action one will adopt in order to deal with this
'other'.
-- Kritik proper is offense – means their interpretation excludes vital discussions that implicate how the plan
is enacted – at worst we turn case
-- Supremacy of policy-making crowds out critical questioning – causes serial policy failure
Biswas 7 (Shampa, Professor of Politics – Whitman College, “Empire and Global Public Intellectuals: Reading
Edward Said as an International Relations Theorist”, Millennium, 36(1), p. 117-125)
The most serious threat to the ‘intellectual vocation’, he argues, is ‘professionalism’ and mounts a pointed attack on the
proliferation of ‘specializations’ and the ‘cult of expertise’ with their focus on ‘relatively narrow areas of knowledge’, ‘technical
formalism’, ‘impersonal theories and methodologies’, and most worrisome of all, their ability and willingness to be seduced by
power.17 Said mentions in this context the funding of academic programmes and research which came out of the exigencies of the Cold War18,
an area in which there was considerable traffic of political scientists (largely trained as IR and comparative politics scholars) with institutions of
policy-making. Looking at various influential US academics as ‘organic intellectuals’ involved in a dialectical relationship with foreign policymakers and examining the institutional relationships at and among numerous think tanks and universities that create convergent perspectives and
interests, Christopher Clement has studied US intervention in the Third World both during and after the Cold War made possible and justified
through various forms of ‘intellectual articulation’.19 This is not simply a matter of scholars working for the state, but indeed a larger
question of intellectual orientation . It is not uncommon for IR scholars to feel the need to formulate their scholarly
conclusions in terms of its relevance for global politics, where ‘relevance’ is measured entirely in terms of policy wisdom. Edward
Said’s searing indictment of US intellectuals – policy-experts and Middle East experts - in the context of the first Gulf War20 is certainly even
more resonant in the contemporary context preceding and following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The space for a critical appraisal of the
motivations and conduct of this war has been considerably diminished by the expertise-framed national debate wherein certain kinds of ethical
questions irreducible to formulaic ‘for or against’ and ‘costs and benefits’ analysis can simply not be raised. In
effect, what Said argues for, and IR scholars need to pay particular heed to, is an understanding of ‘intellectual relevance’ that is larger and
more worthwhile, that is about the posing of critical, historical, ethical and perhaps unanswerable questions rather than the
offering of recipes and solutions, that is about politics (rather than techno-expertise) in the most fundamental and important
senses of the vocation.21
-- Their interp is worse – leads to word pik’s which link more to all their offense
AT Plan Focus
Plan focus is bad –
1. Reductionist – a 9 minute speech is reduced to a 10 second sentence. Focusing exclusively on the plan limits
us to the tip of the political iceberg.
2. Choice – plans are constrained by the resolution, but advantages are unrestrained. This means they have
more responsibility for choosing and should be held accountable. They get strategic advantages from reading
hyperbolic impact cards, they should have to bear the costs.
3. Word PICs are worse – plan focus encourages sheisty word PICs with 1 random card and no solvency
advocate – hurts discussion of the 1AC and core literature
4. Predictability – the ballot says “did the better debating” – If they can’t defend the majority of their
representations, they haven’t done the better debating – debate is an academic activity where you have to
defend your ideas
AT Judge Choice
1. Judge choice assumes plan focus and that’s debated elsewhere
2. We engage all representations, if there are good ones the affirmative should be able to leverage those
representations as offense.
3. Town hall model is false – the affirmative isn’t tacking on good representations to the negative
representations of another party, they are directly responsible for the good and the bad.
4. Form and content are indistinguishable. Plan can’t be divorced from its justifications.
Hill 91 (Thomas E. Jr., Professor of Philosophy – University of North Carolina, “The Message of Affirmative Action”, The Affirmative Action
Debate (1995), Ed. Cahn, p. 169-170)
Actions, as the saying goes, often speak louder than words. There are times, too, when only actions can effectively communicate the
message we want to convey, and times when giving a message is a central part of the purpose of action. What our actions say to
others depends largely, though not entirely, upon our avowed reasons for acting; and this is a matter for reflective [end page
169] decision, not something we discover later by looking back at what we did and its effects. The decision is important because "the
same act" can have very different consequences, depending upon how we choose to justify it. In a sense, acts
done for different reasons are not "the same act" even if otherwise similar, and so not merely the consequences
but also the moral nature of our acts depend in part on our decisions about the reasons for doing them.
Unfortunately, the message actually conveyed by our actions does not depend only on our intentions and reasons, for our acts may have a
meaning for others quite at odds with what we hoped to express. Others may misunderstand our intentions, doubt our sincerity, or discern a
subtext that undermines the primary message. Even if sincere, well-intended, and successfully conveyed, the message of an act or
policy does not by itself justify the means by which it is conveyed; it is almost always a relevant factor, however, in the moral
assessment of the act or policy. These remarks may strike you as too obvious to be worth mentioning; for, even if we do not usually
express the ideas so abstractly, we are all familiar with them in our daily interactions with our friends, families, and colleagues. Who, for
example, does not know the importance of the message expressed in offering money to another person, as well
as the dangers of misunderstanding? What is superficially "the same act" can be an offer to buy, an admission of
guilt, an expression of gratitude, a contribution to a common cause, a condescending display of superiority, or an
outrageous insult. Because all this is so familiar, the extent to which these elementary points are ignored in
discussions of the pros and cons of social policies such as affirmative action is surprising. The usual presumption is
that social policies can be settled entirely by debating the rights involved or by estimating the consequences,
narrowly conceived apart from the messages that we want to give and the messages that are likely to be received.
AT Reps Irrelevant
Not just a question of representation – the alternative rejects the aff’s security discourse – this encompasses
reps as well as the epistemological and ontological focus behind the aff – means we still get all of our impacts
Representations must precede policy discussion – it determines what is politically thinkable
Crawford 2 -- Neta,PhD MA MIT, BA Brown, Prof. of poli sci at boston univ. Argument and Change in World
Politics, p. 19-21
Coherent arguments are unlikely to take place unless and until actors, at least on some level, agree on what they are arguing
about. The at least temporary resolution of meta-arguments- regarding the nature of the good (the content of prescriptive norms); what is
out there, the way we know the world, how we decide between competing beliefs (ontology and epistemology); and the nature of the
situation at hand( the proper frame or representation)- must occur before specific arguments that could lead to
decision and action may take place. Meta-arguments over epistemology and ontology, relatively rare, occur in instances where there is a
fundamental clash between belief systems and not simply a debate within a belief system. Such arguments over the nature of the world and how
we come to know it are particularly rare in politics though they are more frequent in religion and science. Meta-arguments over the “good”
are contests over what it is good and right to do, and even how we know the good and the right. They are about the nature of the good, specifically, defining the
qualities of “good” so that we know good when we see it and do it. Ethical arguments are about how to do good in a particular situation. More
common are
meta-arguments over representations or frames- about how we out to understand a particular situation. Sometimes actors agree
on how they see a situation. More often there are different possible interpretations. Thomas Homer-Dixon and Roger karapin suggest, “Argument and debate
occur when people try to gain acceptance for their interpretation of the world”. For example, “is the war defensive or aggressive?”.
Defining and controlling representations and images, or the frame, affects whether one thinks there is an issue at stake
and whether a particular argument applies to the case. An actor fighting a defensive war is within international law; an aggressor may
legitimately be subject to sanctions. Framing and reframing involve mimesis or putting forward representations of what is going on. In mimetic meta-arguments,
actors who are struggling to characterize or frame the situation accomplish their ends by drawing vivid pictures of the “reality”
through exaggeration, analogy, or differentiation. Representations of a situation do not re-produce accurately so
much as they creatively re-present situations in a way that makes sense. “mimesis is a metaphoric or ‘iconic argumentation of the
real.’ Imitating not the effectivity of events but their logical structure and meaning .” Certain features are emphasized
and others de-emphasized or completely ignored as their situation is recharacterized or reframed. Representation thus
becomes a “constraint on reasoning in that it limits understanding to a specific organization of conceptual
knowledge.” The dominant representation delimits which arguments will be considered legitimate, framing how
actors see possibities. As Roxanne Doty argues, “the possibility of practices presupposes the ability of an agent to imagine
certain courses of action. Certain background meanings, kinds of social actors and relationships, must already be in place.” If, as Donald Sylvan and Stuart
Thorson argue, “politics involves the selective privileging of representations, “it may not matter whether one
representation or another is true or not. Emphasizing whether frames articulate accurate or inaccurate
perceptions misses the rhetorical import of representation- how frames affect what is seen or not seen, and
subsequent choices. Meta-arguments over representation are thus crucial elements of political argument
because an actor’s arguments about what to do will be more persuasive if their characterization or framing of the
situation holds sway. But, as Rodger Payne suggests, “No frame is an omnipotent persuasive tool that can be decisively wielded by norm entrepreneurs
without serious political wrangling.” Hence framing is a meta-argument.
2NC Alt Solvency
Only resistance to security logic can generate genuine political thought
Neocleous 8 – Mark Neocleous, Prof. of Government @ Brunel, 2008 [Critique of Security, 185-6]
The only way out of such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is perhaps to eschew the logic of security altogether - to reject it as so
ideologically loaded in favour of the state that any real political thought other than the authoritarian and reactionary should be pressed to give it
up. That is clearly something that can not be achieved within the limits of bourgeois thought and thus could never even begin to be imagined by
the security intellectual. It is also something that the constant iteration of the refrain 'this is an insecure world' and reiteration of
one fear, anxiety and insecurity after another will also make it hard to do. But it is something that the critique of security suggests we may
have to consider if we want a political way out of the impasse of security. This impasse exists because security has now become so all-
encompassing that it marginalises all else, most notably the constructive conflicts, debates and discussions that animate
political life. The constant prioritising of a mythical security as a political end - as the political end constitutes a rejection of politics in any
meaningful sense of the term. That is, as a mode of action in which differences can be articulated, in which the conflicts and struggles that arise
from such differences can be fought for and negotiated, in which people might come to believe that another world is possible - that they might
transform the world and in turn be transformed. Security politics simply removes this; worse, it remoeves it while purportedly addressing it. In so
doing it suppresses all issues of power and turns political questions into debates about the most efficient way to
achieve 'security', despite the fact that we are never quite told - never could be told - what might count as having achieved it. Security politics
is, in this sense, an anti-politics,"' dominating political discourse in much the same manner as the security state tries to dominate human beings,
reinforcing security fetishism and the monopolistic character of security on the political imagination. We therefore need to get beyond security
politics, not add yet more 'sectors' to it in a way that simply expands the scope of the state and legitimises state intervention in yet more and more
areas of our lives. Simon Dalby reports a personal communication with Michael Williams, co-editor of the important text Critical Security
Studies, in which the latter asks: if you take away security, what do you put in the hole that's left behind? But I'm inclined to
agree with Dalby: maybe there is no hole ."' The mistake has been to think that there is a hole and that this hole needs to be filled with a
new vision or revision of security in which it is re-mapped or civilised or gendered or humanised or expanded or whatever. All of these ultimately
remain within the statist political imaginary, and consequently end up reaffirming the state as the terrain of modern politics, the grounds of
security. The real task is not to fill the supposed hole with yet another vision of security, but to fight for an alternative political
language which takes us beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois security and which therefore does not constantly throw us into the
arms of the state. That's the point of critical politics: to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of society we want. Thus
while much of what I have said here has been of a negative order, part of the tradition of critical theory is that the negative may be as
significant as the positive in setting thought on new paths. For if security really is the supreme concept of bourgeois society and
the fundamental thematic of liberalism, then to keep harping on about insecurity and to keep demanding 'more security' (while meekly
hoping that this increased security doesn't damage our liberty) is to blind ourselves to the possibility of building real alternatives to the
authoritarian tendencies in contemporary politics. To situate ourselves against security politics would allow us to circumvent the
debilitating effect achieved through the constant securitising of social and political issues, debilitating in the sense that 'security' helps consolidate
the power of the existing forms of social domination and justifies the short-circuiting of even the most democratic forms. It would also allow us
to forge another kind of politics centred on a different conception of the good. We need a new way of thinking and talking
about social being and politics that moves us beyond security. This would perhaps be emancipatory in the true sense of the word. What this might
mean, precisely, must be open to debate. But it certainly requires recognising that security is an illusion that has forgotten it is an illusion; it
requires recognising that security is not the same as solidarity; it requires accepting that insecurity is part of the human
condition, and thus giving up the search for the certainty of security and instead learning to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and
'insecurities' that come with being human; it requires accepting that 'securitizing' an issue does not mean dealing with it
politically, but bracketing it out and handing it to the state; it requires us to be brave enough to return the
gift."'
AT Perm – Do Both
1. Cross-apply framework – the aff must prove there’s value in incorporating their discourse and
epistemology. Testing competitiveness with the plan is nonsensical because our kritik is about their
scholarship.
2. Theory – permutations must include 1AC representations, they’re the majority of the opening speech.
Severance makes the aff a moving target and being neg becomes impossible. The aff isn’t selected in a
vacuum, they had infinite prep to select advantages they had defenses of.
3. The plan cannot be detached from its discursive underpinnings
Burke 7 – Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales
(Anthony, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence, p. 3-4)
These frameworks
are interrogated at the level both of their theoretical conceptualisation and their practice: in their
influence and implementation in specific policy contexts and conflicts in East and Central Asia, the Middle East and
the 'war on terror', where their meaning and impact take on greater clarity. This approach is based on a conviction that the meaning of
powerful political concepts cannot be abstract or easily universalised: they all have histories, often complex and
conflictual; their forms and meanings change over time; and they are developed, refined and deployed in concrete struggles over power, wealth
and societal form. While this should not preclude normative debate over how political or ethical concepts should be
defined and used, and thus be beneficial or destructive to humanity, it embodies a caution that the meaning of
concepts can never be stabilised or unproblematic in practice. Their normative potential must always be considered
in relation to their utilisation in systems of political, social and economic power and their consequent worldly
effects. Hence this book embodies a caution by Michel Foucault, who warned us about the 'politics of truth . . the battle about the status of truth
and the economic and political role it plays', and it is inspired by his call to 'detach the power of truth from the forms of hegemony, social,
economic and cultural, within which it operates at the present time'.1 It is clear that traditionally coercive and violent approaches to security and
strategy are both still culturally dominant, and politically and ethically suspect. However, the reasons for pursuing a critical analysis
relate not only to the most destructive or controversial approaches, such as the war in Iraq, but also to their available
(and generally preferable) alternatives. There is a necessity to question not merely extremist versions such as the Bush
doctrine, Indonesian militarism or Israeli expansionism, but also their mainstream critiques - whether they take the
form of liberal policy approaches in international relations (IR), just war theory, US realism, optimistic accounts of globalisation,
rhetorics of sensitivity to cultural difference, or centrist Israeli security discourses based on territorial compromise with
the Palestinians. The surface appearance of lively (and often significant) debate masks a deeper agreement about major
concepts, forms of political identity and the imperative to secure them. Debates about when and how it may be effective and
legitimate to use military force in tandem with other policy options, for example, mask a more fundamental discursive consensus
about the meaning of security, the effectiveness of strategic power, the nature of progress, the value of freedom or the promises
of national and cultural identity. As a result, political and intellectual debate about insecurity, violent conflict and global
injustice can become hostage to a claustrophic structure of political and ethical possibility that systematically wards
off critique.
4. Multiple perms are a VI – no risk option for the aff that demands lots of block time and are impossible to
generate offense against, sandbags explanation to the 1AR screwing the neg, ci – they get 1 permutation.
Embedded in their 1ac discourse –
[INSERT LINKS]
AT Cede the Political
1. 1NC straight-turns this – the politics of the Aff results in hyper-conservativism – the logic of security and
state-centrism inevitably privileges a closed and exclusionary politics – that’s Neoclous – only the alt’ solves
political engagement because it informs vita aspects of decision-making.
2. Non-unique – Obama is getting controlled by the military now – Middle East strategy and restriction of
civil liberties proves
3. Broadening the scope of politics is key to effective engagement
Grondin 4 [David, master of pol sci and PHD of political studies @ U of Ottowa “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How and Why
Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War,” http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf]
A poststructuralist approach to international relations reassesses the nature of the political. Indeed, it calls for the
repoliticization of practices of world politics that have been treated as if they were not political. For instance, limiting the
ontological elements in one’s inquiry to states or great powers is a political choice. As Jenny Edkins puts it, we need to
“bring the political back in” (Edkins, 1998: xii). For most analysts of International Relations, the conception of the
“political” is narrowly restricted to politics as practiced by politicians. However, from a poststructuralist viewpoint, the
“political” acquires a broader meaning, especially since practice is not what most theorists are describing as practice. Poststructuralism
sees theoretical discourse not only as discourse, but also as political practice. Theory therefore becomes practice. The political
space of poststructuralism is not that of exclusion; it is the political space of postmodernity, a dichotomous one,
where one thing always signifies at least one thing and another (Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 14). Poststructuralism
thus gives primacy to the political, since it acts on us, while we act in its name, and leads us to identify and
differentiate ourselves from others. This political act is never complete and celebrates undecidability, whereas decisions, when taken,
express the political moment. It is a critical attitude which encourages dissidence from traditional approaches (Ashley and
Walker, 1990a and 1990b). It does not represent one single philosophical approach or perspective, nor is it an alternative
paradigm (Tvathail, 1996: 172). It is a nonplace, a border line falling between international and domestic politics (Ashley,
1989). The poststructuralist analyst questions the borderlines and dichotomies of modernist discourses, such as
inside/outside, the constitution of the Self/Other, and so on. In the act of definition, difference – thereby the
discourse of otherness – is highlighted, since one always defines an object with regard to what it is not (Knafo, 2004). As Simon Dalby
asserts, “It involves the social construction of some other person, group, culture, race, nationality or political system
as different from ‘our’ person, group, etc. Specifying difference is a linguistic, epistemological and, most
importantly, a political act; it constructs a space for the other distanced and inferior from the vantage point of the
person specifying the difference” (Dalby, cited in Tvathail, 1996: 179). Indeed, poststructuralism offers no definitive answers, but leads
to new questions and new unexplored grounds. This makes the commitment to the incomplete nature of the political and of political analysis so
central to poststructuralism (Finlayson and Valentine, 2002: 15). As Jim George writes, “It is postmodern resistance in the sense that while it is
directly (and sometimes violently) engaged with modernity, it seeks to go beyond the repressive, closed aspects of modernist
global existence. It is, therefore, not a resistance of traditional grand-scale emancipation or conventional radicalism
imbued with authority of one or another sovereign presence. Rather, in opposing the large-scale brutality and inequity in human
society, it is a resistance active also at the everyday, com- munity, neighbourhood, and interpersonal levels, where it confronts those
processes that systematically exclude people from making decisions about who they are and what they can be”
(George, 1994: 215, emphasis in original). In this light, poststructural practices are used critically to investigate how the subject
of international relations is constituted in and through the discourses and texts of global politics. Treating theory as
discourse opens up the possibility of historicizing it. It is a myth that theory can be abstracted from its sociohistorical context, from reality, so to speak, as neorealists and neoclassical realists believe. It is a political practice
which needs to be contextualized and stripped of its purportedly neutral status. It must be understood with respect to its role in
preserving and reproducing the structures and power relations present in all language forms. Dominant theories
are, in this view, dominant discourses that shape our view of the world (the “subject”) and our ways of understanding it.
4. Only resistance to security logic can generate genuine political thought
Neocleous 8 – Mark Neocleous, Prof. of Government @ Brunel, 2008 [Critique of Security, 185-6]
The only way out of such a dilemma, to escape the fetish, is perhaps to eschew the logic of security altogether - to reject it as so
ideologically loaded in favour of the state that any real political thought other than the authoritarian and reactionary should be pressed to give it
up. That is clearly something that can not be achieved within the limits of bourgeois thought and thus could never even begin to be imagined by
the security intellectual. It is also something that the constant iteration of the refrain 'this is an insecure world' and reiteration of
one fear, anxiety and insecurity after another will also make it hard to do. But it is something that the critique of security suggests we may
have to consider if we want a political way out of the impasse of security. This impasse exists because security has now become so all-
encompassing that it marginalises all else, most notably the constructive conflicts, debates and discussions that animate
political life. The constant prioritising of a mythical security as a political end - as the political end constitutes a rejection of politics in any
meaningful sense of the term. That is, as a mode of action in which differences can be articulated, in which the conflicts and struggles that arise
from such differences can be fought for and negotiated, in which people might come to believe that another world is possible - that they might
transform the world and in turn be transformed. Security politics simply removes this; worse, it remoeves it while purportedly addressing it. In so
doing it suppresses all issues of power and turns political questions into debates about the most efficient way to
achieve 'security', despite the fact that we are never quite told - never could be told - what might count as having achieved it. Security politics
is, in this sense, an anti-politics,"' dominating political discourse in much the same manner as the security state tries to dominate human beings,
reinforcing security fetishism and the monopolistic character of security on the political imagination. We therefore need to get beyond security
politics, not add yet more 'sectors' to it in a way that simply expands the scope of the state and legitimises state intervention in yet more and more
areas of our lives. Simon Dalby reports a personal communication with Michael Williams, co-editor of the important text Critical Security
Studies, in which the latter asks: if you take away security, what do you put in the hole that's left behind? But I'm inclined to
agree with Dalby: maybe there is no hole ."' The mistake has been to think that there is a hole and that this hole needs to be filled with a
new vision or revision of security in which it is re-mapped or civilised or gendered or humanised or expanded or whatever. All of these ultimately
remain within the statist political imaginary, and consequently end up reaffirming the state as the terrain of modern politics, the grounds of
security. The real task is not to fill the supposed hole with yet another vision of security, but to fight for an alternative political
language which takes us beyond the narrow horizon of bourgeois security and which therefore does not constantly throw us into the
arms of the state. That's the point of critical politics: to develop a new political language more adequate to the kind of society we want. Thus
while much of what I have said here has been of a negative order, part of the tradition of critical theory is that the negative may be as
significant as the positive in setting thought on new paths. For if security really is the supreme concept of bourgeois society and
the fundamental thematic of liberalism, then to keep harping on about insecurity and to keep demanding 'more security' (while meekly
hoping that this increased security doesn't damage our liberty) is to blind ourselves to the possibility of building real alternatives to the
authoritarian tendencies in contemporary politics. To situate ourselves against security politics would allow us to circumvent the
debilitating effect achieved through the constant securitising of social and political issues, debilitating in the sense that 'security' helps consolidate
the power of the existing forms of social domination and justifies the short-circuiting of even the most democratic forms. It would also allow us
to forge another kind of politics centred on a different conception of the good. We need a new way of thinking and talking
about social being and politics that moves us beyond security. This would perhaps be emancipatory in the true sense of the word. What this might
mean, precisely, must be open to debate. But it certainly requires recognising that security is an illusion that has forgotten it is an illusion; it
requires recognising that security is not the same as solidarity; it requires accepting that insecurity is part of the human
condition, and thus giving up the search for the certainty of security and instead learning to tolerate the uncertainties, ambiguities and
'insecurities' that come with being human; it requires accepting that 'securitizing' an issue does not mean dealing with it
politically, but bracketing it out and handing it to the state; it requires us to be brave enough to return the
gift."'
Realism
1. Prefer the specificity of our criticism – incorporation of critical perspectives is k2 understand the
international system – perspectives are influenced by soci-cognitive perspectives even under the assumption
of rationality.
2. Begs the question of the role of the judge – specific intellectuals can take steps in the right direction even if
they aren't practical because it’s a better form of pedagogy.
3. Turns the aff –
4. Realism has gaps that destroys its explanatory ability --- recognizing social influences enriches and sustains
the theory
Niarguinen 1 (Dmitri, Professor of International Relations and European Studies – Central European University,
Rubikon, December, http://venus.ci.uw.edu.pl/~rubikon/forum/dmitri.htm)
Morgenthau’s state-centric theory is clearly set, but it is not to say he envisages it as being pre-destined and unchangeable. The political, cultural
and strategic environment will largely determine the forms of power a state chooses to exercise, just as the types of power which feature in
human relationships change over time. In addition, Realists should not be wedded to a perennial connection between interest and the nation-state
which is 'a product of history, and therefore bound to disappear'[19]. Later (in 1970) Morgenthau anticipated that the forces of globalization
would render the nation-state no longer valid: “the sovereign nation-state is in the process of becoming obsolete”[20]. He stresses that a final task
that a theory of international relations can and must perform is to prepare the ground for a new international order radically different from that
which preceded it[21]. Kenneth Waltz's neo-realism is both a critique of traditional realism and a substantial intellectual extension of a
theoretical tradition which was in danger of being outflanked by rapid changes in the contours of global politics[22]. The international system
(anarchy) is treated as a separate domain which conditions the behavior of all states within it. Paradoxically, with the advent of neo-
realism, the scope and flexibility of Realism have significantly diminished. The theory has become deterministic,
linear, and culturally poor. For neo-realists, culture and identity are (at best) derivative of the distribution of capabilities and have no
independent explanatory power. Actors deploy culture and identity strategically, to further their own self-interests[23]. Nevertheless, it is wrong
to assert that neo-realist perspectives do not acknowledge the importance of social facts. Gilpin has developed a compelling argument about war
and change[24]. While his book is built on (micro)economic premises, he does not neglect sociological insights as necessary for understanding
the context of rational behavior. "Specific interests or objectives that individuals pursue and the appropriateness of the means they employ are
dependent on prevailing social norms and material environment…In short, the economic and sociological approaches must be
integrated to explain political change"[25]. Waltz was implicitly talking about identity when he argued that anarchic structures tend to
produce “like units”[26]. He allows for what he calls ‘socialization’ and ‘imitation’ processes. Stephen Krasner suggested that regimes could
change state interests[27]. Regimes are an area where knowledge should be taken seriously. If regimes matter, then cognitive
understanding can matter as well[28]. Realism is not necessarily about conflict; material forces may as well lead to
cooperation. However, the minimalist treatment of culture and social phenomena increasingly proved neo-realism as
losing ground empirically and theoretically. It was the suspicion that the international system is transforming itself culturally faster
than would have been predictable from changes in military and economic capabilities that triggered the interest in problems of identity[29].
Reconstruction of the theory was vital in order to save Realism from becoming obsolete . The realization of this fact has
triggered a shift in Realist thinking and gave way to the emergence of a 'constructivist' re-incarnation of Realism. Friedrich Kratochwil has once
observed that no theory of culture can substitute for a theory of politics[30]. At least, nobody has ventured to accomplish such an enterprise so
far. To disregard culture in politics, it seems obvious today, is inappropriate, not to say foolish. There remain opportunity
costs incurred by Realism in its asymmetric engagement with cultural phenomena. Thus, Realism, notwithstanding its
concern with parsimony, should make a serious commitment to building analytical bridges which link identity - and culturerelated phenomena to its explanatory apparatus (like anarchy, sovereignty, the security dilemma, self-help, and balancing)[31]. Alexander Wendt
in his seminal article “Anarchy Is What States Make of It” has masterfully shown how power politics is socially constructed[32]. Salus populi
supreme lex. This classical metalegal doctrine of necessity is associated with raison d’etat, the right of preservation, and self-help. Wendt is
convinced that the self-help corollary to anarchy does enormous work in Realism, generating the inherently competitive dynamics of the security
dilemma and collective action problem[33]. What misses the point, however, is that self-help and power politics follow either logically or
causally from anarchy. They do not; rather, they are just among other institutions (albeit significant ones) possible under anarchy. Consequently,
provided there is relatively stable practice, international institutions can transform state identities and interests. Let me focus on two concrete
security issues - the security dilemma and nuclear deterrence - to illustrate the point. A central tenet of Realism, the security dilemma[34], arises
for the situation when “one actor’s quest for security through power accumulation ... exacerbates the feelings of insecurity of another actor, who
in turn will respond by accumulating power”[35]. As a result of this behavior, a vicious circle or spiral of security develops, with fear and
misperception exacerbating the situation[36]. Nevertheless, security dilemmas, as Wendt stresses, are not given by anarchy or
nature[37]. Security dilemmas are constructed because identities and interests are constituted by collective
meanings which are always in process . This is why concepts of security may differ in the extent to which and the manner in which
the self is identified cognitively with the other. Because deterrence is based on ideas about threat systems and conditional commitments to carry
out punishment, it has proved particularly congenial to the strategic studies scholarship within the Realist tradition[38]. Deterrence is a
conditional commitment to retaliate, or to exact retribution if another party fails to behave in a desired, compliant manner. Thus defined,
deterrence has been invoked as the primary explanation for the non-use of nuclear weapons. The nuclear case, in contrast to chemical weapons,
for example, is definitely problematic for challenging traditional deterrence theory because it is widely felt that the tremendous destructive power
of thermonuclear weapons does render them qualitatively different from other weapons. Yet, the patterns of the non-use of nuclear weapons
cannot be fully understood without taking into account the development of norms that shaped these weapons as unacceptable. By applying social
constructivist approach, it is possible to emphasize the relationship between norms, identities, and interests and try to provide a causal
explanation of how the norms affect outcomes[39]. Norms shape conceptualizations of interests through the social construction of identities. In
other words, a constructivist account is necessary to get at 'what deters,' and how and why deterrence 'works' [40]. International relations theory
cannot afford to ignore norms. Demonstrating the impact of norms on the interests, beliefs, and behavior of actors in international
politics does
not and must not invalidate Realism. Rather, it points to analytical blind spots and gaps in traditional
accounts. In so doing, it not only casts light into the shadows of existing theory but raises new questions as well.[41]
However, with all the 'constructivist' adjustments made (which are absolutely credible), it is important to keep in mind 'pure rationalist' tools as
well. Krasner points out that whenever the cost-benefit ratio indicates that breaking its rules will bring a net benefit that is what states will do[42].
Wendt introduces a correction that instrumentalism may be the attitude when states first settle on norms, and "continue(s) to be for poorly
organized states down the road"[43]. States obey the law initially because they are forced to or calculate that it is in their self-interest. Some states
never get beyond this point. Some do, and then obey the law because they accept its claims on them as legitimate[44]. This is truly an excellent
observation. The problem here, however, could be that even when states remove the option of breaking the law from their agenda, this already
implies that benefits overweight costs. And even if this is not the case, how can we know where exactly this point is, beyond which states respect
law for law’s sake? Furthermore, states that supposedly have stepped over this point might break the law, when it has become least expected, if
they consider this of their prime interest. Powerful illustration of this is France, which resumed its nuclear testing to the great surprise of the
world[45]. Another interesting example is the case of NATO. Traditional alliance theories based on Realist thinking provide insufficient
explanations of the origins, the interaction patterns, and the persistence of NATO. The 'brand new' interpretation is that the Alliance represents an
institutionalized pluralistic community of liberal democracies. Democracies not only do not fight each other, they are likely to develop a
collective identity facilitating the emergence of cooperative institutions for specific purposes[46]. Thus presented, old questions get revitalized.
Why is NATO the strongest among the other post-Cold War security institutions – as compared to, the WEU, not even to mention the EU’s
Common Foreign and Security Policy? Why is not the OSCE given a chance to turn into a truly pluralistic European 'Security Architecture'? Why
was NATO so eager to bomb Kosovo, which was a clear breach of international law? Because it is ‘an institutionalized pluralistic community of
liberal democracies’? Or yet because it is a predominantly military organization? Why do public opinion polls in Russia[47] repeatedly show that
NATO is an aggressive organization (and which can also be observed in official rhetoric, as in the national security conception and the military
doctrine[48])? All these questions suggest that to claim that Realist explanation of NATO existence can be thrown into a dustbin is at minimum
inappropriate. Social sciences do not evolve via scientific revolutions, as Thomas Kuhn argues is the case for the natural sciences.
Not paradigm shifts but rather style and fashion changes are what characterize social science[49]. Thus posed, paradigm
development promises Realism a bright future. In this respect, recent success of constructivism has, metaphorically speaking,
breathed in a new life into Realism. Realism is in much debt to constructivism for being revitalized. Yet, paying full credit to the
contribution of constructivism, it should be noted that to a large extent constructivists take off from the Realist positions.
5. Realism is only inevitable because of existing power structures – challenging dominant discourses via the
alt’ overcomes
Grondin 4 [David, master of pol sci and PHD of political studies @ U of Ottowa “(Re)Writing the “National Security State”: How and Why
Realists (Re)Built the(ir) Cold War,” http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/ieim/IMG/pdf/rewriting_national_security_state.pdf]
[YELLOW]
Neorealist and neoclassical realism
offer themselves up as a narrative of the world institutional order. Critical approaches must therefore
“those whose lives and voices have been variously silenced in the process of strategic
practices” (Klein, 1994: 28). The problem, as revealed in the debate between gatekeepers of the subfield of Strategic Studies (Walt, 1991), is that those
analyses that contravene the dominant discourse are deemed insignificant by virtue of their differing ontological and epistemological
seek to countermemorialize
foundations. Approaches that deconstruct theoretical practices in order to disclose what is hidden in the use of concepts such as “national security” have something
valuable to say. Their more reflexive and critically-inclined view illustrates how terms used in realist discourses, such as state, anarchy, world order, revolution in
military affairs, and security dilemmas, are
produced by a specific historical, geographical and socio-political context as well as historical forces
realist analysts do not question their ontology and yet purport to provide a neutral and
objective analysis of a given world order based on military power and interactions between the most important political units, namely states, realist
discourses constitute a political act in defense of the state. Indeed, “[…] it is important to recognize that to employ a textualizing approach to
social policy involving conflict and war is not to attempt to reduce social phenomena to various concrete manifestations of language. Rather, it is an attempt to
analyze the interpretations governing policy thinking. And it is important to recognize that policy thinking is not unsituated” (Shapiro, 1989a:
71). Policy thinking is practical thinking since it imposes an analytic order on the “real world”, a world that only exists in the
and social relations of power (Klein, 1994: 22). Since
analysts’ own narratives. In this light, Barry Posen’s political role in legitimizing American hegemonic power and national security conduct seems obvious: U.S.
command of the commons provides an impressive foundation for selective engagement. It is not adequate for a policy of primacy. […] Command of the commons
gives the United States a tremendous capability to harm others. Marrying that capability to a conservative policy of selective engagement helps make U.S. military
power appear less threatening and more tolerable. Command of the commons creates additional collective goods for U.S. allies. These collective goods help connect
U.S. military power to seemingly prosaic welfare concerns. U.S. military power underwrites world trade, travel, global telecommunications, and commercial remote
sensing, which all depend on peace and order in the commons” (Posen, 2003: 44 and 46). Adopting a more critical stance, David Campbell points out that
“[d]anger is not an objective condition. It (sic) is not a thing which exists independently of those to whom it may become a
threat. […] Nothing is a risk in itself; [...] it all depends on how one analyses the danger, considers the event” (Campbell,
1998: 1-2). In the same vein, national security discourse does not evaluate objective threats; rather, it is itself a product of
historical processes and structures in the state and society that produces it. Whoever has the power to define security is then the one who
has the authority to write legitimate security discourses and conduct the policies that legitimize them. The realist analysts and state leaders who
invoke national security and act in its name are the same individuals who hold the power to securitize threats by inserting them in a discourse that frames national
In a critical reinterpretation of realism, James Der Derian offers a
genealogy of realism that deconstructs the uniform realism represented in IR: he reveals many other versions of realism that
are never mentioned in International Relations texts (Der Derian, 1995: 367). I am aware that there are many realist discoursesin International Relations, but
identity and freezes it.9 Like many concepts, realism is essentially contested.
they all share a set of assumptions, such as “the state is a rational unitary actor”, “the state is the main actor in international relations”, “states pursue power defined as
a national interest”, and so on. I want to show that realism is one way of representing reality, not the reflection of reality . While
my aim here is not to rehearse Der Derian’s genealogy of realism, I do want to spell out the problems with a positivist theory of realism and a correspondence
philosophy of language. Such a philosophy accepts nominalism, wherein language as neutral description corresponds to reality. This
is precisely the problem
of epistemic realism and of the realism characteristic of American realist theoretical discourses. And since for poststructuralists language
constitutes reality, a reinterpretation of realism as constructed in these discourses is called for.10 These scholars cannot refer to the “essentially
contested nature of realism” and then use “realism as the best language to reflect a self-same phenomenon” (Der Derian,
1995: 374). Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that the many neorealist and neoclassical realist discourses in International Relations are not useful. Rather, I want to
argue that these technicist and scientist forms of realism serve political purposes, used as they are in many think tanks and foreign policy bureaucracies to inform
American political leaders. This is the relevance of deconstructing the uniform realism (as used in International Relations): it brings to light
its locatedness in a hermeneutic circle in which it is unwittingly trapped (Der Derian, 1995: 371). And as Friedrich Kratochwil argues, “[…] the rejection of a
correspondence theory of truth does not condemn us, as it is often maintained, to mere ‘relativism’ and/or to endless “deconstruction” in which anything goes but it
leaves us with criteria that allows us to distinguish and evaluate competing theoretical creations” (Kratochwil, 2000: 52). Given that political language is not a neutral
medium that gives expression to ideas formed independently of structures of signification that sustain political action and thought, American realist discourses
belonging to the neorealist or neoclassical realist traditions cannot be taken as mere descriptions of reality. We
are trapped in the production of discourses
in which national leaders and security speech acts emanating from realist discourses develop and reinforce a notion of national
identity as synony- mous with national security. U.S. national security conduct should thus be understood through the prism of the theoretical
discourses of American political leaders and realist scholars that co-constitute it. Realist discourses depict American political leaders acting in defense of national
security, and political leaders act in the name of national security. In the end, what distinguishes realist
discourses is that they depict the United States as
having behaved like a national security state since World War II, while legitimating the idea that the United States should continue to do so.
Political scientists and historians “are engaged in making (poesis), not merely recording or reporting” (Medhurst, 2000: 17). Precisely in
this sense, rhetoric is not the description of national security conduct; it constitutes it.
AT Predictions Good
Worst-case scenario planning causes serial policy failure and disables solvency
Schneier 10 -- American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer; author of several books on general
security topics; master's degree in computer science @ American University; honorary Ph.D from the University of
Westminster (Bruce, 3-13, http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/worst-case_thin.html)
At a security conference recently, the moderator asked the panel of distinguished cybersecurity leaders what their nightmare scenario was. The
answers were the predictable array of large-scale attacks: against our communications infrastructure, against the power grid, against the financial
system, in combination with a physical attack. I didn't get to give my answer until the afternoon, which was: "My nightmare scenario is that
people keep talking about their nightmare scenarios." There's a certain blindness that comes from worst-case thinking. An
extension of the precautionary principle, it involves imagining the worst possible outcome and then acting as if it were a
certainty. It substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis, and fear for reason . It fosters
powerlessness and vulnerability and magnifies social paralysis. And it makes us more vulnerable to the effects of
terrorism. Worst-case thinking means generally bad decision making for several reasons. First, it's only half of the costbenefit equation. Every decision has costs and benefits, risks and rewards. By speculating about what can possibly go wrong,
and then acting as if that is likely to happen, worst-case thinking focuses only on the extreme but improbable risks
and does a poor job at assessing outcomes. Second, it's based on flawed logic. It begs the question by assuming that
a proponent of an action must prove that the nightmare scenario is impossible. Third, it can be used to support any
position or its opposite. If we build a nuclear power plant, it could melt down. If we don't build it, we will run short
of power and society will collapse into anarchy. If we allow flights near Iceland's volcanic ash, planes will crash and people will die.
If we don't, organs won’t arrive in time for transplant operations and people will die. If we don't invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein might
use the nuclear weapons he might have. If we do, we might destabilize the Middle East, leading to widespread violence and
death. Of course, not all fears are equal. Those that we tend to exaggerate are more easily justified by worst-case
thinking. So terrorism fears trump privacy fears, and almost everything else ; technology is hard to understand and therefore
scary; nuclear weapons are worse than conventional weapons; our children need to be protected at all costs; and annihilating the planet is bad.
Basically, any fear that would make a good movie plot is amenable to worst-case thinking. Fourth and finally, worst-case thinking
validates ignorance. Instead of focusing on what we know, it focuses on what we don't know -- and what we can imagine.
Remember Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's quote? "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we
know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are
some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know." And this: "the absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence." Ignorance isn't a cause for doubt; when you can fill that ignorance with
imagination, it can be a call to action . Even worse, it can lead to hasty and dangerous acts. You can't wait for a
smoking gun, so you act as if the gun is about to go off. Rather than making us safer, worst-case thinking has the
potential to cause dangerous escalation . The new undercurrent in this is that our society no longer has the ability to
calculate probabilities. Risk assessment is devalued. Probabilistic thinking is repudiated in favor of "possibilistic
thinking": Since we can't know what's likely to go wrong, let's speculate about what can possibly go wrong. Worst-case thinking leads to
bad decisions, bad systems design, and bad security. And we all have direct experience with its effects: airline security and the TSA,
which we make fun of when we're not appalled that they're harassing 93-year-old women or keeping first graders off airplanes. You can't be too
careful! Actually, you can. You can refuse to fly because of the possibility of plane crashes. You can lock your children in the house because of
the possibility of child predators. You can eschew all contact with people because of the possibility of hurt. Steven Hawking wants to avoid
trying to communicate with aliens because they might be hostile; does he want to turn off all the planet's television broadcasts because they're
radiating into space? It isn't hard to parody worst-case thinking, and at its extreme it's a psychological condition. Frank Furedi, a sociology
professor at the University of Kent, writes: "Worst-case thinking encourages society to adopt fear as one of the
dominant principles around which the public, the government and institutions should organize their life. It
institutionalizes insecurity and fosters a mood of confusion and powerlessness. Through popularizing the belief
that worst cases are normal, it incites people to feel defenseless and vulnerable to a wide range of future threats."
Even worse, it plays directly into the hands of terrorists, creating a population that is easily terrorized -- even by failed
terrorist attacks like the Christmas Day underwear bomber and the Times Square SUV bomber. When someone is proposing a change, the onus
should be on them to justify it over the status quo. But worst-case thinking is a way of looking at the world that exaggerates the
rare and unusual and gives the rare much more credence than it deserves. It isn't really a principle; it's a cheap trick
to justify what you already believe. It lets lazy or biased people make what seem to be cogent arguments without
understanding the whole issue. And when people don't need to refute counterarguments, there's no point in listening
to them.
Perf Con
Not a perf con – our evidence is very specific to 1ac discourse
2. no skew – they can answer both with intellectually consistent arguments or concede one
3. mixed scanning good – we should test the aff from many levels – it’s a test to find the best out-round
advocacy
Links
Latin America Link
Their case is a lie – US representations of Latin America are manufactured to support our interests
Young 11 -- political organizer for Organization for a Free Society and PhD candidate in history at Stony Brook
University (Kevin, 10/31/2011, "Few Surprises in Latin American Poll: US Foes Still among the More Democratic
Regimes in Latin America, According to their People," http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6594)
The poll
results also indicate widespread opposition to neoliberal economic policies of privatization and reduced
social programs. A large majority of respondents in every country believe that the distribution of wealth should be more
equitable, which is an unequivocal rejection of neoliberalism’s tendency to exacerbate inequality. And although most
Latin Americans say that markets and private enterprise should play some role in their economies, they strongly reject the
privatization of public services and industries that was imposed across the region in the 1980s and 1990s. Only 36 percent of
all Latin Americans think that “privatizations have been beneficial” for their countries, and just 31 percent report satisfaction with privatized
services (almost precisely the same figures as last year) [12]. Past Latinobarómetro polls have found overwhelming support for keeping basic
services and industries “mainly in the hands of the State,” and have found that about half of Latin Americans think that government should
provide free education and health care [13]. The 2011 version omitted these questions. Implications These findings present a general
picture of Latin America that is starkly different from the standard images in US press coverage and political
commentary. The image of close US allies like Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras as shining examples of democracy finds
little support in the poll results. Conversely, US foes—particularly the arch-foe, Venezuela—are rated reasonably well by their
own people. The view of the Chávez government as dictatorial and repressive that is ubiquitous in US corporate media is
simply not shared by most Venezuelans. Venezuela is certainly not an ideal democracy, and the Chávez government has acted
undemocratically at times, but the poll results do support the notion that Venezuela is among the more democratic governments in the region [14].
The same is true of most other left-leaning regimes, but the trend is especially apparent in the case of Venezuela. Mainstream commentators have
an interesting way of dealing with such findings. The Latinobarómetro analysts quietly acknowledge that Venezuelans themselves “respond
positively to the actions of the Chávez government, while the world rates it negatively” (the world is presumably intended here in its technical
sense, as the world of elite opinion) [15]. Last year’s report commented on this same disjunction: It’s paradoxical that Venezuela features the
most support [for democracy], given that it’s also the country about which there is the most criticism regarding the state of its democracy.
Venezuelans, however, don’t have the same opinion as the analysts of democracy. (My emphasis) The 2010 report thus argued that there is an
“incongruence between objective reality and perceived reality” [16]. In other words, Venezuelans themselves are too stupid
and brainwashed to realize that their country is a totalitarian dungeon, and that countries like Colombia and Mexico are the vanguard of
democracy and human rights. Our only hope is that the “analysts of democracy” can show Venezuelans this objective truth before Chávez installs
the gas chambers. As I argued last year, the Latinobarómetro poll and the mainstream commentary that accompanies it (led by The Economist)
reveal almost as much about the intellectual subservience and dishonesty of the commentators as they do about Latin Americans’ attitudes [17].
Another crucial implication concerns US policy. When public opinion is the measure of democracy, there is absolutely no positive
correlation between US support for a regime and the level of democracy in that country; if anything, the correlation is
negative: the US government tends to support regimes that are less democratic. Although polls alone are insufficient to prove this relationship,
when considered alongside regimes’ broader human rights records they provide strong evidence that
the US government prefers
repression and exclusionary forms of democracy (what William Robinson calls “polyarchy”) to more participatory forms
and social redistribution [18]. The idea that US policy supports repression and opposes meaningful democracy is
certainly consistent with past history, for which academic studies have confirmed this pattern [19].
OCS Link
Your acquisition of offshore resources for security causes serial policy failure and environmental destruction
that results in extinction
Martens 11 (Emily, MA in Geography and Regional Studies – University of Miami, “The Discourses of Energy and
Environmental Security in the Debate Over Offshore Oil Drilling Policy in Florida,” Open Access Theses, 5-10,
http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1253&context=oa_theses)
Amid growing concerns over access to reliable and cheap energy resources, on March 31, 2010 the Obama Administration announced the opening of additional exploratory and drilling
sites for oil within the United States’ Outer Continental Shelf. The announcement of an Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Strategy for 2012-2017 came only three weeks before the BP
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an event that marked an unprecedented economic and environmental disaster, spilling an estimated 5 million barrels (172 million gallons) of oil into the
offshore oil
drilling, however, has been a concern of environmental activists and domestic energy policy makers for decades . Since
the oil crises of 1970s the political rhetoric regarding access to energy resources has focused on the creation of domestic
supplies that can reduce heavy dependence on imports from volatile or hostile foreign producers. Yet, the rhetoric of energy security emanating from
policy making circles has been, since its beginning, internally constrained by a rhetoric of environmental protection,
because of an oil spill in January 29, 1969 resulting from a blowout on a Union Oil Co. drilling platform six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. Thus the opening
of new spaces for the purpose of oil exploration and drilling under the rubric of domestic energy security, ranging
Gulf of Mexico over the course of 86 days. This oil disaster renewed concerns over the environmental impacts of offshore drilling – many of which remain unknown;
from removing protected place status from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to new offshore spaces along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, including the historically oil-rig free
has since been debated heavily in the public forum. 2 The impetus to open additional
offshore spaces to oil drilling and selling more leases in offshore territory has been sustained by a dominant
discourse of energy security that has called to expand the domestic oil supply in order to establish national energy
independence and ensure access to cheap and “safe” energy supplies. More recently, this discourse has been lent urgency by
geopolitical rearrangements that rendered US oil imports as an indirect means of funding terrorism and states hostile to the interests of the US . This
discourse of energy security, however, is opposed to, and by an alternative expression of energy security emanating from the environmental movement — an
environmental discourse of energy security that shares the goal of reducing the dependence of the US on foreign oil not by
expanding domestic oil production but by reducing the dependence of the US on oil itself and therefore the development of alternative fuels.
The fusion of energy security and environmental protection concerns has since the energy and environmental crises of the 1970s forged a
policy aimed at creating environmentally safe extraction and production processes. The emphasis on cheap energy resources, however, has
come into contradiction with requirements of costly regulation and oversight practices that are thought to better
ensure environmental security. The attempt to reconcile offshore drilling with concerns about environmental
protection during the Nixon and Carter years was torn asunder by the hostility to regulation during the Reagan and Clinton years. As a result, a heated debate
waters surrounding the state of Florida,
developed between proponents of offshore oil drilling who argue that (unregulated) offshore oil drilling — and expanded domestic oil production in general — ensures energy security by
making the United States energy independent and opponents of offshore oil drilling who do not 3 contest the goal of energy independence but who argue that this should not be at the
expense of the protection of marine ecosystems and coastal economies from the destructive effects of offshore drilling, regulated or not. The debate, in other words, developed into a
debate between a dominant discourse of energy security and a counter discourse of environmental security — at the core of it were questions of regulation as well as competing
commercial interests. Though there are various actors and interests within each of these discourses, the primary tension between proponents and opponents of offshore oil drilling tends to
reproduce the tensions embodied in the larger discourses of energy security and environmental security at different geographical scales. One of the main arguments of this thesis is that the
credence given to either one of these two security discourses at any given time is the result of broader socio-political forces and the changing ideologies within which they operate.
Underlying both seemingly opposed discourses, however, is a common logic that informs the path they take and the language they use to establish legitimacy — the logic of the
commodity — an abstract representation of space that supports this logic. This space, as Lefebvre (2007: 53) points out, “includes the ‘world of commodities’, its ‘logic’ and its
worldwide strategies, as well as the power of money and that of the political state”. As will be shown in the following chapters, each of these competing discourses has organized its
arguments around the logics of capitalism to gain public support and federal and local state protections. This is not an arbitrary association but rather the result of specific political
developments in the US that have shaped environmental concerns, and the environment, according to free market principles. 4 Prior to the injection of neoliberal policies of deregulation
and privatization into the environment and discourses on the environment under the Reagan Administration, the Nixon and Carter Administrations were caught between an environmental
movement, which attempted to create a new perspective from which human activity could be viewed in light of its often negative impacts on the environment – especially offshore oil
drilling as a result of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill – and the volatility of the international oil market which threatened oil imports. The Nixon and Carter strategies attempted to balance
the two agendas through the expansion of domestic oil production in tandem with regulations and oversight that would monitor the offshore oil industry’s compliance with environmental
standards. This was thought and presented as a temporary measure. Ultimately the aim was to create alternative fuels in the not too distant future to replace oil, in light of evidence and
Neoliberal
restructuring under the Reagan Administration, however, promoted a market-based discourse of energy security above, or more precisely
against the discourse of environmental security , advocating reduction of state oversights and reliance on market signals
instead as the more efficient means to regulate offshore drilling. Environmental security, in the form of government oversight, became a threat to the
accumulation of wealth — a source of insecurity . Instead, environmental security could be entrusted to the multiple interests operating in the free market.
The argument rested on the neoliberal mantra that the government was not as efficient as private owners and the market in managing and protecting the environment. As a result,
offshore oil drilling 5 activity has since enjoyed lax regulatory oversight, while day-to-day oil pollution continues to disrupt
various ecological and economic activities that share ocean space . The fact that the question of environmental protection and regulation
concern that both the production and consumption of oil were proving to be detrimental to the environment which humans depended on for their own survival.
concerns productive activity in ocean space lends it additional complexity deriving both from the nature of ocean space itself, and how it has been historically perceived and constructed,
and from the peculiar political system in the US that divides sovereignty between the federal government an the individual states. This shared sovereignty over ocean space has shaped the
interaction of policy-makers at the state and Federal level in their attempt to promote policy reconciling economic imperatives and environmental concerns that differed across scale. This
scalar tension finds its origin in the Submerged Lands Act that President Eisenhower signed in 1945, which gave coastal states sovereign rights over coastal territory extending three miles
from the shore. In the case of Florida and Texas, where a rather extensive continental shelf exists on their gulf coasts, they were granted 10.3 miles of territory into the Gulf of Mexico,
which was to acknowledge historical use claims. Complementary ocean laws between the state and federal government appear to acknowledge the uncontainable nature of the ocean
environment which can carry pollutants horizontally across space, which exacerbates not only the tension between states and the federal government but also the varying interests of
different coastal states with different economies and ecologies. Where the government of Florida, a state heavily dependent on revenues from tourism, has found it commercially
necessary to keep the ocean territory free of oil pollutants, at least for now, the Federal government has implemented a moratorium that extends what can only be seen as a buffer
surrounding the state of Florida in order to reduce the risk of oil pollutants washing ashore. In Texas 6 and Louisiana, on the other hand, whose economies are dependent on revenues from
and employment in offshore oil drilling (despite some tourism, and fishing and shrimping interests in the latter), the coastal territory has developed into a site of extensive drilling and
production, with an extensive network of pipelines strewn over the ocean floor. Florida’s coast, in contrast, is a protected area at both the state and Federal levels, with policy-makers at
marine sanctuaries
would be threatened by pollution
both levels acknowledging sensitive environments, such as the Everglades and a few
that
from
offshore oil activities and potential oil spills. But ocean space does not recognize political borders, and the shores of Florida are as susceptible to that ever present threat of a large oil spill
as the spill from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig might come to prove I found Florida to be a significant case for studying the interaction between the discourses of energy
and environmental security and their perceived utility for ocean space because it allows for significant insight into the interaction between proponents and opponents of offshore oil
drilling as well as how the logic of commodity comes to be expressed as a vital component in creating policies that protect commercially viable interests harnessed within the security
discourses. Though a similar study could be done on California, I find the unique positioning of Florida in relation to the other Gulf States extremely intriguing, particularly due to Florida
being the only state situated along the Gulf of Mexico to ban offshore oil drilling. Furthermore, the Gulf of Mexico is considered to be partially landlocked, which means that there is only
one side that connects to the open ocean, where the rest is encapsulated by land. This means that pollution from offshore oil drilling would have to maneuver its way through the gulf, 7
possibly traveling around the Florida Peninsula on the Loop Current, before it would reach the open ocean. This situation is very unlike that of California, as there is no offshore oil
production nearby to threaten its coasts. Though it would be an interesting point of departure to compare Florida’s offshore oil drilling policy and the reasons behind it with those of the
other Gulf States of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, my primary concern in this thesis is to understand the interaction between the discourses of energy and environmental
security which compete to define the utility of ocean space and its relationship to society. The case study of Florida is significant, as it allows an analysis of how the security debate in
crosses between the federal and state levels, and is not simply reiterated but is also localized, made pertinent to specifically local concerns. Secondly, the case of Florida allows a look into
a state that has managed to successfully commodify a clean environment and create policy that protects that commodity from the threat posed by offshore oil drilling; and this in the Gulf
of Mexico where offshore oil drilling is widespread. The ban on offshore drilling in Florida and the uncertainty about potential, largely unexplored, offshore oil reserves lend the debate
over offshore oil drilling in Florida more significance. With advancements in exploration and drilling technology it has been argued that larger oil deposits may lie in or around what were
once commercially unproductive oil wells off the Florida coast. As a result, there has been a push at both the Federal and state levels to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling off Florida’s
coasts. The push to open offshore oil drilling around Florida has been met with objections from both environmentalist groups and industries dependent on maintaining a clean marine 8
environment, such as tourism and fishing. As a state dependent on beach tourism, with roughly $37 billion generated in revenue annually, the cost of offshore drilling in Florida depends
more heavily on the creation of unsightly oil rigs and the potential for spills that can spoil beaches and thereby the local economy. Florida remains the only gulf state that does not allow
drilling in either its coastal waters, or in the Federal waters within 100 miles from its coast, though some drilling did take place along Florida’s coast before it was banned in 1990.
Operating on the notion that offshore oil drilling within and near state waters will threaten the “pristine” marine environment and damage the local, tourism-dependent industries,
environmental activism within the state, in conjunction with the local tourism industry, has played a key role in keeping oil rigs out of Floridian waters since 1990. Prior to the BP oil spill
in April 2010, however, a debate was underway within the Florida state legislature to allow offshore exploration and production within state waters. Though state waters – which extend
some three miles into the Atlantic Ocean and ten miles into the Gulf of Mexico – ultimately remained closed to offshore oil drilling, President Obama announced a plan in March 2010 to
open the Federal waters along Florida’s northeast coast, as well as an area in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil leasing. The policy generated a backlash by drilling opponents,
even though the drilling would take place more than 100 miles from the Florida coasts. The sense of victory this created for offshore oil proponents did not last long, as the Obama
administration reversed its decision to allow oil drilling off the Florida coast – in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast – until 2017 as a result of the BP oil spill. The
environmental devastation caused by the BP oil spill, along with the economic turmoil 9 suffered by the tourism and fishing industries along the Gulf coast, managed to table the
discussion on offshore oil drilling along the Florida coast until a full investigation could be conducted as to the cause of the spill and the effects it had on the environment. The intention of
this thesis is to analyze the Florida offshore oil debate within the contexts of the energy security and environmental security discourses, in order to gain insight into the values and beliefs
that lead to the implementation of policies regarding offshore oil drilling within the United States, and more particularly the state of Florida. Using a discursive analysis, I look at how
arguments for and against offshore oil drilling are framed, justified and how they are incorporated into the policy-making process. Furthermore, I aim to understand why and when certain
arguments come to dominate the discussion by looking at current events and socio-economic structures which inform how a discourse comes to be articulated to gain credence and policy
ocean space is constructed as a result of perceptions about its utility to society. Social
constructions of the ocean’s position in relation to the social sphere , as well as its perceived utility, serve as a prominent point of departure for
the security discourses analyzed later on. The dominant energy security discourse seeks to maintain the ocean as a source of
resources and wealth accumulation external and resistant to socialization, while simultaneously promoting a sense of national security
through attempts to reduce dependence on oil imports by increasing domestic production. On the other hand, offshore oil drilling opponents, who have adopted
support. I begin by looking at how
an environmental security discourse, have a negative reaction to expanded offshore oil drilling as it signifies a threat to the long-term environmental sustainability and commercial
The opposition attempts to 10 reconstruct the ocean as a pristine
environment, an essential element in the Earth’s ecosystem as well as coastal tourism and fishing industries, while simultaneously
promoting a counter-hegemonic energy security by advocating for alternative fuels. The discussion regarding the construction
interests that depend on an ocean free of dangerous pollutants.
of the ocean in Chapter 2 uses a historical optic through which one can view the evolution of ocean space in its relationship with human society. More importantly it looks at how
perceptions and representations of ocean space inform how policy is made
and how States, as the sources of legitimate territorial
jurisdiction, manage to acquire and secure ocean territory in order to utilize it for exclusive resource exploitation. Chapter 3 and 4 look at the historical evolution of energy security and
environmental security in relation to offshore oil drilling first at the level of the federal state (chapter 3) and then at the level of the state of Florida (chapter 4), with the aim of
deconstructing the discourses in the historical contexts from which they emanate. The 1970s mark a key turning point for, if not the initial emergence in the United States of concerns
concerns about oil dependence and
as a representation of hegemonic policy discourse. This is important
beyond the discursive level, at the level of policy making , because US presidents have the power to directly appoint
key decisionmakers, such as the Secretary of the Interior – the department which then appoints the head of the Minerals Management Service which is in charge of leasing,
overseeing and collecting revenues from the oil industry – the Secretary of Energy, and the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. These appointed officials
are in charge of the 11 agencies that implement policy and oversee compliance with regulations in the area of offshore oil
drilling. Therefore, the sentiments towards offshore oil drilling that are held by the president tend to reflect those held by these appointed leaders and
dictate regulations and how strictly they will be enforced . The discourses of US presidents on energy and environmental security
are what Wolford (2010: 8) calls “strategic essentialisms”, “intentional simplifications of an otherwise complex subject for the purposes of democratic engagement.”
about environmental sustainability as well as concerns about the foreign oil supplies. The analysis focuses on the articulation of
environmental protection in the speeches of United States Presidents
Engagement in what? Thus, the primary question behind the discursive analysis I exercise in chapters 3 and 4 is: in the discourse on energy and environmental security, what is it that
needs to be made secure, why does it need to be secured, and what are the potential threats to its security? Chapter 2 - The Construction and Securitization of Ocean Space To look upon
the ocean is to place it within a particular social context according to a perceived utility. For the Florida beachgoer, the ocean is a pristine environment, where the horizon seems to extend
infinitely as it meets the sky. For the oil entrepreneur, it holds great mineral wealth, which, at some point in time, must be exploited to fuel the economy and expand the industry. For the
ecologist the ocean contains essential biophysical processes that are not only necessary for marine life, but part of the larger, global ecosystem that sustains all life forms on the planet. For
the fisherman, the ocean is a space where both income and sustenance may be obtained. The ocean has been used for transportation, commercial and military activities for several
divergent interests find themselves
competing over ocean space in order to define its utility as well as the international and State legislation required to secure these
interests against potential threats. In the case of offshore oil drilling, ocean space is the physical arena upon which the security
discourses, such as energy and environmental, create knowledge, portraying counter-realities of the ocean and its value for society. Though
the security discourses discussed in depth in chapters 3 and 4 attach new images and values to ocean space through the perpetuation of their associated knowledges, the ocean
has, throughout history, been the subject of social representations and value constructions that persist within these
discourses. In particular, marine or ocean space, most notably in terms of its relationship to terrestrial space, has often held the position as the
spatial ‘other’ in respect to human processes . As Steinberg (2001) points out, the ocean has held many positions in its relationship with society, namely
as a space for transportation, resource extraction, and, more recently, an intricate part of the biophysical processes that sustain human
thousand years, but only recently has much credence been given to its location within the global ecosystem. Today, these
life . Regardless of the attempts of the latter imagination to integrate ocean spaces into a complex argument about the long-term sustainability of life on earth, the more
traditional notion that the ocean is “merely a distance and not a place” where social rules do not apply, persists
in contemporary discourses, managing to distance ocean spaces from social controls and oversight (Steinberg 2001: 49;
Zalik 2009). During the centuries before widespread seafaring, the ocean was a ‘resource provider’, furnishing littoral communities with food and the occasional luxury items (i.e. pearls).
the Imperial quest to map and mine the world sent many explorers across the oceans, but with little interest
given to the content of the oceans themselves. This has resulted, especially under the auspices of capitalism and neoliberalism, which emphasize
material and financial accumulation in tandem with deregulation and privatization, in policies that often ignore or belittle social and
environmental consequences to the very social processes transpiring within ocean space. Due to the
anthropocentric nature of exploration and resource extraction, the oceans have tended to play merely a service role, as they
are viewed simply as the matter lying between the more easily inhabitable terrestrial formations . Social
constructions or representations of the ocean, attempt to provide a static image of this space in order to define
the parameters of its usefulness to society. In the processes of resource extraction, multi-use preservation, and environmental
With God, Glory and Gold in mind,
sustainability, the often competing representations of ocean space have seen little compromise, with regulatory policies constantly being implemented, lifted, or ignored in view of
competing interests, and their associated ocean-space imaginations. This chapter seeks to highlight the evolution of social constructions and securitization of the ocean, namely in the
United States, by deconstructing and analyzing a few of the dominant perspectives regarding ocean space throughout history. I hope to show that despite an increase in scientific inquiry
aimed at increasing an understanding of ocean spaces and reconfiguring the spatial imagination, the ocean as a resource provider and the ‘other’ to terrestrial spaces remains a prominent
vision that serves to inform human actions within that space. As a result of the ocean’s seemingly fixed construction as the ‘other’, limited authority is placed on any knowledge that
conceptualizes ocean space as a vital element within the Earth’s ecosystem, and the subsequent need for protections and regulations to ensure its sustainability. In fact, where protections
of ocean space exist it is most frequently in light of efforts to maintain the ocean as a multiple use space for commercial enterprises, and not as a result of an incorporation of a new
knowledge that seeks to protect ocean space for the purpose of environmental sustainability or ecosystem protection. In the case of energy and environmental security, the
under the
discourse of energy security the ocean is constructed as the frontier for oil resources, that would be produced
and used domestically in order to secure the American oil supply from the volatile foreign oil market and oilfunded terrorism. In the case of environmental security, the ocean is perceived as [1] a vital element in the larger
ecosystem on which humans rely upon for long-term survival ; and [2] is the site where the commodification of the pristine, unspoiled by dirty
conceptualization of the ocean provides the frame of reference from which each discourse imagines the ocean’s relationship and utility to society. For instance,
offshore drilling activities and rigs, is able to generate thousands of jobs and billions in annual income for coastal tourism.
Arctic Link
Your construction of the Arctic justifies increased military presence – turns conflict and causes
environmental degradation
Dittmer et al 11 -- Professors in the Departments of Geography at University College London, University of Oulu, University College
London, and Royal Holloway, respectively (Jason Dittmer, Sami Moisi, Alan Ingrama, Klaus Dodds, Political Geography, 2011, “Have you
heard the one about the disappearing ice? Recasting Arctic geopolitics,”
http://www.uta.fi/jkk/jmc/studies/courses/reading1%20+%20arctic%20+%20moisio.pdf)
The idea of the Arctic as an open e or opening e and uncertain space also calls forth future-oriented imaginative
techniques, notably scenario analysis and the booming trade in “Arctic futures” (Anderson, 2010). The rhetorical orientation of such
exercises inevitably reproduces and gives free rein to divergent conceptualizations of the future. Thus, on the one hand
are dystopian imaginations of the Arctic as a locus of social, political, economic, cultural and ecological disaster.
While during the 1990s Arctic space was infused with political idealism and hope as the end of the Cold War seemed to open the possibility of a
less explicitly territorialized governance regime (the Arctic Council), current interventions in Arctic space raise the spectres of
conflict, environmental degradation and the “resource curse” (Emmerson, 2010). The notion of the Arctic as an open,
‘melting space’ is thus represented as posing a multi-faceted security risk. Scott Borgerson (2008) published a notably
neo-realist intervention in Foreign Affairs which considered this kind of scenario in more detail; he argued that the
decrease in sea ice cover is directly correlated to evidence of a new ‘scramble for resources’ in the region, involving the five
Arctic Ocean coastal states and their national security interests. According to Borgerson (2008: 65), the Arctic “region could erupt in
an armed mad dash for its resources” . More generally, melting ice is correlated with enhanced accessibility and
hence opportunities for new actors ranging from commercial shipping to illegal migrants and terrorist groups to migrate within and
beyond the Arctic. At the most extreme, neorealists have contended that Arctic installations such as pipelines or terminals
might be potential targets for terrorist organizations hell-bent on undermining North American energy security (Byers, 2009). At the
same time, the Arctic is also framed as a space of promise: the locus of a potential oil bonanza, new strategic trade routes and huge
fishing grounds (Powell, 2008a). No wonder then that the Arctic possibilities have resulted in a number of scenarios on the
relationship between Arctic resources and Arctic geopolitical order. Lawson Brigham, a well known Arctic expert, has
imagined an “Arctic race”, a scenario in which “high demand and unstable governance set the stage for a ‘no holds
barred’ rush for Arctic wealth and resources” (described in Bennett, 2010, n.p.). This vision, which is opposite to “Arctic saga”,
can be regarded as a liberal warning message. Accordingly, without new governance structures based on new international agreements, high
demand in the Arctic region could lead to political chaos which could also jeopardize Arctic ecosystems and
cultures. The emphasis on the economic potential of the Arctic maritime areas further highlights the dominance of future over present in
contemporary geopolitical discourses. The image of disaster (as epitomised by the Exxon Valdez sinking in 1989) thus forms a
counterpoint to the image of a treasure chest (the Russian flagplanting in 2007).We suggest that these assertions of Arctic
disaster are used to justify a strengthened military presence in Arctic waters in the name of national security
along with a range of futuristic possibilities (Jensen & Rottem, 2009). Here neo-realism feeds off the idea of the Arctic as
opening, shifting and potentially chaotic space. It thus has an affective as well as descriptive quality e invoking a mood change and
associated “calls to arms” (Dodds, 2010). This theme of ‘fearing the future’ has emerged periodically within Canadian political
discourse, with Stephen Harper’s famous “use it or lose it” dictum traceable through previous governments, which have emphasized the
threat of incursion by the Soviets or the United States (Dodds, in press; Head, 1963; Huebert, 2003). The disaster argumentation (Berkman
& Young, 2009) also underwrites liberal calls for a new multilateral Arctic legal agreement which would set out rules, for
example, on how to exploit Arctic resources. In these representations, “multilateralism” denotes peace, prosperity, stability
and environmental rescue whilst national control and interest denote increasing tension, environmental degradation
and conflict. Arctic ‘openness’ is central to the performance of Arctic geopolitics, enabling sabre-rattling by the five
Arctic Ocean coastal states. The region’s coding as a feminine space to be tamed by masculine exploits provides an arena
for national magnification. The remoteness and difficulty of maintaining permanent occupation of the far north also
makes it a space where overlapping territorial claims and competing understandings of access to transit passages can
(at the moment) co-exist with relatively little chance of actual combat (Baev, 2007). As we shall see, this is particularly true of the
US/Canadian arguments over the legal status of the NorthWest Passage. In this way the discursive formation of Arctic geopolitics is
also bound up with neo-realist ideas about the inherent tendencies of ‘states’ towards ‘conflict’ over ‘resources’,
‘sovereignty’ and so on e ideas that have been subject to extensive critical deconstruction in IR and political
geography, but which are being rapidly reassembled in relation to the Arctic. The Arctic is thus a space in which the
foundational myths of orthodox international relations are being reasserted . It might be said that it is not just the Arctic
climate that is changing, with knock on effects for state politics and international relations, but rather that the region is being reconstituted within
a discursive formation that renders it amenable to neo-realist understandings and practices inconceivable for other, more inhabited regions.
Accepting the premises of ‘Arctic geopolitics’ risks both obscuring the liveliness of Arctic geography (Vannini,
Baldacchino, Guay, Royle, & Steinberg, 2009) and
enabling the sovereign fantasy that coastal states and their civilian and military
representatives have previously enjoyed security via effective territorial control and may establish it once again .
China Link
China threat discourse reduces the world to calculative strategy. Behaviors, histories, and possibilities that
don’t fit into the affirmative’s worldview of stability and certainty are labeled threatening.
Chengxin PAN IR @ Australian Nat’l ‘4 “The China Threat’ in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive
Construction of Other as Power Politics” Alternatives 29 p. 314-315
In this sense, the discursive construction of China as a threatening other cannot be detached from (neo)realism, a
positivist. ahistorical framework of analysis within which global life is reduced to endless interstate rivalry for
power and survival. As many critical IR scholars have noted, (neo) realism is not a transcendent description of global reality
but is predicated on the modernist Western identity, which, in the quest for scientific certainty, has come to define
itself essentially as the sovereign territorial nation-state. This realist self-identity of Western states leads to the
constitution of anarchy as the sphere of insecurity, disorder, and war . In an anarchical system, as (neo) realists argue, "the gain
of one side is often considered to be the loss of the other,"''5 and "All other states are potential threats."'•^ In order to survive in such a system,
states inevitably pursue power or capability. In doing so, these realist claims represent what R. B. J. Walker calls "a specific
historical articulation of relations of universality/particularity and self/Other ."^^ The (neo) realist paradigm has dominated the
U.S. IR discipline in general and the U.S. China studies field in particular. As Kurt Campbell notes, after the end of the Cold War, a whole
new crop of China experts "are much more likely to have a background in strategic studies or international relations
than China itself. ""^^ As a result, for those experts to know China is nothing more or less than to undertake a
geopolitical analysis of it, often by asking only a few questions such as how China will "behave" in a strategic sense
and how it may affect the regional or global balance of power, with a particular emphasis on China's military power or
capabilities. As Thomas J. Christensen notes, "Although many have focused on intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent
component of the [China threat] debate is the assessment of China's overall future military power compared with that of the United States and
other East Asian regional powers."''^ Consequently, almost by default, China emerges as an absolute other and a threat thanks to this (neo) realist
prism. The (neo) realist emphasis on survival and security in international relations dovetails perfectly with the U.S.
self-imagination, because for the United States to define itself as the indispensable nation in a world of anarchy is often to
demand absolute security. As James Chace and Caleb Carr note, "for over two centuries the aspiration toward an eventual condition of absolute
security has been viewed as central to an effective American foreign policy."50 And this self-identification in turn leads to the
definition of not only "tangible" foreign powers but global contingency and uncertainty per se as threats . For example,
former U.S. President George H. W. Bush repeatedly said that "the enemy [of America] is unpredictability. The enemy is instability. "5'
Similarly, arguing for the continuation of U.S. Cold War alliances, a high-ranking Pentagon official asked, "if we pull out, who knows what
nervousness will result? "^2Thus understood, by its very uncertain character, China would now automatically constitute a
threat to the United States. For example, Bernstein and Munro believe that "China's political unpredictability, the always-present
possibility that it will fall into a state of domestic disunion and factional fighting," constitutes a source of danger.s^ In like manner, Richard Betts
and Thomas Christensen write: If the PLA [People's Liberation Army] remains second-rate, should the world breathe a sigh of relief? Not
entirely. . . . Drawing China into the web of global interdependence may do more to encourage peace than war, but it cannot guarantee that the
pursuit of heartfelt political interests will be blocked by a fear of economic consequences. . . . U.S. efforts to create a stable balance across the
Taiwan Strait might deter the use of force under certain circumstances, but certainly not all.54 The upshot, therefore, is that since China
displays no absolute certainty for peace, it must be, by definition, an uncertainty, and hence, a threat . In the same way, a
multitude of other unpredictable factors (such as ethnic rivalry, local insurgencies, overpopulation, drug trafficking, environmental degradation,
rogue states, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and international terrorism) have also been labeled as "threats" to U.S. security. Yet, it
seems that in the post-Cold War environment, China represents a kind of uncertainty par excellence. "Whatever the prospects for a more peaceful,
more democratic, and more just world order, nothing seems more uncertain today than the future of post-Deng China,"55 argues Samuel Kim.
And such an archetypical uncertainty is crucial to the enterprise of U.S. self-construction, because it seems that only
an uncertainty with potentially global consequences such as China could justify U.S. indispensability or its continued
world dominance. In this sense, Bruce Cumings aptly suggested in 1996 that China (as a threat) was basically "a metaphor for an
enormously expensive Pentagon that has lost its bearings and that requires a formidable 'renegade state' to define its
mission (Islam is rather vague, and Iran lacks necessary weights)."56
Competitiveness Link
Competitiveness makes environmental and economic collapse and resource wars inevitable
Bristow ’10 (School of City & Regional Planning, Cardiff University) (Gillian, Resilient regions: re-‘place’ing
regional competitiveness, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 2010, 3, 153–167)
In recent years, regional development strategies have been subjugated to the hegemonic discourse of competitiveness, such that the ultimate
objective for all regional development policy-makers and practitioners has become the creation of economic advantage through superior
productivity performance, or the attraction of new firms and labour (Bristow, 2005). A major consequence is the developing ‘ubiquitification’ of
regional development strategies (Bristow, 2005; Maskell and Malmberg, 1999). This reflects the status of competitiveness as a key discursive
construct (Jessop, 2008) that has acquired hugely significant rhetorical power for certain interests intent on reinforcing capitalist relations
(Bristow, 2005; Fougner, 2006). Indeed, the competitiveness hegemony is such that many policies previously considered only
indirectly relevant to unfettered economic growth tend to be hijacked in support of competitiveness agendas (for
example Raco, 2008; also Dannestam, 2008). This paper will argue, however, that a particularly narrow discourse of
‘competitiveness’ has been constructed that has a number of negative connotations for the ‘resilience’ of regions.
Resilience is defined as the region’s ability to experience positive economic success that is socially inclusive, works within
environmental limits and which can ride global economic punches (Ashby et al., 2009). As such, resilience clearly resonates with
literatures on sustainability, localisation and diversification, and the developing understanding of regions as intrinsically diverse entities with
evolutionary and context-specific development trajectories (Hayter, 2004). In contrast, the dominant discourse of competitiveness is
‘placeless’ and increasingly associated with globalised, growth-first and environmentally malign agendas (Hudson,
2005). However, this paper will argue that the relationships between competitiveness and resilience are more complex than might at first appear.
Using insights from the Cultural Political Economy (CPE) approach, which focuses on understanding the construction, development and spread
of hegemonic policy discourses, the paper will argue that the dominant discourse of competitiveness used in regional development policy is
narrowly constructed and is thus insensitive to contingencies of place and the more nuanced role of competition within economies. This leads to
problems of resilience that can be partly overcome with the development of a more contextualised approach to competitiveness. The paper is now
structured as follows. It begins by examining the developing understanding of resilience in the theorising and policy discourse around regional
development. It then describes the CPE approach and utilises its framework to explain both how a narrow conception of competitiveness has
come to dominate regional development policy and how resilience inter-plays in subtle and complex ways with competitiveness and its emerging
critique. The paper then proceeds to illustrate what resilience means for regional development firstly, with reference to the Transition Towns
concept, and then by developing a typology of regional strategies to show the different characteristics of policy approaches based on
competitiveness and resilience. Regional resilience Resilience is rapidly emerging as an idea whose time has come in policy discourses around
localities and regions, where it is developing widespread appeal owing to the peculiarly powerful combination of transformative pressures from
below, and various catalytic, crisis-induced imperatives for change from above. It features strongly in policy discourses around environmental
management and sustainable development (see Hudson, 2008a), but has also more recently emerged in relation to emergency and disaster
planning with, for example ‘Regional Resilience Teams’ established in the English regions to support and co-ordinate civil protection activities
around various emergency situations such as the threat of a swine flu pandemic. The discourse of resilience is also taking hold in discussions
around desirable local and regional development activities and strategies. The recent global ‘credit crunch’ and the accompanying in-crease in
livelihood insecurity has highlighted the advantages of those local and regional economies that have greater ‘resilience’ by virtue of being less
dependent upon globally footloose activities, hav-ing greater economic diversity, and/or having a de-termination to prioritise and effect more
significant structural change (Ashby et al, 2009; Larkin and Cooper, 2009). Indeed, resilience features particular strongly in the ‘grey’
literature spawned by thinktanks, consul-tancies and environmental interest groups around the consequences of the global recession,
catastrophic climate change and the arrival of the era of peak oil for localities and regions with all its implications
for the longevity of carbon-fuelled economies, cheap, long-distance transport and global trade. This popularly labelled
‘triple crunch’ (New Economics Foundation, 2008) has power-fully illuminated the potentially disastrous material
consequences of the voracious growth imperative at the heart of neoliberalism and competitiveness, both in the form
of resource constraints (especially food security) and in the inability of the current system to manage global financial
and ecological sustainability. In so doing, it appears to be galvinising previously disparate, fractured debates about the merits of the
current system, and challenging public and political opinion to develop a new, global concern with frugality, egalitarianism and localism (see, for
example Jackson, 2009; New Economics Foundation, 2008).
Democracy Link
Democratization is imperialism 2.0 – exposing the flip side of this oppressive regime is necessary
Alison J. Ayers, Department of Political Science - Simon Fraser University, “Imperial Liberties: Democratisation
and Governance in the ‘New’ Imperial Order” POLITICAL STUDIES: 2009 VOL 57, 1–27
Thus, far from non- or indeed anti-imperial, the current ‘global mission’ to ‘democratise’ the world is internal to
contemporary imperialism. For those who do constantly think within the horizons of the putatively non-imperial present, the
internationalisation of (neo)liberal democracy is presumed to be incompatible with imperialism, but this habitual and normative acceptance is
highly problematic (Marks, 2000; Tully, 2008). Mainstream accounts of ‘democratisation’ presuppose what requires
explanation, taking for granted the non-imperial character of this global project, the hegemony of a specific and
impoverished model of (neo)liberal democracy, highly problematic, de-historicised notions of state, society and self
and the categorical separation of the ‘domestic’ and the ‘international’. The article seeks to address such lacunae through a
critique of the project of ‘democratisation’. It provides detailed empirical evidence from Africa. As such Africa is central while also curiously
marginal to the general thesis. The article seeks to demonstrate that far from an alternative to imperialism, the
‘democratisation project’ involves the imposition of aWestern (neo)liberal procedural form of democracy on
imperialised peoples. As such, ‘democracy promotion’ is concerned, in part, with manufacturing mentalities and
consent around the dominant (neo)liberal notion of democracy, foreclosing attempts to understand or constitute
democracy in any other terms. It should be noted, however, that this project is executed somewhat inconsistently. Western powers
have been selective in their approach to liberal-democratic reform when countervailing strategic, economic or
‘ideological’ interests have prevailed. Thus Western governments have eschewed aid restrictions despite gross and
persistent violations of human rights or ‘good governance’ in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Egypt, Colombia,
Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Niger (Callinicos, 2003; Crawford, 2001; Olsen, 1998). As demonstrated by the situation in Uganda (detailed
below) as well as Niger, in cases of violations of liberal democratic principles, official Western agencies have routinely prioritised
liberalisation over democratic principles. Likewise, in other instances, Western intervention has terminated autonomous democratic
processes, for example in Chile, Guatemala and Nicaragua (Slater, 2002). Selective adherence notwithstanding, the orthodox (neo)liberal model
of democracy claims universality. As Bhikhu Parekh notes in his account of the cultural particularity of liberal democracy, such claims have
‘aroused deep fears in the fragile and nervous societies of the rest of the world’ (Parekh, 1992, p. 160). In seeking to constitute African (and
other) social relations in its own particular image, the democratisation project reproduces internal tensions and antinomies
within liberal thought. As such, a profound non-correspondence exists, in Mahmood Mamdani’s (1992) terms, between
‘received’ (neo)liberal democratic theory and ‘living’ African realities. Resistance is therefore widespread, with Western (neo)liberal democratic
notions being ‘re-assessed in many places on the continent nowadays, often more censoriously than may be heard above the clamor of EuroAmerican triumphalism’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 1997, p. 141). As Michel Foucault argued in The Subject and Power,
‘between a relationship of power and a strategy of struggle there is a reciprocal appeal, a perpetual linking and a
perpetual reversal’. The ensuing instability enables analysis ‘either from inside the history of struggle or from the standpoint of the power
relationships’ as well as interaction or ‘reference’ between the two (Foucault, 1994, p. 347). Each approach is necessary but not
possible within the scope of the present article. The article seeks to provide analysis of the articulation of informal
imperialism, inter alia through ‘democracy’ and ‘governance’ interventions, as a necessary and prefigurative
‘mapping’ exercise (Peterson, 2003) to understanding social transformation, as well as the social conditions of possibility of alternative
forms of relation and engagement.5 The ‘mapping’ of this project is essential in illuminating relations of power. The
current imperial order is inimical to democracy but to ‘disrupt and redirect the particular orderings “at work” we
must first be able to see them clearly’ (Peterson, 2003, p. 173, emphasis in original). As such, analysis of how ‘post-colonial’
imperialism is articulated is a necessary precondition of thinking in an informed manner about resistance and transformation.
Disease Link
Disease descriptions are shaped by political interests and in turn shape reality – turns the aff
MacPhail 2009 (Theresa, medical anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley “The Politics of Bird Flu: The Battle over Viral
Samples and China’s Role in Global Public Health,” Journal of language and politics, 8:3, 2009)
In fact, the health development strategies of international organizations are judged
as significant in reinforcing the
role of the state in relation to the production of primary products for the world market, thereby perpetuating
international relations of dominance and dependency. — Soheir Morsy, Political Economy in Medical Anthropology In July of
2007, former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona appeared before a congressional committee and testified that during his term in
office he had been pressured by the Bush administration to suppress or downplay any public health information that
contradicted the administration’s beliefs and/or policies. Gardiner Harris of the New York Times noted that Dr. Carmona was only
“one of a growing list of present and former administration officials to charge that politics often trumped science within what had
previously been largely nonpartisan government health and scientific agencies ” (Harris 2007). Dr. Carmona testified that he
had repeatedly faced “political interference” on such varied topics as stem cell research and sex education. Two days later, an editorial in the
Times bemoaned the resultant diminution of public health — both its reputation as non-biased and the general “understanding of important public
health issues” — in the eyes of the same public it was meant to serve (2007). In the wake of Dr. Carmona’s testimony, it would appear that these
are grave times for public health. And yet, public health concerns and international measures to thwart disease pandemics have never been more
at the forefront of governmental policy, media focus and the public imagination. Dr. Carmona’s testimony on the fuzzy boundaries between
science and state, health and policy, is in line with a recent spate of sensational stories on the dangers of drug-resistant tuberculosis and the
recurrent threat of a bird flu outbreak — all of which belie any distinct separation of politics and medical science and highlight the everincreasing commingling of the realms of public health and political diplomacy. Until recently, the worlds of public health and
politics have generally been popularly conceptualized as separate fields. Public health, undergirded by medicine, is primarily
defined as “the science and practice of protecting and improving the health of a community” (public health 2007), regardless of political borders
on geographical maps. Disease prevention and care is typically regarded as neutral ground, a conceptual space where
governments can work together for the direct (or indirect) benefit of all . Politics, on the other hand, is usually referred to in the
largely Aristotelian sense of the word, or politika, as “the art or science of government or governing, especially the governing of a political entity,
such as a nation, and the administration and control of its internal and external affairs” (politics 2007). If we take to be relevant Clausewitz’s
formulation that war is merely the continuation of policy (or such politics) by other means, might we then argue that the recent ‘wars’ on
disease — specifically the one being waged on the ever-present global threat of bird flu — are merely a continuation
of politics by different means? In an article written for the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), two health professionals suggest that
the flow of influence works optimally when an unbiased science first informs public health, with public health then influencing governmental
policy decisions. The other potential direction of influence, wherein politics directly informs public health, eventually
constraining or directing scientific research, has the potential to create a situation in which “ideology clouds
scientific and public health judgment, decisions go awry and politics become dangerous” (Koplan and McPheeters 2004:
2041). The authors go on to argue that: Scientists and public health professionals often offer opinions on policy and political issues, and
politicians offer theirs on public health policies, sometimes with the support of evidence. This interaction is appropriate and healthy, and valuable
insights can be acquired by these cross-discussions. Nevertheless the interaction provides an opportunity for inappropriate and
self-serving commentary, for public grandstanding, and for promoting public anxiety for partisan political purposes .
(ibid.) The authors, however, never suggest that pure science, devoid of any political consideration, is a viable alternative to an ideologicallydriven disease prevention policy. What becomes important in the constant interplay of science, politics and ideology, is both an awareness of
potential ideological pitfalls and a balance between official public health policy and the science that underlies it. The science/ public
health/politics interaction is largely taken for granted as the foundation of any appropriate, real-world policy decisions (Tesh 1988: 132). Yet the
political nature of most health policies has, until recently, been overshadowed in popular discourse by the ostensibly
altruistic nature of health medicine. Yet as Michael Taussig reminds us of the doctor/patient relationship: “The issue of control and
manipulation is concealed by the aura of benevolence” (Taussig 1980: 4). Might the overt goodwill of organizations such as the WHO, the CDC,
and the Chinese CDC belie such an emphasis on politics? Certainly there is argumentation to support a claim that public health and medicine are
inherently tied to politics. Examining the ‘hidden arguments’ underlying public health policies, Sylvia Noble Tesh argues: “ disease
prevention began to acquire political meaning. No longer merely ways to control diseases, prevention policies became standardbearers for the contending political arguments about the form the new society would take” (1988: 11). Science is a ‘reason of state’ in Ashis
Nandy’s Science, Hegemony and Violence (1988: 1). Echoing current battles over viral samples, Nandy suggests that in the last century science
was used as “a political plank within the United States in the ideological battle against ungodly communism ” (1988:
3). Scientific performance is linked to ‘political dividends’ (1988: 9), with science becoming “a substitute for politics in many
societies” (1988: 10). What remains novel and of interest in all of this conflation of state and medicine is the new ‘politics of
scale’ of the war on global disease, specifically its focus on reemerging disease like avian influenza . As doctor and
medical anthropologist Paul Farmer notes: “… the WHO manifestly attempts to use fear of contagion to goad wealthy nations
into investing in disease surveillance and control out of self-interest — an age-old public health ploy acknowledged as such in
the Institute of Medicine report on emerging infections” (Farmer 2001: 56–57). What Farmer’s observation underlines is that ‘public health’ has
transformed itself into a savvy, political entity. Institutions like the WHO are increasingly needed to negotiate between nations — they function
as the new ‘diplomats of health’. Modern politics, then, have arguably turned into ‘health’ politics . In 2000, the UN Security
Council passed a resolution on infectious diseases. The resolution came in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and was the first of its kind issued
(Fidler 2001: 80). What started as a reaction to a specific disease, AIDS, has since developed into an overall concern
with any disease or illness which is seen as having the potential to lay waste to global health, national security, or
economic and political stability. In other words, disease and public health have gone “global”. But, as law and international disease
scholar David Fidler points out, the “meeting of realpolitik and pathogens” that he terms “microbialpolitik” is anything but new (Fidler 2001: 81).
Microbialpolitiks is as old as international commerce, wars, and diplomacy. Indeed, it was only the brief half-century respite
provided by antibiotics, modern medicine and the hope of a disease-free future that made the coupling of politics and public health seem out-ofdate. But now we have (re)entered a world in which modern public health structures have weakened, thus making a return to microbialpolitiks
inevitable. As Fidler argues: “The ‘reglobalization of public health is well underway, and the international politics of
infectious disease control have returned” (Fidler 2001: 81). Only three years later, Fidler would write that the predicted return of public
health was triumphant, having “emerged prominently on the agendas of many policy areas in international relations, including national security,
international trade, economic development, globalization, human rights, and global governance” (Fidler 2004: 2). As Nicholas King suggests, the
resurgence of such ‘microbialpolitiking’ owes much to the discourse of risk so prevalent in today’s world. The
current focus on ‘risk’, as it specifically pertains to disease and its relationship to national security concerns, has
been constructed by the interaction of a variety of different social actors: scientists, the media, and health and
security experts (King 2004:62). King argues: The emerging diseases campaign employed a strategic and historically
resonant scale politics, making it attractive to journalists, biomedical researchers, activists, politicians, and public
health and national security experts. Campaigners’ identification of causes and consequences at particular scales were a means of
marketing risk to specific audiences and thereby securing alliances; their recommendations for intervention at particular scales were a means of
ensuring that those alliances ultimately benefited specific interests. (2004: 64) King traces this development to the early 1990s, specifically to
Stephen Morse’s 1989 conference on “Emerging Viruses”. Like the UN Security Council resolution on emerging infections, the conference was
in the wake of HIV/AIDS. In King’s retelling, it was Morse’s descriptions of the causal links between isolated, local events and global effects that
changed the politics of public health (2004: 66). The epidemiological community followed in Morse’s footsteps, with such luminaries as Morse
and Joshua Lederberg calling for a global surveillance network to deal with emerging or reemerging diseases such as bird flu or SARS. However,
although both the problem and the effort were ‘global’ by default, any “interventions would involve ‘passing through’ American laboratories,
biotechnology firms, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and the information science experts” (King 2004: 69). Following the conference, disease
became a hot topic for the media. Such high-profile authors as Laurie Garrett (The Coming Plague) and Richard Preston (The
Hot Zone) stoked the ‘emerging virus’ fires, creating what amounted to a “viral panic” or “viral paranoia” (King 2004:
73). Stories of viruses gone haywire, such as Preston’s account of Ebola, helped reify the notion that localized events were of international
importance. Such causal chains having been formed in the popular imagination, the timing was ripe for the emergence of bioterrorism concerns.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the former cold war had been transformed, using scalar politics, into a hot war with international viruses (King 2004:
76). Of course, all of this can be tied into the Foucaultian concept that knowledge is by its very nature political . In The
Birth of the Clinic, Foucault outlines the ways in which medicine is connected to the power of the state. For Foucault, medicine itself
“becomes a task for the nation” (Foucault 1994: 19). He argues that the practice of medicine is itself political and that “the
struggle against disease must begin with a war against bad government” (Foucault 1994: 33). In an article on the politics of
emerging diseases, Elisabeth Prescott has echoed Foucault’s equation of disease with bad government. She suggests that a nation’s capacity
to combat both old and newly emergent diseases is a marker not of just biological, but of political, health. She argues
that “the ability to respond [is] a reflection of the capacity of a governing system” (2007: 1). What’s more, ruptures in health can lead to breakdowns in effective government or in the ability of governments to inspire confidence. Prescott suggests: “Failures in governance in the face of
infectious disease outbreaks can result in challenges to social cohesion, economic performance and political legitimacy” (ibid.). In other words,
an outbreak of bird flu in China would equate to an example of Foucault’s bad government. In the end, there can be no doubt that the realms of
medicine and (political) power are perpetually intertwined. Foucault writes: “There is, therefore, a spontaneous and deeply rooted convergence
between the requirement of political ideology and those of medical technology” (Foucault 1994: 38). In other words, we should not be overly
surprised by Richard Carmona’s testimony or by debates over bird flu samples. Politics and health have always arguably gone hand-in-hand
Economy Link
Attempting to save the global economy from disaster is a liberal order-building method of security
Mark Neocleous, Professor of Critique of Political Economy, Brunel University, 08 (“Critique of Security”, McGill-Queen’s University, pp.
94-97, Published 2008)
But 'social security' was clearly an inadequate term for this, associated as it now was with 'soft' domestic policy issues such as old-age insurance.
'Collective security' would not do, associated as it was with the dull internationalism of Wilson on the one hand and still very much connected to
the institutions of social security on the other." Only one term would do: national security. This not to imply that 'national
security' was simply adopted and adapted from 'social security'. Rather, what we are dealing with here is another
ideological circuit, this time between 'national security' and 'social security' , in which the policies 'insuring' the
security of the population are a means of securing the body politic, and vice versa;" a circuit in which, to paraphrase
David Peace in the epigraph to this chapter, one can have one's teeth kicked out in the name of national security and put back in through social
security. Social security and national security were woven together: the social and the national were the warp and the weft of the
security fabric. The warp and the welt, that is, of a broader vision of economic security. Robert Pollard has suggested that 'the concept
of "economic security'- the idea that American interests would be best sewed by an open and integrated economic
system, as opposed to a large peacetime military establishment - was firmly established during the wartime period'.
71 In fact, the concept of 'economic security' became a concept of international politics in this period, but the concept itself had a longer history
as the underlying idea behind social security in the 1930s, as we have seen. Economic security, in this sense, provides the important
link between social and national security, becoming liberalism's strategic weapon of choice and the main policy
instrument from 1945. As one State Department memo of February 1944 put it, 'the development of sound international economic relations
is closely related to the problem of security. But it would also continue to be used to think about the political administration of internal order.
Hence Roosevelt's comment that 'we must plan for, and help to bring about, an expanded economy which will result in more security [and so that
the conditions of 1932 and the beginning of 1933 won't come back again'.' On security grounds, inside and outside were constantly
folding into one another, the domestic and the foreign never quite On the fabrication of economic order properly distinguishable.
The reason why lay in the kind of economic order to be secured: both domestically and internationally, 'economic security' is coda for capitalist
order.
Giving a lecture at Harvard University on 5 June 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall recalled the
disruption to the European economy during the war and Europe's continuing inability to feed itself, and suggested that if the US did not help there
would be serious economic, social and political deterioration which would in turn have a knock-on effect on US capital. The outcome was a
joint plan submitted to the US from European states at the end of August, after much wrangling with the Soviet
Union, requesting $28 billion over a four-year period (the figure was reduced when finally agreed by Congress). The European
Recovery Program (ERE known as the Marshall Plan) which emerged has gone down as an economic panacea, 'saving' Europe
from economic disaster. But as the first of many such 'Plans', all the way down to the recent 'reconstruction' of Iraq, it does
not take much to read the original Marshall Plan through the lens of security and liberal order-building.
Alan
Milward has suggested that the conventional reading of the Marshall Plan and US aid tends to accept the picture of postwar Europe on the verge of collapse and with serious social and economic discontent, such that it needed to be
rescued by US aid. In fact, excluding Germany, no country was actually on the verge of collapse. There were no
bank crashes, very few bankruptcies and the evidence of a slow down in industrial production is unconvincing. There
is also little evidence of grave distress or a general deterioration in the standard of living. By late-1946 production had roughly equalled pre-war
levels in all countries except Germany. And yet Marshall Aid came about. Milward argues that the Marshall Plan was designed not to
increase the rate of recovery in European countries or to prevent European economies from deteriorating, but to
sustain ambitious, new, expansionary economic and social policies in Western European countries which were in
fact already in full-bloom conditions. In other words, the Marshall Plan was predominantly designed for political objectives - hence
conceived and rushed through by the Department of State itself." Milward's figures are compelling, and complicate the conventional picture of
the Marshall Plan as simply a form of economic aid. But to distinguish reasons that are 'economic' reasons from reasons that
are 'political' misses the extent to which, in terms of security, the economic and the political are entwined. This is why
the Marshall Plan is so inextricably linked to the Truman Doctrine's offer of military aid and intervention beyond us borders, a new global
commitment at the heart of which was the possibility of intervention in the affairs of other countries. As Joyce and Gabriel Kolko have argued the
important dimension of the Truman Doctrine is revealed in the various drafts of Truman's speech before it was finally delivered on 12 March, and
the private memos of the period. Members of the cabinet and other top officials understood very clearly that the united States was now defining a
strategy and budget appropriate to its new global commitments, and that a far greater involvement in other countries was now pending especially
on the economic level. Hence the plethora of references to 'a world-wide trend away from the system of free enterprise's
which the state Department's speech-writers thought a 'grave threat' to American interests. Truman's actual speech to
Congress is therefore more interesting for what it implied than what it stated explicitly. And what it implied was the politics behind the
Marshall Plan: economic security as a means of maintaining political order against the threat of communism. The point
then, is not just that the Marshall Plan was 'political' how could any attempt to reshape global capital be anything but
political? It is fairly clear that the Marshall Plan was multidimensional, and to distinguish reasons that are 'economic' reasons from reasons that
are 'political' misses the extent to which the economic, political and military are entwined The point is that it was very much a project driven by
the ideology of security. The referent object of 'security here is 'economic order'. The government and the emerging
national security bureaucracy saw the communist threat as economic rather than military. As Latham notes, at first glance
the idea of military security within a broad context of economic containment merely appears to be one more dimension of strength within the
liberal order. But in another respect the project of economic security might itself be viewed as the very force that made military security appear to
be necessary. In this sense, the priority given to economic security was the driving force behind the us commitment to
underwrite milita ry security for Western Europe." The protection and expansion of capital came to be seen as the
path to security, and vice versa. This created the grounds for a re-ordering of global capital involving a constellation of class and
corporate forces as well as state power, undertaken in the guise of national security. NSC-68, the most significant national security document to
emerge in this period, stated that the 'overall policy at the present time may be described as one designed to foster a world environment in which
the American system can survive and flourish'." In this sense we can also read the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of 1947, the Brussels Pact of March 1948 and the nascent movement towards 'European Union' as part and parcel of
the security project being mapped out." The key institutions of 'international order' in this period invoked a particular vision of order with a view
to reshaping global capital as a means of bringing 'security' political, social and economic - from the communist threat.
Energy Security Link
Energy security militarizes energy – justifies intervention and causes serial policy failure
Ciuta 10 -- Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Centre of European Politics, School of Slavonic
and East European Studies @ University College London, UK (Felix, 2010, "Conceptual Notes on Energy Security:
Total or Banal Security?" Security Dialogue 41(123), Sage)
Even casual observers will be familiar with the argument that energy is
a security issue because it is either a cause or an
instrument of war or conflict. Two different strands converge in this logic of energy security. The first strand focuses on energy as an
instrument: energy is what states fight their current wars with. We can find here arguments regarding the use of the ‘energy weapon’
by supplier states (Belkin, 2007: 4; Lugar, 2006: 3; Winstone, Bolton & Gore, 2007: 1; Yergin, 2006a: 75); direct substitutions in which energy
is viewed as the ‘equivalent of nuclear weapons’ (Morse & Richard, 2002: 2); and rhetorical associations that establish
policy associations, as exemplified by the panel ‘Guns and Gas’ during the Transatlantic Conference of the Bucharest NATO Summit. The
second strand comes from the literature on resource wars, defined as ‘hot conflicts triggered by a struggle to grab valuable resources’ (Victor,
2007: 1). Energy is seen as a primary cause of greatpower conflicts over scarce energy resources (Hamon & Dupuy, 2008; Klare, 2001, 2008).
Alternatively, energy is seen as a secondary cause of conflict; here, research has focused on the dynamics through which resource scarcity in
general and energy scarcity in particular generate socio-economic, political and environmental conditions such as population movements, internal
strife, secessionism and desertification, which cause or accelerate both interstate and intrastate conflict (Homer-Dixon, 1991, 1994, 2008; Solana,
2008; see also Dalby, 2004). As is immediately apparent, this logic draws on a classic formulation that states that ‘a nation is secure to the extent
to which it is not in danger of having to sacrifice core values, if it wishes to avoid war, and is able . . . to maintain them by victory in such a war’
(Lippmann, 1943: 51). The underlying principle of this security logic is survival : not only surviving war, but also a generalized
quasi-Darwinian logic of survival that produces wars over energy that are fought with ‘energy weapons’ . At work
in this framing of the energy domain is therefore a definition of security as ‘the absence of threat to acquired values’ (Wolfers, 1952:
485), more recently reformulated as ‘survival in the face of existential threats’ (Buzan, Wæver & de Wilde, 1998: 27). The defining
parameters of this traditional security logic are therefore: (1) an understanding of security focused on the use of force, war and conflict (Walt,
1991: 212; Freedman, 1998: 48); and (2) a focus on states as the subjects and objects of energy security. In the war logic, energy security is
derivative of patterns of international politics – often captured under the label ‘geopolitics’ (Aalto & Westphal, 2007: 3) – that lend
their supposedly perennial attributes to the domain of energy (Barnes, Jaffe & Morse, 2004; Jaffe & Manning, 1998). The struggle for
energy is thus subsumed under the ‘normal’ competition for power, survival, land, valuable materials or markets
(Leverett & Noël, 2007). A key effect of this logic is to ‘ arrest’ issues usually not associated with war, and thus erase their
distinctive characteristics. Even the significance of energy qua energy is abolished by the implacable grammar of conflict: energy
becomes a resource like any other, which matters insofar as it affects the distribution of capabilities in the international
system. As a result, a series of transpositions affect most of the issues ranked high on the energy security agenda. For example, in the European
context, the problem is not necessarily energy (or, more precisely, gas, to avoid the typical reduction performed by such accounts). The
problem lies in the ‘geopolitical interests’ of Russia and other supplier states, whose strength becomes inherently
threatening (Burrows & Treverton, 2007; Horsley, 2006). Energy security policies become entirely euphemistic, as illustrated for
example by statements that equate ‘avoiding energy isolation’ with ‘beating Russia’ (Baran, 2007). Such ‘geopolitical’
understanding of international politics also habituates a distinct vocabulary. Public documents, media reports and academic
analyses of energy security are suffused with references to weapons, battles, attack, fear, ransom, blackmail,
dominance, superpowers, victims and losers. It is therefore unsurprising that this logic is coterminous with the widely
circulating narrative of the ‘new’ Cold War . This lexicon of conflict encourages modulations, reductions and
transpositions in the meanings of both energy and security. This is evident at the most fundamental level, structuring
encyclopaedic entries (Kohl, 2004) and key policy documents (White House, 2007), where energy security becomes oil security
(security modulates energy into oil), which becomes oil geopolitics (oil modulates security into geopolitics). Once security is
understood in the grammar of conflict, the complexity of energy is abolished and reduced to the possession of oilfields or
gas pipelines. The effect of this modulation is to habituate the war logic of security, and also to create a hierarchy
between the three constitutive dimensions of energy security (growth, sustenance and the environment). This hierarchy reflects and at the same
time embeds the dominant effect of the war logic, which is the militarization of energy (Russell & Moran, 2008), an
argument reminiscent of the debates surrounding the securitization of the environment (Deudney, 1990). It is of course debatable whether this is a
new phenomenon. Talk of oil wars has been the subject of prestigious conferences and conspiracy theories alike, and makes the headlines of
newspapers around the world. A significant literature has long focused on the relationship between US foreign policy, oil and war (Stokes, 2007;
in contrast, see Nye, 1982). The pertinence of this argument cannot be evaluated in this short space, but it is worth noting that it too reduces
energy to oil, and in/security to war. The key point is that this logic changes not only the vocabulary of energy security but also
its political rationality . As Victor (2008: 9) puts it, this signals ‘the arrival of military planning to the problem of natural
resources’ and inspires ‘a logic of hardening, securing and protecting’ in the entire domain of energy. There is, it must be
underlined, some resistance to the pull of the logic of war, as attested for example by NATO’s insistence that its focus on energy security ‘will
not trigger a classical military response’ (De Hoop Scheffer, 2008: 2). Yet, the same NATO official claims that ‘ the global competition for
energy and natural resources will re-define the relationship between security and economics’, which hints not only at the
potential militarization of energy security policy but also at the hierarchies this will inevitably create. New geographies
of insecurity will thus emerge if the relationship between the environment, sustenance and growth is structured by the
militarized pursuit of energy (Campbell, 2005: 952; Christophe Paillard in Luft & Paillard, 2007).
Environment Link
Environmental apocalypticism causes eco-authoritarianism and mass violence against those deemed
environmental threats – also causes political apathy which turns case
Buell 3 Frederick—cultural critic on the environmental crisis and a Professor of English at Queens College and the author of five books,
From Apocalypse To Way of Life, pages 185-186
Looked at critically, then, crisis discourse thus
suffers from a number of liabilities. First, it seems to have become a
political liability almost as much as an asset. It calls up a fierce and effective opposition with its predictions;
worse, its more specific predictions are all too vulnerable to refutation by events. It also exposes
environmentalists to being called grim doomsters and antilife Puritan extremists. Further, concern with crisis has
all too often tempted people to try to find a “total solution” to the problems involved— a phrase that, as an
astute analyst of the limitations of crisis discourse, John Barry, puts it, is all too reminiscent of the Third Reich’s
infamous “final solution.”55 A total crisis of society—environmental crisis at its gravest—threatens to
translate despair into inhumanist authoritarianism ; more often, however, it helps keep merely dysfunctional authority in
place. It thus leads, Barry suggests, to the belief that only elite- and expert-led solutions are possible.56 At the same
time it depoliticizes people, inducing them to accept their impotence as individuals; this is something that has made many people
today feel, ironically and/or passively, that since it makes no difference at all what any individual does on his or her own ,
one might as well go along with it. Yet another pitfall for the full and sustained elaboration of environmental crisis is, though least
discussed, perhaps the most deeply ironic. A problem with deep cultural and psychological as well as social effects, it is embodied in a
startlingly simple proposition: the worse one feels environmental crisis is, the more one is tempted to turn one’s back
on the environment. This means, preeminently, turning one’s back on “nature”—on traditions of nature feeling,
traditions of knowledge about nature (ones that range from organic farming techniques to the different departments of ecological science),
and traditions of nature-based activism. If nature is thoroughly wrecked these days, people need to delink from
nature and live in postnature—a conclusion that, as the next chapter shows, many in U.S. society drew at the end of the millenium.
Explorations of how deeply “nature” has been wounded and how intensely vulnerable to and dependent on human actions it is
can thus lead, ironically, to further indifference to nature-based environmental issues, not greater concern with
them. But what quickly becomes evident to any reflective consideration of the difficulties of crisis discourse is that all of these
liabilities are in fact bound tightly up with one specific notion of environmental crisis—with 1960s- and 1970s-style
environmental apocalypticism. Excessive concern about them does not recognize that crisis discourse as a whole has significantly
changed since the 1970s. They remain inducements to look away from serious reflection on environmental crisis only if one does not
explore how environmental crisis has turned of late from apocalypse to dwelling place. The apocalyptic mode had a number of
prominent features: it was preoccupied with running out and running into walls; with scarcity and with the imminent rupture of
limits; with actions that promised and temporally predicted imminent total meltdown; and with (often, though not
always) the
need for immediate “total solution.” Thus doomsterism was its reigning mode; ecoauthoritarianism was a grave temptation; and as crisis was elaborated to show more and more severe deformations of
nature, temptation increased to refute it, or give up, or even cut off ties to clearly terminal “nature.”
Heg Links
Pursuit of hegemony is a fantasy of control that relies upon construction of threatening Otherness --- this
prompts resistance and create a permanent state of conflict
Chernus 6 (Ira, Professor of Religious Studies and Co-director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program – University of Colorado-Boulder,
Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin, p. 53-54)
The end of the cold war spawned a tempting fantasy of imperial omnipotence on a global scale. The neocons want to turn that
fantasy into reality. But reality will not conform to the fantasy; it won’t stand still or keep any semblance of permanent order. So the neocons’
efforts inevitably backfire. Political scientist Benjamin Barber explains that a nation with unprecedented power has
“unprecedented vulnerability: for it must repeatedly extend the compass of its power to preserve what it already has, and so is almost by
definition always overextended.” Gary Dorrien sees insecurity coming at the neoconservatives in another way, too: “For the empire, every
conflict is a local concern that threatens its control. However secure it maybe, it never feels secure enough. The [neocon]
unipolarists had an advanced case of this anxiety. . . . Just below the surface of the customary claim to toughness lurked persistent
anxiety. This anxiety was inherent in the problem of empire and, in the case of the neocons, heightened by ideological ardor.”39 If the U.S.
must control every event everywhere, as neocons assume, every act of resistance looks like a threat to the very existence
of the nation. There is no good way to distinguish between nations or forces that genuinely oppose U.S. interests and those that don’t. Indeed,
change of any kind, in any nation, becomes a potential threat. Everyone begins to look like a threatening monster that might have
to be destroyed. It’s no surprise that a nation imagined as an implacable enemy often turns into a real enemy. When the U.S. intervenes
to prevent change, it is likely to provoke resistance. Faced with an aggressive U.S. stance, any nation might get tough in return. Of course,
the U.S. can say that it is selflessly trying to serve the world. But why would other nations believe that? It is more likely that others will
resist, making hegemony harder to achieve. To the neocons, though, resistance only proves that the enemy really is a
threat that must be destroyed. So the likelihood of conflict grows, making everyone less secure. Moreover, the neocons
want to do it all in the public spotlight. In the past, any nation that set out to conquer others usually kept its plans largely secret. Indeed, the cold
war neocons regularly blasted the Soviets for harboring a “secret plan” for world conquest. Now here they are calling on the U.S. to blare out its
own domineering intentions for all the world to [end page 53] hear. That hardly seems well calculated to achieve the goal of hegemony. But it is
calculated to foster the assertive, even swaggering, mood on the home front that the neocons long for. Journalist Ron Suskind has noted that
neocons always offer “a statement of enveloping peril and no hypothesis for any real solution.” They have no hope of finding a real solution
because they have no reason to look for one. Their story allows for success only as a fantasy. In reality, they expect to find nothing but an endless
battle against an enemy that can never be defeated. At least two prominent neocons have said it quite bluntly. Kenneth Adelman: “We should not
try to convince people that things are getting better.” Michael Ledeen: “The struggle against evil is going to go on forever.”40 This vision of
endless conflict is not a conclusion drawn from observing reality. It is both the premise and the goal of the neocons’ fantasy. Ultimately, it seems,
endless resistance is what they really want. Their call for a unipolar world ensures a permanent state of conflict, so that the
U.S. can go on forever proving its military supremacy and promoting the “manly virtues” of militarism. They have to admit
that the U.S., with its vastly incomparable power, already has unprecedented security against any foreign army. So they must sound the alarm
about a shadowy new kind of enemy, one that can attack in novel, unexpected ways. They must make distant changes appear as huge imminent
threats to America, make the implausible seem plausible, and thus find new monsters to destroy. The neocons’ story does not allow for a final
triumph of order because it is not really about creating a politically calm, orderly world. It is about creating a society full of virtuous people who
are willing and able to fight off the threatening forces of social chaos. Having superior power is less important than proving superior power. That
always requires an enemy. Just as neocons need monsters abroad, they need a frightened society at home. Only insecurity can justify their shrill
call for a stronger nation (and a higher military budget). The more dire their warnings of insecurity, the more they can demand greater military
strength and moral resolve. Every foreign enemy is, above all, another occasion to prod the American people to overcome their anxiety, identify
evil, fight resolutely against it, and stand strong in defense of their highest values. Hegemony will do no good unless there is challenge to be met,
weakness to be conquered, evil to be overcome. The American people must actively seek hegemony and make sacrifices for it, to show that they
are striving to overcome their own weakness. So the quest for strength still demands a public confession of weakness, just as the neocons had
demanded two decades earlier when they warned of a Soviet nuclear attack through a “window of vulnerability.” The quest for strength through
the structures of national security still demands a public declaration of national insecurity. Otherwise, there is nothing to overcome. The more
frightened the public, the more likely it is to believe and enact the neocon story.
Conflict de-escalation is backwards – assumptions of violence become a self-fulfilling prophecy and guarantee
environmental collapse
Clark 4 (Mary E., French Cumbie Professor of Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, “Rhetoric,
Patriarchy & War: Explaining the Dangers of "Leadership" in Mass Culture,” Women and Language. Urbana: Fall,.
Vol. 27, Iss. 2, ProQuest)
Today's Western patriarchal world view now dominates globalwide dialogue among the "leaders" of Earth's nearly two hundred nation-states. Its
Machiavellian/Realpolitik assumptions about the necessity of' military power to preserve order within and between groups of
humans trumps--and stifles--other potential viewpoints. Founded on the belief that "evil" is innate, it dictates that human conflict
must be "controlled": global "law" backed by coercive force. This view, when cross-culturally imposed, becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy, thus "legitimating" an escalating use of force. Western leaders (male and female) use a rhetoric couched in a
"hegemonic masculinity" to justify their ready use of military force to coerce "those who are against us" into compliance. This
translates globally as "national leaders must never lose face!" Changing this dominant paradigm requires dismantling the hierarchic hegemony of masculine militarism and its related economic
institutions, through global cross-cultural dialogues, thus replacing a hegemonic world view and institutions with new, more adaptive visions, woven out of the most useful remnants of multiple
past cultural stories. The paper concludes with a few examples where people around the worm are doing just this--using their own small voices to insert their local "sacred social story" into the
global dialogue. This global process--free from a hegemonic militaristic rhetoric--has the potential to initiate a planetary dialogue where "boundaries" are no longer borders to be defended, but
sites of social ferment and creative adaptation. When the call came for papers on War, Language, and Gender, referring us to Carol Cohn's seminal paper "Sex and Death in the Rational World of
Defense Intellectuals," (1) I at first felt that little more could be added on the subject. But events in Washington in the ensuing weeks stimulated me to a broader "take" on this topic. Defense
intellectuals, after all, are embedded in a whole culture, and the interaction is two-way. Not only does their strategic framework with its euphemistic language about war and killing have the
outcome of forcing society to think in their terms; their framework and language developed in response to our deeply embedded, Western cultural image of a Machiavellian / neo-Darwinian
In other words, militarism and the necessity for organized physical force (2) emerge out of culturewide assumptions
about human nature. Throughout historical times these assumptions have repeatedly proved to be self-fulfilling
prophecies. The pervasive perception of enemy-competitors has generated violent conflicts that flared up and died
back, only to flare up again through our failure to achieve deep resolution and, especially, to alter our basic beliefs about human nature and
universe.
our consequent social institutions. Today our species, politically, comprises some 180190 "nations" of varying cultural homogeneity and moral legitimacy, not to mention size and
physical power. Regardless of their indigenous, internal cultural preferences, their cross-national interactions are institutionalized to fit a framework long established by former Western colonial
powers among themselves. In other words, the global "reality" constructed by Western patriarchies-a Realpolitik, ultimately grounded in military power-has come to define day-to-day crossnational politics. During the era of the Cold War, this resulted in small, powerless nations seeking alliances with one or other superpower, which offered not only development aid but military
protection, and, for locally unpopular, but "cooperating" leaders, small arms to maintain order at home. The "end" of the Cold War brought little change in this pervasive global militarism
The enormous technological "improvements"-i.e. efficiency in killing
power-in weaponry of all types over the past few decades has now resulted in a dangerously over-armed planet that
simultaneously faces a desperate shortage of resources available for providing the world's people with water, energy, health care,
education, and the infrastructure for distributing them. While our environmental and social overheads continue to mount, our
species seems immobilized, trapped in an institutionalized militarism-an evolutionary cul-de-sac! We need new insights-as Cohn
(though it did strengthen the role of economic hegemony by the remaining superpower (3)).
said, a new language, a new set of metaphors, a new mental framework-for thinking, dialoguing and visioning new patterns of intersocietal
interaction.
Iran Link
Describing Iran as a security threat crowds out discussions on root causes of conflict and cause self-fulfilling
prophecies
Limbert 12 – earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, Prof of IR @ US Naval Academy, 20092010 served as Deputy Assistant Secretary, responsible for Iranian affairs, in the State Department’s Bureau of Near
East Affairs (John, “We Need to Talk to Iran, But How? Thirty-two years of sanctions and bluster haven't worked.
It's time to try something different”)
It was easy enough to miss amid all the chest-thumping, threats, and talk of imminent strikes filling the airways, but
last week, Iran signaled its willingness to restart talks with the P5+1 (the five U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) about its nuclear program. "We hope the P5+1
meeting will be held in near future," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said, as a group of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) toured the country. The last round of such talks ended inconclusively
in Istanbul in January 2011, and it has taken more than a year to get close to a new meeting. Although no date has been set for the new talks, it's not too early to begin planning for how to make them more productive than past
It is tempting to dismiss
the current talk of war as bluff and bluster. Although there is certainly much hot air in the current talk of Iran's closing the Strait of Hormuz or of imminent Israeli attacks on Iran, its very
volume and frequency should make us worry. Each threat, each warning, each "red line" declared threatens to trap the parties in
rhetorical corners. Even worse, a party might start believing its own defiant rhetoric and fail to distinguish
between real and imaginary threats. Complicating the issue is the fact that the United States and Iran have
almost never spoken officially to each other in more than 30 years. Diplomats do not meet; officials do not
talk; and military officials to not communicate . Instead of contact in which each side can listen to the other, take the measure of personalities, and look for underlying interests
behind public positions, each side has imputed the worst possible motives to the other, creating an adversary both
superhuman (devious, powerful, and implacably hostile) and subhuman (violent, irrational, and unthinking).
This mutual demonization -- born of fear and contempt -- raises the risk that a simple confrontation will lead
to miscalculation and full-scale conflict. Put simply, today, in the absence of direct communication, it would be very difficult to de-escalate a potential incident in the Persian Gulf or
Afghanistan. With each side assuming the worst about the other, a minor incident could lead both sides into military
and political disaster. 2. REACT CAUTIOUSLY Current events are not running in Iran's favor, despite its bombastic rhetoric. The overthrow of longtime despots in Tunisia and Egypt raised an obvious
negotiations. Here are a few steps that could put us on a road more promising than the current ominous exchanges. 1. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE RISK OF MISCALCULATION
question for Iranian leaders: "Why not here?" Iranians chanted in the streets, Tunes tunest; Iran natunest ("Tunisia could; Iran could not"). As for Bahrain, the Islamic Republic could only watch and denounce as a Sunni-dominated
government with Saudi support suppressed fellow Shiites. Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, one of Iran's few reliable friends in the region, is engulfed in a burgeoning civil war. A frustrated Iran is one that will lash out in all
directions -- at Israel, at the United States, at Britain (as in the recent attack on its embassy in Tehran), and at Saudi Arabia (as in the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States with the help of Mexican drug
cartels). Nonetheless, U.S. negotiators should be careful not to overreact to every claim, every statement, and every bit of bluster coming from the harried leaders in Tehran. Iran would like Washington to dance to its tune, and it likes
to show its power by provoking America into unwise reactions. In such cases, language matters, and U.S. diplomats should be measured, clear, and cautious. Let the other side rant and rave. 3. SMASH THE ATOM If these future
talks -- or any talks -- deal only with Iran's nuclear program, they will fail. For better or worse, the nuclear program has become highly symbolic for the Iranian side. Exchanges on the subject have become an exercise in "asymmetric
negotiation," in which each side is talking about a different subject to a different audience for a different purpose. The failure of such exchanges is certain, with both sides inevitably claiming afterward, "We made proposals, but they
were not listening." For Americans, the concern is technical and legal matters such as the amounts of low- and high-enriched uranium, as well as the type and number of centrifuges in Iran's possession. For Iranians, the negotiations
are about their country's place in the world community -- its rights, national honor, and respect. As such, any Iranian negotiator who compromises will immediately face accusations of selling out his country's dignity. Such was the
case 60 years ago between Prime Minister Mohammad Mosadegh and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company when the British insisted on the sanctity of contracts and the Iranians sought to rectify a relationship out of balance for over a
century. Today, the United States risks falling into the same trap of mutual incomprehension. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's words on the subject are revealing. He says, "We do not believe in making atomic bombs. We believe
that goes against human morality." He adds, however, that the decision to build or not build such a weapon is Iran's decision to make. No one else -- not the United States, the United Nations, the IAEA, or the European Union -- can
tell Iran what to do. It is Iran's right to make that decision. In other words, "Others are seeking to impose their will on us; we are seeking to assert our national rights." 4. BROADEN THE CONVERSATION So if not nukes, what
should the talks be about? If U.S. negotiators are interested in going beyond the most difficult issue on the table -- Iran's nuclear program -- and exploring areas where "yes" is possible, they need to be talking about Afghanistan, Iran,
terrorism, drugs, piracy, and other areas where, in a rational world, there exists basis for agreement. Such will never happen, however, if U.S. and Iranian officials cannot talk to each other. Before the United States enters another
round of talks, it must make certain that the Iranians will not re-enact the farce of their January 2011 meeting with the P5+1 in Istanbul. At that session, Iranian representative Saeed Jalili, apparently under instructions from Tehran,
deliberately avoided a bilateral meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. The sad irony is that, among senior U.S. officials, Burns is probably the only one prepared to listen seriously to Iranian concerns. In fact, the
two had met productively in Geneva in 2009 to discuss a deal to supply fuel to Tehran's research reactor. If the Iranians won't talk to Burns, however, then there is no one in Washington who will listen to them. Of course there is little
one can do if the Iranians insist on rubbing salt into self-inflicted wounds. But they should know the opportunity is there. Although the Geneva deal eventually collapsed, those 2009 talks are still the only high-level meeting between
U.S. and Iranian officials during Barack Obama's presidency. Iranians and Americans need to be talking again at that level, and about much more than just their nuclear programs. In the preparations for the next round of talks, the
Americans -- through the designated P5+1 channel -- should make two points: 1. Burns looks forward to a bilateral meeting with his Iranian counterpart. 2. He is prepared to listen to Iranian concerns on all issues and explore areas of
potential agreement and further discussion. 5. MANAGE EXPECTATIONS The United States should be wary of overplaying its hand -- something it often accuses the Iranians of doing. It should be realistic about the effectiveness of
so-called "punishing" and "biting" sanctions. Just who gets punished and bitten by these measures? Such actions may have their effects, though perhaps not on those in Tehran whom America is seeking to influence. If Iran cannot sell
crude oil, it will clearly be in serious trouble. But if sanctions do not bring the Iranians to yield -- and 32 years of sanctions have not done so -- the only way to do so may be long-term measures to lower the world oil price so that Iran
Nor should the United States oversell the "threat" from Iran. The Islamic
Republic, through its economic mismanagement, inept diplomacy, and talent for making gratuitous enemies, is
chiefly a threat to itself. Although the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is very worrying to others in the region, it is
difficult to see how a nuclear weapon serves Iran's interests or helps the current authorities stay in power. A nuclear
weapon is of no use against urban demonstrators seeking a government that treats them decently or against restive
ethnic minorities seeking cultural rights and a fair share of political and economic power. The chief threat to the
Islamic Republic, in the government's own words, is not an invasion of foreign armies, but a "soft overthrow," a
velvet revolution fueled by hostile foreign countries and local Iranian "seditionists ." Whenever negotiations occur, there will be no quick
faces an economic crisis it cannot avoid no matter how much oil it sells.
breakthroughs. If there is any progress, it will be slow, and it will measured in small achievements -- something not said, a handshake, an agreement to meet again, a small change in tone. Above all, what is needed is patience and
The Americans cannot simply throw up their hands and say, "Well, we tried, but they are just too
irrational (or devious, or suspicious). Let's return to what we have always done." One thing is clear: Three
decades of demonization and hostility have accomplished nothing. Both sides need to stop shouting and start
listening.
forbearance.
Korea Link
Securitization of North Korean war turns case – ethical obligation to reject it
Bleiker 5 – Professor of International Relations at the University of Queensland (Roland, “Professor of International
Relations at the University of Queensland,” University of Minnesota Press, google books, x-xi)
The dangers of North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship are evident and much discussed. Miscalculation or a sudden escalation could precipitate a
human disaster at any moment. Equally dangerous, although much less evident, are the confrontational and militaristic
attitudes with which some of the key regional and global players seek to contain the volatile situation. Particularly
problematic is the approach of the most influential external actor on the peninsula, the United States. Washington’s inability to
see North Korea as anything but a threatening “rogue state” seriously hinders both an adequate understanding
and potential resolution of the conflict. Few policy makers, security analysts, and journalists ever try to imagine how North Korea
decision makers perceive these threats and how these perceptions are part of an interactive security dilemma in which the West is implicated as
much as is the vilified regime in Pyongyang. Particularly significant is the current policy of preemptive strikes against the rogue states, for it
reinforces half a century of American nuclear threats towards North Korea. The problematic role of these threats has been largely obscured, not
least because the highly technical discourse of security analysis has managed to present the strategic situation on the peninsula in a manner that
attributes responsibility for the crisis solely to North Korea’s actions, even if the situation is in reality far more complex and interactive. A
fundamental rethinking of security is required if the current culture of insecurity is to give way to a more stable
and peaceful environment. Contributing to this task is my main objective of this book. I do so by exploring insights and options broader
than those articulated by most security studies specialists. While pursuing this objective I offer neither a comprehensive take on the Korean
security situation nor a detailed updates on the latest events. Various excellent books have already doe so. I seek not new facts and data but new
perspectives. I identify broad patterns of conflict and embark on a conceptual engagement with some of the ensuing dilemmas. I aspire to what
Gertrude Stein sought to capture through a poetic metaphor: the
political and moral obligation to question the immutability of
the status quo; the need to replace old and highly problematic Cold War thinking patterns with new and more
sensitive attempts to address the dilemmas of Korean security.
Middle East Link
Representations can’t be divorced from policy actions- they establish a framework for thinking about the
Middle East. They selectively reveal and conceal aspects of the Middle East to represent it as conflict prone
Pinar Bilgin, PhD International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Department of International Relations Bilkent Univ.,
Regional Security in the Middle East 2005 p. 1
Throughout the twentieth century, the Middle East remained as an arena of incessant conflict attracting global attention. As the
recent developments in Israel/Palestine and the US-led war on Iraq have showed, it is difficult to exaggerate the signifcance of Middle Eastern
insecurities for world politics. By adopting a critical approach to re-think security in the Middle East, this study addresses
an issue that continues to attract the attention of students of world politics. Focusing on the constitutive relationship between
(inventing) regions, and (conceptions and practices of) security, the study argues that the current state of 'regional security' - often a
euphemism for regional insecurities - has its roots in practices that have throughout history been shaped by its various
representations - the geopolitical inventions of security. In doing this, it lays out the contours of a framework for
thinking differently about regional security in the Middle East. Prevailing approaches to regional security have had
their origins in the security concerns and interests of Western states, mainly the United States. The implication of this
Western bias in security thinking within the Middle Eastern context has been that much of the thinking done on regional
security in the Middle East has been based on Western conceptions of 'security'. During the Cold War what was meant by
'security in the Middle East' was maintaining the security of Western (mostly US) interests in this part of the world and its
military defence against other external actors (such as the Soviet Union that could jeopardise the regional and/or global status quo). Western
security interests in the Middle East during the Cold War era could be summed up as the unhindered flow of oil at reasonable
prices, the cessation of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the prevention of the emergence of any regional hegemon, and the
maintenance of 'friendly' regimes that were sensitive to these concerns. This was (and still is) a top-down conception of security that
was military-focused, directed outwards and privileged the maintenance of stability. Let us take a brief look at these
characteristics. The Cold War approach to regional security in the Middle East was top-down because threats to security were defined
largely from the perspective of external powers rather than regional states or peoples. In the eyes of British and US defence
planners, communist infiltration and Soviet intervention constituted the greatest threats to security in the Middle East during the Cold War. The
way to enhance regional security, they argued, was for regional states to enter into alliances with the West. Two security
umbrella schemes, the Middle East Defence Organisation (1951) and the Baghdad Pact (1955), were designed for this purpose. Although there
were regional states such as Iraq (until the 1958 coup), Iran (until the 1978-79 revolution), Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey that shared this
perception of security to a certain extent, many Arab policy-makers begged to differ. Traces of this top-down thinking are still
prevalent in the US approach to security in the 'Middle East'. During the 1990s, in following a policy of dual containment US
policy-makers presented Iran and Iraq as the main threats to regional security largely due to their military capabilities and
the revisionist character of their regimes that were not subservient to US interests. In the aftermath of the events of
September 11 US policy-makers have focused on 'terrorism' as a major threat to security in the Middle East and elsewhere. Yet, US policy so
far has been one of 'confronting the symptoms rather than the cause' (Zunes 2002:237) as it has focused on the military
dimension of security (to the neglect of the socio-economic one) and relied on military tools (as with the war on Iraq) in
addressing these threats. This is not to underestimate the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction or terrorism to global and regional security.
Rather, the point is that these top-down perspectives, while revealing certain aspects of regional insecurity at the same
time hinder others. For example, societal and environmental problems caused by resource scarcity do not only threaten the security
of individual human beings but also exacerbate existing conflicts (as with the struggle over water resources in Israel/Palestine; see Sosland
2002). Besides, the lives of women in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were made insecure not only by the threat caused by
Iraq's military capabilities, but also because of the conservative character of their own regimes that restrict women's rights
under the cloak of religious tradition. For, it is women who suffer disproportionately as a result of militarism and the
channelling of valuable resources into defence budgets instead of education and health (see Mernissi 1993). What is more, the
measures that are adopted to meet such military threats sometimes constitute threats to the security of individuals and
social groups. The sanctions regime adopted to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction has caused a problem of food insecurity for Iraqi
people during the 1990s. In the aftermath of the US-led war on Iraq, Iraqi people are still far from meeting their daily needs. Indeed, it is
estimated that if it were not for the monthly basket distributed as part of the United Nations' 'Oil for Food' programme, 'approximately 80 percent
of the Iraqi population would become vulnerable to food insecurity' (Hurd 2003). Such concerns rarely make it into analyses on
regional security in the Middle East.
Prolif Link
Prolif is an epistemological excuse for violence – their discourse wrecks alternative approaches – and trades
off with structural violence
Woods 7 Matthew, PhD in IR @ Brown - Researcher @ Thomas Watson Institute of International Relations
[Journal of Language and Politics 6.1“Unnatural Acts: Nuclear Language, proliferation, and order,” p. 116-7]
It is important to identify, expose and understand the successful creation of 'proliferation' as the inevitable, uncontrollable
and dangerous spread of nuclear arms because it changed the world in innumerable ways. On one hand, it is the chief
motivation for a wide array of cooperative endeavors among states and the central rationale for the most successful arms control agreement in
modern history, the NPT. It inspired sacrifices that led to faith in our regard for others and stimulated confidence in international law. On the
other hand, it is the reason for an unparalleled collection of international denial and regulatory institutions and it is
the omnipresent and ineliminable threat at the heart of our chronic, unremitting suspicion of others. It is a cause
of global inequality and double-standards among states and the progenitor of the name and identity 'rogue state'
(states that reject the whaling ban are not 'rogue states'). It is a central element in world-wide toleration for human misery, such
as starvation in North Korea, and in public toleration for the clear deception and dissembling of government elites ,
such as in the US. It is a vehicle in some media for racial stereotypes. The existence of 'proliferation' is a primary rationale
among nuclear states for preserving and improving their nuclear arsenals. And faith in the existence of 'Proliferation’: most
recently, brought about invasion, war and continuing death in the Middle East. Every individual that fears it,
organization that studies it and state that strives to prevent it embraces 'proliferation' as a real and known thing and ,
in part, orients their identity and behavior according to it. The successful creation of 'proliferation' represents the
creation of our common sense, our everyday life and our natural attitude toward the nuclear world 'out there.' It is
uncontestable and to suggest otherwise that nuclear states might be to blame for any spread of nuclear arms, or that it has actually been rare and
so far benign or that it may even be beneficial (see a critical review of this literature in Woods 2002) - is to invite derision and ostracism. The
reality of 'proliferation' is so massive and solidified that the essential role of (cell) proliferation in maintaining life and health is virtually
forgotten, overwhelmed, its positive meaning restricted to the doctor's office and biology lab. In short, the creation of 'proliferation' is a
textbook example of what some term hegemony, the creation by a dominant group of a world that realizes its
ideological preferences while marginalizing other possibilities and co-opting subordinates.
Russia Link
Russian threat constructions are rooted in western racism
Øyvind Jæger, @ Norweigian Institute of International Affairs and the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, 2k [Peace and Conflict Studies
7.2, “Securitizing Russia: Discoursive Practice of the Baltic States,” http://shss.nova.edu/pcs/journalsPDF/V7N2.pdf#page=18]
The Russian war on Chechnya is one event that was widely interpreted in the Baltic as a ominous sign of what Russia
has in store for the Baltic states (see Rebas 1996: 27; Nekrasas 1996: 58; Tarand 1996: 24; cf. Haab 1997). The constitutional ban in all three
states on any kind of association with post-Soviet political structures is indicative of a threat perception that confuses Soviet and post- Soviet,
conflating Russia with the USSR and casting everything Russian as a threat through what Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985) call a
discursive "chain of equivalence". In this the value of one side in a binary opposition is reiterated in other denotations of
the same binary opposition. Thus, the value "Russia" in a Russia/Europe-opposition is also denoted by "instability",
"Asia", "invasion", "chaos", "incitement of ethnic minorities", "unpredictability", "imperialism", "slander campaign", "migration",
and so forth. The opposite value of these markers ("stability", "Europe", "defence", "order", and so on) would then
denote the Self and thus conjure up an identity. When identity is precarious, this discursive practice intensifies by shifting
onto a security mode, treating the oppositions as if they were questions of political existence, sovereignty, and
survival. Identity is (re)produced more effectively when the oppositions are employed in a discourse of in-security and
danger, that is, made into questions of national security and thus securitised in the Wæverian sense. In the Baltic cases, especially the
Lithuanian National Security Concept is knitting a chain of equivalence in a ferocious discourse of danger. Not only does it establish "[t]hat the
defence of Lithuania is total and unconditional," and that "[s]hould there be no higher command, self-controlled combat actions of armed units
and citizens shall be considered legal." (National Security Concept, Lithuania, Ch. 7, Sc. 1, 2) It also posits that [t]he power of civic resistance is
constituted of the Nation’s Will and self-determination to fight for own freedom, of everyone citizen’s resolution to resist to [an] assailant or
invader by all possible ways, despite citizen’s age and [or] profession, of taking part in Lithuania’s defence (National Security Concept,
Lithuania, Ch. 7, Sc. 4). When this is added to the identifying of the objects of national security as "human and citizen rights, fundamental
freedoms and personal security; state sovereignty; rights of the nation, prerequisites for a free development; the state independence; the
constitutional order; state territory and its integrity, and; cultural heritage," and the subjects as "the state, the armed forces and other institutions
thereof; the citizens and their associations, and; non governmental organisations,"(National Security Concept, Lithuania, Ch. 2, Sc. 1, 2) one
approaches a conception of security in which the distinction between state and nation has disappeared in allencompassing securitisation. Everyone is expected to defend everything with every possible means. And when the list of
identified threats to national security that follows range from "overt (military) aggression", via "personal insecurity", to "ignoring of national
values,"(National Security Concept, Lithuania, Ch. 10) the National Security Concept of Lithuania has become a totalising one taking everything
to be a question of national security. The chain of equivalence is established when the very introduction of the National Security Concept is
devoted to a denotation of Lithuania’s century-old sameness to "Europe" and resistance to "occupation and subjugation" (see quotation below),
whereby Russia is depicted and installed as the first link in the discursive chain that follows. In much the same way the "enemy within" came
about in Estonia and Latvia. As the independence-memory was ritualised and added to the sense of insecurity – already fed by confusion in state
administration, legislation and government policy grappling not only with what to do but also how to do it given the inexperience of state
institutions or their absence – unity behind the overarching objective of independence receded for partial politics and the construction of the
enemy within. This is what David Campbell (1992) points out when he sees the practices of security as being about
securing a precarious state identity. One way of going about it is to cast elements on the state inside resisting the
privileged identity as the subversive errand boys of the prime external enemy.
Terrorism Link
Your terror discourse enables mass state violence
Jackson 9 (Senior Researcher @ Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Contemporary Political Violence,
Richard, Reader in the Department of International Politics @ Aberystwyth University, Critical Terrorism Studies:
A New Research Agenda, ed. Jackson, Smyth, and Gunning, p.77-80)
In contrast to first order critique, second order critique involves the adoption of a critical standpoint outside of the discourse. That is, based on an
understanding of discourse as socially productive or constitutive and fully cognisant of the knowledge-power nexus, a second
order critique attempts to expose the political functions and ideological consequences of the particular narratives,
practices, and forms of representation enunciated within the dominant terrorism studies discourse. In the first place, it can be
argued that terrorism studies fulfills an obvious ideological function because , as Jeroen Gunning (2007a) has convincingly
shown, the dominant knowledge' of the field is an ideal type of "problem-solving theory'. According to Robert Cox,
‘problem-solving theory takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the
institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action’, and then works to "make these relationships and
institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble' (Cox. 1981: 128 129). In this instance, problem-solving
theories of terrorism do not question the extent to which the status quo and the dominant actors within it, the
hierarchies and operation of power and the inequalities and injustices thus generated could be implicated in the very
'problem' of terrorism itself or the many other forms of violence which it is inextricably bound up with. The problem-solving
character of the field is illustrated most prosaically by the ubiquitous efforts of virtually every terrorism studies scholar to
provide research that is 'policy relevant' and which will assist the state in its efforts to defeat terrorism, and by the
widespread tendency to uncritically accept the state's categorisations, definitions, dichotomies, and demonisations
(see Toms and Gunning, this volume). Andrew Silke's study concluded that a great deal of the field's output is driven by policy
concerns and is limited to addressing government agendas (Silke. 2004d: 58). This characteristic is not at all surprising
given that terrorism studies' origins lie in counter-insurgency studies, security studies, and neo-realist approaches to
international relations at the height of the cold war (Burnett and Whyte. 2005: 11-13). In fact, the first major review of the field
concluded that much of its early output appeared to be 'counterinsurgency masquerading as political science* (Schinid and Jongman, 1988: 182).
More recently, the events of 11 September 2001 galvanised a whole new generation of scholars who were
understandably eager to offer their skills in the cause of preventing further such attacks and "solving” the terrorism
'problem’. They therefore had little reason to question the dominant orientation of the field towards assisting state
security or the underlying assumptions this necessarily entails. The desire to assist governments in their efforts to control the
destructive effects of non-state terrorism is not necessarily problematic in and of itself; nor does it imply any bad faith on the part of individual
scholars (Morgan and Boyle. 2008). In fact, the prevention of violence against civilians is a highly laudable aspiration.
However, when virtually the entire academic field collectively adopts state priorities and aims, and when it tailors its
research towards assisting state agencies in fighting terrorism (as defined by state institutions), it means that
terrorism studies functions ideologically as an intellectual arm of the state and is aligned with its broader hegemonic
project. The field's problem-solving, state-oriented and therefore ideological character is also illustrated by the way
in which the field's 'knowledge' functions to delegitimise any kind of non-state violence while simultaneously
reifying and legitimising the state's employment of violence; and the way it constructs terrorism as a social problem to
be solved by the state but never as a problem of state violence itself. From this viewpoint, the silence regarding state
terrorism within the discourse (Jackson. 2008b). and in particular the argument of many terrorism studies scholars that state actions should not
be defined as 'terrorism', actually functions to furnish states with an authoritative academic justification for using what may
actually be terroristic forms of violence against their opponents and citizens. In effect, it provides them with greater leeway when
applying terror-based forms of violence against civilians, a leeway exploited by a great many states who intimidate groups and individuals with
the application of massive and disproportionate state violence. In other words, by occluding and obscuring the very possibility of
state terrorism, and as a field with academic and political authority, the discourse of terrorism studies can be considered part of
the conditions that actually make state terrorism possible. Furthermore, the discourse is deeply ideological in the way
in which its core assumptions, narratives, and knowledge-producing practices function to legitimise existing power
structures and particular hegemonic political practices in society. For instance, the primary' focus on the 'problem' of
non-state terrorism functions to distract from and deny the long history of Western involvement in terrorism (sec
Blakeley. forthcoming), thereby constructing Western foreign policy as essentially benign - rather than aimed primarily at
reifying existing structures of power and domination in the international system, for example. That is, by deflecting
criticism of particular Western policies, the discourse works to maintain the potentially dangerous myth the accepted
common sense among Western scholars and Western publics - of Western exceptionalism. This sense of exceptionalism in turn permits
Western states and their allies to pursue a range of discrete and often illiberal political projects and partisan interests
aimed at maintaining dominance in a hegemonic liberal international order. Specifically, by reinforcing the dominant
'knowledge’ that non-state terrorism is a much greater security threat than state terrorism and by obscuring the ways in
which counterterrorism itself can morph into state terrorism (see Jackson, forthcoming), the discourse functions to legitimise the
current global war on terror and its associated policies of military intervention and regime change , extraordinary
rendition, military expansion to new regions, military assistance programmes (often to repressive regimes), the
imposition of sanctions, the isolation of oppositional political movements, and the like (see, among many others, Stokes and Raphael,
forthcoming; F.I Fadl. 2002; Mahajan. 2002, 2003; C'allinicos. 2003). More directly, the discourse provides legitimacy to broader
counter-insurgency or counterterrorism programmes in strategic regions where the actual underlying aims clearly
reside in the maintenance of a particular political-economic order such as is occurring in Colombia at the present time (see
Stokes, 2006). At the domestic level, the dominant terrorism discourse can and has been used by political elites to
justify and promote a whole range of political projects, such as: expanding and strengthening the institutions of national
security and the military-industrial complex; the construction of extensive surveillance and social control systems; the
normalisation of security procedures across all areas of social life; expanding the powers and jurisdiction of state
security agencies and the executive branch, in large part by normalising a state of exception; controlling wider social and
political dissent, restricting human rights, and setting the parameters for acceptable public debate; and altering (he legal
system - among others (see. among manyothers. Mueller. 2006; Lustick. 2006; Cole, 2007. 2003; Jackson. 2007c; Scratou. 2002). Lastly, we
must note that powerful economic interests particularly those linked to the security sector, such as private security firms, defence
industries, and pharmaceutical companies, among others all benefit materially and politically from the primary narratives of the
terrorism studies discourse. For example, the accepted "knowledge' that non-state terrorism poses a catastrophic threat
to Western society has in part resulted in contracts worth many millions of dollars to private security companies for site
security at airports and government buildings, while pharmaceutical companies have been contracted to provide millions of
vaccines and decontamination material in case of bioterrorism (see Mueller, 2006). In other words, there are a clear set
of identifiable political-economic and elite interests that are served by the discourse. In sum, it seems clear that the
discourse functions to encourage the reification and extension of state hegemony both internationally and
domestically, and directly serves a range of political and economic interests . Perhaps more importantly, the discourse
reinforces the widely accepted belief in the instrumental rationality of violence as an effective tool of politics (Burke.
2008), particularly as it relates to counterterrorism. As such, it can be argued that the discourse and knowledge practices of terrorism
studies function as a kind of disciplinary and hegemonic truth regime designed to reify existing structures of power
and dominance. Despite the intentions of individual terrorism scholars therefore, who may believe that they are
engaged in objective academic analysis of a clearly defined phenomenon, the broader discourse which they
reproduce and legitimise actually serves distinctly political purposes and has clear ideological consequences for
society.
Warming Link
This technological enframing makes warming strategically even more dangerous.
Crist ‘7 – Ass. Prof. Sci & Tech in Society @ VT (Eileen, Telos 141, Winter, Beyond the Climate Crisis)
While the dangers of climate change are real, I argue that there are even greater dangers in representing it as the most
urgent problem we face. Framing climate change in such a manner deserves to be challenged for two reasons: it encourages the
restriction of proposed solutions to the technical realm, by powerfully insinuating that the needed approaches are those that directly
address the problem; and it detracts attention from the planet’s ecological predicament as a whole, by virtue of claiming the
limelight for the one issue that trumps all others. Identifying climate change as the biggest threat to civilization, and ushering it into
center stage as the highest priority problem, has bolstered the proliferation of technical proposals that address the specific challenge. The race is
on for figuring out what technologies, or portfolio thereof, will solve “the problem.” Whether the call is for reviving nuclear power,
boosting the installation of wind turbines, using a variety of renewable energy sources, increasing the efficiency of fossil-fuel use,
developing carbon-sequestering technologies, or placing mirrors in space to deflect the sun’s rays, the narrow character of such
proposals is evident: confront the problem of greenhouse gas emissions by technologically phasing them out ,
superseding them, capturing them, or mitigating their heating effects. In his The Revenge of Gaia, for example, Lovelock briefly mentions the
need to face climate change by “changing our whole style of living.”16 But the thrust of this work, what readers and policy-makers come away
with, is his repeated and strident call for investing in nuclear energy as, in his words, “the one lifeline we can use immediately.”17 In the policy
realm, the first step toward the technological fix for global warming is often identified with implementing the Kyoto protocol. Biologist Tim
Flannery agitates for the treaty, comparing the need for its successful endorsement to that of the Montreal protocol that phased out the ozonedepleting CFCs. “The Montreal protocol,” he submits, “marks a signal moment in human societal development, representing the first ever victory
by humanity over a global pollution problem.”18 He hopes for a similar victory for the global climate-change problem. Yet the deepening
realization of the threat of climate change, virtually in the wake of stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with global problems
treaty-by-treaty is no solution to the planet’s predicament. Just as the risks of unanticipated ozone depletion have been followed by the dangers of
a long underappreciated climate crisis, so it would be naïve not to anticipate another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe arising
after the (hoped-for) resolution of the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were restricted successfully by means of technological shifts
and innovations, the root cause of the ecological crisis as a whole would remain unaddressed. The destructive patterns of
production, trade, extraction, land-use, waste proliferation, and consumption, coupled with population growth, would go
unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty, and biological richness of the Earth. Industrial-consumer civilization has
entrenched a form of life that admits virtually no limits to its expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to, the entire planet.19 But
questioning this civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its single-minded quest for a global-warming technofix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social organization that are causing the climate crisis—among numerous other catastrophes—climatechange literature often focuses on how global warming is endangering the culprit, and agonizes over what technological means can save it from
impending tipping points.21 The dominant frame of climate change funnels cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically addressing global
warming, while muting a host of equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so huge on the environmental and political agenda
today that it has contributed to downplaying other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of species, the devastation of
the oceans by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification, endocrine
disruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and more forgiving by comparison with
“dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system. In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climatechange discourse encourages the continued marginalization of the biodiversity crisis—a crisis that has been soberly described as a holocaust,22
and which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a virtual non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and
other academic literatures. Several works on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global warming
for biodiversity, 23 but rarely is it mentioned that biodepletion predates dangerous greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and
will not be stopped by a technological resolution of global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem losses—
indeed, is doing so already. But while technologically preempting the worst of climate change may temporarily avert
some of those losses, such a resolution of the climate quandary will not put an end to—will barely address—the ongoing
destruction of life on Earth.
Aff
Alt’/Perm/FW
2AC Args
1. Perm do both- solves the residual links
2. Framework- the role of the ballot is to weigh the plan against a competitive policy option
Net benefitsFirst- Fairness- they moot the entirety of the 1ac, makes it impossible to be affirmative
Second – Education- Policy education is good- it teaches future decisionmaking
Cede the Political
The alt creates a political void filled by elites – locking in oppression
Cook 92 (Anthony, Associate Professor – Georgetown Law, New England Law Review, Spring, 26 New Eng.L.
Rev. 751, Lexis)
The effect of deconstructing the power of the author to impose a fixed meaning on the text or offer a continuous
narrative is both debilitating and liberating. It is debilitating in that any attempt to say what should be done within
even our insular Foucaultian preoccupations may be oppositionalized and deconstructed as an illegitimate
privileging of one term, value, perspective or narrative over another. The struggle over meaning might continue ad
infinitum. That is, if a deconstructionist is theoretically consistent and sees deconstruction not as a political tool but
as a philosophical orientation, political action is impossible, because such action requires a degree of closure that
deconstruction, as a theoretical matter, does not permit. Moreover, the approach is debilitating because
deconstruction without material rootedness, without goals and vision, creates a political and spiritual void into
which the socially real power we theoretically deconstruct steps and steps on the disempowered and
dispossessed. [*762] To those dying from AIDS, stifled by poverty, dehumanized by sexism and racism, crippled
by drugs and brutalized by the many forms of physical, political and economic violence that characterizes our
narcissistic culture, power hardly seems a matter of illegitimate theoretical privileging. When vision, social theory
and political struggle do not accompany critique, the void will be filled by the rich, the powerful and the
charismatic, those who influence us through their eloquence, prestige, wealth and power.
The impact is extinction
Rorty 98 (Richard, Professor of Comparative Literature – Stanford University, Achieving Our Country: Leftist
Thought in Twentieth-Century America, p. 89-94)
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around
for a strongman to vote for someone willing to assure them that , once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist
professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once such a strongman
takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler
chancellor were wildly overoptimistic. One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and
brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words "nigger"
and "kike" will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come
flooding back . All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. But such a renewal of sadism will not alter the effects of
selfishness. For after my imagined strongman takes charge, he will quickly make his peace with the international superrich, just as Hitler made his with the German industrialists. He will invoke the
glorious memory of the Gulf War to provoke military adventures which will generate short-term prosperity. He will be a disaster for the country and the
world . People will wonder why there was so little resistance to his evitable rise. Where, they will ask, was the American Left? Why was it only rightists like Buchanan who spoke to the workers about the
consequences of globalization? Why could not the Left channel the mounting rage of the newly dispossessed? It is often said that we Americans, at the end of the twentieth century, no longer have a Left.
Since nobody denies the existence of what I have called the cultural Left, this amounts to an admission that that Left is unable to engage in national politics. It is not the sort of Left which can be a sked
to deal with the consequences of globalization. To get the country to deal with those consequences, the present cultural Left would have to transform itself by opening relations with the residue of the old
reformist Left, and in particular with the labor unions. It would have to talk much more about money, even at the cost of tal king less about stigma. I have two suggestions about how to effect this transition.
The first is that the Left should put a moratorium on theory. It should try to kick its philosophy habit. The second is that the Left should try to mobilize what remains of our pride in being Americans. It should ask
the public to consider how the country of Lincoln and Whitman might be achieved. In support of my first suggestion, let me cite a passage from Dewey's Reconstruction in Philosophy in which he expresses his
exasperation with the sort of sterile debate now going on under the rubric of "individualism versus communitarianism." Dewey thought that all discussions which took this dichotomy seriously suffer from a
common defect. They are all committed to the logic of general notions under which specific situations are to be brought. What we want is light upon this or that group of individuals, this or that concrete human
being, this or that special institution or social arrangement. For such a logic of inquiry, the traditionally accepted logic substitutes discussion of the meaning of concepts and their dialectical relationships with one
another. Dewey was right to be exasperated by sociopolitical theory conducted at this level of abstraction. He was wrong when he went on to say that ascending to this level is typically a rightist maneuver, one
which supplies "the apparatus for intellectual justifications of the established order. "9 For such ascents are now more common on the Left than on the Right. The contemporary academic Left seems to think that
the higher your level of abstraction, the more subversive of the established order you can be. The more sweeping and novel your conceptual apparatus, the more radical your critique. When one of today's
academic leftists says that some topic has been "inadequately theorized," you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist
version of economic determinism. Theorists of the Left think that dissolving political agents into plays of differential subjectivity, or political initiatives into pursuits of Lacan's impossible object of desire, helps to
subvert the established order. Such subversion, they say, is accomplished by "problematizing familiar concepts." Recent attempts to subvert social institutions by problematizing concepts have produced a few
very good books. They have also produced many thousands of books which represent scholastic philosophizing at its worst. The authors of these purportedly "subversive" books honestly believe that they are
serving human liberty. But it is almost impossible to clamber back down from their books to a level of abstraction on which one might discuss the merits of a law, a treaty, a candidate, or a political strategy. Even
though what these authors "theorize" is often something very concrete and near at hand-a current TV show, a media celebrity, a recent scandal-they offer the most abstract and barren explanations imaginable.
These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and
adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical
hallucinations. These result in an intellectual environment which is, as Mark Edmundson says in his book Nightmare on Main Street, Gothic. The cultural Left is haunted by ubiquitous specters, the
most frightening of which is called "power." This is the name of what Edmundson calls Foucault's "haunting agency, which is everywhere and nowhere, as evanescent and insistent as a resourceful spook."10
Alt’ Fails
Rejection of securitization causes the state to become more interventionist—turns the K
Tara McCormack, ’10, is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester and has a PhD in International Relations from the
University of Westminster. 2010, (Critique, Security and Power: The political limits to emancipatory approaches, page 127-129)
The following section will briefly raise some questions about the rejection of the old security framework as it has been taken up by the
most powerful institutions and states. Here we can begin to see the political limits to critical and emancipatory frameworks .
In an international system which is marked by great power inequalities between states, the rejection of the old narrow national interestbased security framework by major international institutions, and the adoption of ostensibly emancipatory policies and policy
rhetoric, has the consequence of problematising weak or unstable states and allowing international institutions or
major states a more interventionary role, yet without establishing mechanisms by which the citizens of states
being intervened in might have any control over the agents or agencies of their emancipation. Whatever the
problems associated with the pluralist security framework there were at least formal and clear demarcations.
This has the consequence of entrenching international power inequalities and allowing for a shift towards a
hierarchical international order in which the citizens in weak or unstable states may arguably have even less freedom
or power than before. Radical critics of contemporary security policies, such as human security and humanitarian intervention, argue that
we see an assertion of Western power and the creation of liberal subjectivities in the developing world. For example, see Mark Duffield’s
important and insightful contribution to the ongoing debates about contemporary international security and development. Duffield attempts to
provide a coherent empirical engagement with, and theoretical explanation of, these shifts. Whilst these shifts, away from a focus on state
security, and the so-called merging of security and development are often portrayed as positive and progressive shifts that have come about
because of the end of the Cold War, Duffield argues convincingly that these shifts are highly problematic and unprogressive. For example, the
rejection of sovereignty as formal international equality and a presumption of nonintervention has eroded the division between the international
and domestic spheres and led to an international environment in which Western NGOs and powerful states have a major role in the governance of
third world states. Whilst for supporters of humanitarian intervention this is a good development, Duffield points out the depoliticising
implications, drawing on examples in Mozambique and Afghanistan. Duffield also draws out the problems of the
retreat from modernisation that is represented by sustainable development. The Western world has moved away from the
development policies of the Cold War, which aimed to develop third world states industrially. Duffield describes this in terms of a new division
of human life into uninsured and insured life. Whilst we in the West are ‘insured’ – that is we no longer have to be entirely self-reliant, we have
welfare systems, a modern division of labour and so on – sustainable development aims to teach populations in poor states how to survive in the
absence of any of this. Third world populations must be taught to be self-reliant, they will remain uninsured. Selfreliance of course means the condemnation of millions to a barbarous life of inhuman bare survival. Ironically,
although sustainable development is celebrated by many on the left today, by leaving people to fend for themselves rather than developing a
society wide system which can support people, sustainable development actually leads to a less human and humane system
than that developed in modern capitalist states. Duffield also describes how many of these problematic shifts are
embodied in the contemporary concept of human security. For Duffield, we can understand these shifts in terms of
Foucauldian biopolitical framework, which can be understood as a regulatory power that seeks to support life
through intervening in the biological, social and economic processes that constitute a human population (2007: 16).
Sustainable development and human security are for Duffield technologies of security which aim to create self-managing and self-reliant
subjectivities in the third world, which can then survive in a situation of serious underdevelopment (or being uninsured as Duffield terms it)
without causing security problems for the developed world. For Duffield this is all driven by a neoliberal project which seeks to control and
manage uninsured populations globally. Radical critic Costas Douzinas (2007) also criticises new forms of cosmopolitanism such as human rights
and interventions for human rights as a triumph of American hegemony. Whilst we are in agreement with critics such as Douzinas and Duffield
that these new security frameworks cannot be empowering, and ultimately lead to more power for powerful states, we
need to understand why these frameworks have the effect that they do. We can understand that these frameworks have political limitations
without having to look for a specific plan on the part of current powerful states. In new security frameworks such as human security we can see
the political limits of the framework proposed by critical and emancipatory theoretical approaches.
Alternative fails – critical theory has no mechanism to translate theory into practice
Jones 99 (Richard Wyn, Lecturer in the Department of International Politics – University of Wales, Security,
Strategy, and Critical Theory, CIAO, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/wynjones/wynjones06.html)
Because emancipatory political practice is central to the claims of critical theory, one might expect that proponents
of a critical approach to the study of international relations would be reflexive about the relationship between theory
and practice. Yet their thinking on this issue thus far does not seem to have progressed much beyond grandiose
statements of intent. There have been no systematic considerations of how critical international theory can help
generate, support, or sustain emancipatory politics beyond the seminar room or conference hotel. Robert Cox, for
example, has described the task of critical theorists as providing “a guide to strategic action for bringing about an
alternative order” (R. Cox 1981: 130). Although he has also gone on to identify possible agents for change and has
outlined the nature and structure of some feasible alternative orders, he has not explicitly indicated whom he regards
as the addressee of critical theory (i.e., who is being guided) and thus how the theory can hope to become a part of
the political process (see R. Cox 1981, 1983, 1996). Similarly, Andrew Linklater has argued that “a critical theory of
international relations must regard the practical project of extending community beyond the nation–state as its most
important problem” (Linklater 1990b: 171). However, he has little to say about the role of theory in the realization
of this “practical project.” Indeed, his main point is to suggest that the role of critical theory “is not to offer
instructions on how to act but to reveal the existence of unrealised possibilities” (Linklater 1990b: 172). But the
question still remains, reveal to whom? Is the audience enlightened politicians? Particular social classes? Particular
social movements? Or particular (and presumably particularized) communities? In light of Linklater’s primary
concern with emancipation, one might expect more guidance as to whom he believes might do the emancipating and
how critical theory can impinge upon the emancipatory process. There is, likewise, little enlightenment to be
gleaned from Mark Hoffman’s otherwise important contribution. He argues that critical international theory seeks
not simply to reproduce society via description, but to understand society and change it. It is both descriptive and
constructive in its theoretical intent: it is both an intellectual and a social act. It is not merely an expression of the
concrete realities of the historical situation, but also a force for change within those conditions. (M. Hoffman 1987:
233) Despite this very ambitious declaration, once again, Hoffman gives no suggestion as to how this “force for
change” should be operationalized and what concrete role critical theorizing might play in changing society. Thus,
although the critical international theorists’ critique of the role that more conventional approaches to the study of
world politics play in reproducing the contemporary world order may be persuasive, their account of the relationship
between their own work and emancipatory political practice is unconvincing. Given the centrality of practice to the
claims of critical theory, this is a very significant weakness. Without some plausible account of the mechanisms by
which they hope to aid in the achievement of their emancipatory goals, proponents of critical international theory are
hardly in a position to justify the assertion that “it represents the next stage in the development of International
Relations theory” (M. Hoffman 1987: 244). Indeed, without a more convincing conceptualization of the theory–
practice nexus, one can argue that critical international theory, by its own terms, has no way of redeeming some of
its central epistemological and methodological claims and thus that it is a fatally flawed enterprise.
Util Good
-- Evaluate consequences – allowing violence for the sake of moral purity is evil
Isaac 2 (Jeffrey C., Professor of Political Science – Indiana-Bloomington, Director – Center for the Study of
Democracy and Public Life, Ph.D. – Yale, Dissent Magazine, 49(2), “Ends, Means, and Politics”, Spring, Proquest)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an
unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable,
reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s
intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common
cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is
hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that
in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of
complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a
potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent
injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is
about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the
alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the
lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally
important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and
historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true
believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
Ontology Not First
Existence is a pre-requisite to examining ontology
Wapner 3 (Paul, Associate Professor and Director of the Global Environmental Policy Program – American
University, “Leftist Criticism of”, Dissent, Winter, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=539)
THE THIRD response to eco-criticism would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they themselves silence nature
and then to respect the sheer otherness of the nonhuman world. Postmodernism prides itself on criticizing the urge toward
mastery that characterizes modernity. But isn't mastery exactly what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman
world within its own conceptual domain? Doesn't postmodern cultural criticism deepen the modernist urge toward mastery by
eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world? What else could it mean to assert that there is no such thing as
nature? I have already suggested the postmodernist response: yes, recognizing the social construction of "nature" does deny the
self-expression of the nonhuman world, but how would we know what such self-expression means? Indeed, nature doesn't speak;
rather, some person always speaks on nature's behalf, and whatever that person says is, as we all know, a social construction. All
attempts to listen to nature are social constructions-except one. Even the most radical postmodernist must acknowledge the
distinction between physical existence and non-existence. As I have said, postmodernists accept that there is a physical
substratum to the phenomenal world even if they argue about the different meanings we ascribe to it. This
acknowledgment of physical existence is crucial. We can't ascribe meaning to that which doesn't appear. What
doesn't exist can manifest no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should rightly worry about
interpreting nature's expressions. And all of us should be wary of those who claim to speak on nature's behalf
(including environmentalists who do that). But we need not doubt the simple idea that a prerequisite of expression
is existence. This in turn suggests that preserving the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be seen
by eco-critics as a fundamental good. Eco-critics must be supporters, in some fashion, of environmental
preservation. Postmodernists reject the idea of a universal good. They rightly acknowledge the difficulty of identifying a
common value given the multiple contexts of our value-producing activity. In fact, if there is one thing they vehemently scorn, it
is the idea that there can be a value that stands above the individual contexts of human experience. Such a value would present
itself as a metanarrative and, as Jean-François Lyotard has explained, postmodernism is characterized fundamentally by its
"incredulity toward meta-narratives." Nonetheless, I can't see how postmodern critics can do otherwise than accept the value of
preserving the nonhuman world. The nonhuman is the extreme "other"; it stands in contradistinction to humans as a species. In
understanding the constructed quality of human experience and the dangers of reification, postmodernism inherently advances an
ethic of respecting the "other." At the very least, respect must involve ensuring that the "other" actually continues to exist. In our
day and age, this requires us to take responsibility for protecting the actuality of the nonhuman. Instead, however, we are running
roughshod over the earth's diversity of plants, animals, and ecosystems. Postmodern critics should find this particularly
disturbing. If they don't, they deny their own intellectual insights and compromise their fundamental moral commitment. NOW,
WHAT does this mean for politics and policy, and the future of the environmental movement? Society is constantly being asked
to address questions of environmental quality for which there are no easy answers. As we wrestle with challenges of global
climate change, ozone depletion, loss of biological diversity, and so forth, we need to consider the economic, political, cultural,
and aesthetic values at stake. These considerations have traditionally marked the politics of environmental protection. A
sensitivity to eco-criticism requires that we go further and include an ethic of otherness in our deliberations. That is, we need to
be moved by our concern to make room for the "other" and hence fold a commitment to the nonhuman world into our policy
discussions. I don't mean that this argument should drive all our actions or that respect for the "other" should always
carry the day. But it must be a central part of our reflections and calculations. For example, as we estimate the
number of people that a certain area can sustain, consider what to do about climate change, debate restrictions on
ocean fishing, or otherwise assess the effects of a particular course of action, we must think about the lives of other
creatures on the earth-and also the continued existence of the nonliving physical world. We must do so not because
we wish to maintain what is "natural" but because we wish to act in a morally respectable manner.
Epistemology Not First
Epistemology must be secondary to the prior question of political practice
Jarvis 00 (Darryl, Senior Lecturer in International Relations – University of Sydney, International Relations and the
Challenge of Postmodernism, p. 128-9)
More is the pity that such irrational and obviously abstruse debate should so occupy us at a time of great global
turmoil. That it does and continues to do so reflect our lack of judicious criteria for evaluating theory and, more
importantly, the lack of attachment theorists have to the real world. Certainly it is right and proper that we ponder
the depths of our theoretical imaginations, engage in epistemological and ontological debate, and analyze the
sociology of our knowledge. But to support that this is the only task of international theory, let alone the most
important one, smacks of intellectual elitism and displays a certain contempt for those who search for guidance in
their daily struggle as actors in international politics. What does Ashley’s project, his deconstructive efforts, or
valiant fight against positivism say to the truly marginalized, oppressed, and destitute? How does it help solve the
plight of the poor, the displaced refugees, the casualties of war, or the émigrés of death squads? Does it in any way
speak to those whose actions and thoughts comprise the policy and practice of international relations? On all these
questions one must answer no. This is not to say, of course, that all theory should be judged by its technical
rationality and problem-solving capacity as Ashley forcefully argues. But to support that problem-solving technical
theory is not necessary—or in some way bad—is a contemptuous position that abrogates any hope of solving some
of the nightmarish realities that millions confront daily. As Holsti argues, we need ask of these theorists and their
theories the ultimate question, “So what?” To what purpose do they deconstruct, problematize, destabilize,
undermine, ridicule, and belittle modernist and rationalist approaches? Does this get us any further, make the world
any better, or enhance the human condition? In what sense can this “debate toward [a] bottomless pit of
epistemology and metaphysics” be judged pertinent, relevant, helpful, or cogent to anyone other than those foolish
enough to be scholastically excited by abstract and recondite debate. Contrary to Ashley’s assertions, then, a
poststructural approach fails to empower the marginalized and, in fact, abandons them. Rather than analyze the
political economy of power, wealth, oppression, production, or international relations and render and intelligible
understanding of these processes, Ashley succeeds in ostracizing those he portends to represent by delivering an
obscure and highly convoluted discourse. If Ashley wishes to chastise structural realism for its abstractness and
detachment, he must be prepared also to face similar criticism, especially when he so adamantly intends his work to
address the real life plight of those who struggle at marginal places.
Representations Not First
Representations don’t influence reality
Kocher 00 (Robert L., Author of “The American Mind in Denial” and Philosopher, “Discourse on Reality and
Sanity”, http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/reality_sanity1.htm)
While it is not possible to establish many proofs in the verbal world, and it is simultaneously possible to make many
uninhibited assertions or word equations in the verbal world, it should be considered that reality is more rigid and
does not abide by the artificial flexibility and latitude of the verbal world. The world of words and the world of
human experience are very imperfectly correlated. That is, saying something doesn't make it true. A verbal
statement in the world of words doesn't mean it will occur as such in the world of consistent human experience I call
reality. In the event verbal statements or assertions disagree with consistent human experience, what proof is there
that the concoctions created in the world of words should take precedence or be assumed a greater truth than the
world of human physical experience that I define as reality? In the event following a verbal assertion in the verbal
world produces pain or catastrophe in the world of human physical reality or experience, which of the two can and
should be changed? Is it wiser to live with the pain and catastrophe, or to change the arbitrary collection of words
whose direction produced that pain and catastrophe? Which do you want to live with? What proven reason is there
to assume that when doubtfulness that can be constructed in verbal equations conflicts with human physical
experience, human physical experience should be considered doubtful? It becomes a matter of choice and pride in
intellectual argument. My personal advice is that when verbal contortions lead to chronic confusion and difficulty,
better you should stop the verbal contortions rather than continuing to expect the difficulty to change. Again, it's a
matter of choice. Does the outcome of the philosophical question of whether reality or proof exists decide whether
we should plant crops or wear clothes in cold weather to protect us from freezing? Har! Are you crazy? How many
committed deconstructionist philosophers walk about naked in subzero temperatures or don't eat? Try creating and
living in an alternative subjective reality where food is not needed and where you can sit naked on icebergs, and find
out what happens. I emphatically encourage people to try it with the stipulation that they don't do it around me, that
they don't force me to do it with them, or that they don't come to me complaining about the consequences and
demanding to conscript me into paying for the cost of treating frostbite or other consequences. (sounds like there is a
parallel to irresponsibility and socialism somewhere in here, doesn't it?). I encourage people to live subjective
reality. I also ask them to go off far away from me to try it, where I won't be bothered by them or the consequences.
For those who haven't guessed, this encouragement is a clever attempt to bait them into going off to some distant
place where they will kill themselves off through the process of social Darwinism — because, let's face it, a society
of deconstructionists and counterculturalists filled with people debating what, if any, reality exists would have the
productive functionality of a field of diseased rutabagas and would never survive the first frost. The attempt to
convince people to create and move to such a society never works, however, because they are not as committed or
sincere as they claim to be. Consequently, they stay here to work for left wing causes and promote left wing political
candidates where there are people who live productive reality who can be fed upon while they continue their
arguments. They ain't going to practice what they profess, and they are smart enough not to leave the availability of
people to victimize and steal from while they profess what they pretend to believe in.
Methodology Not First
Methodologies are always imperfect – endorsing multiple epistemological frameworks can correct the
blindspots of each
Stern and Druckman 00 (Paul, National Research Council and Daniel, Institute for Conflict Analysis and
Resolution – George Mason University, International Studies Review, Spring, p. 62-63)
Using several distinct research approaches or sources of information in conjunction is a valuable strategy for
developing generic knowledge. This strategy is particularly useful for meeting the challenges of measurement and
inference. The nature of historical phenomena makes controlled experimentation—the analytic technique best suited
to making strong inferences about causes and effects—practically impossible with real-life situations. Making
inferences requires using experimentation in simulated conditions and various other methods, each of which has its
own advantages and limitations, but none of which can alone provide the level of certainty desired about what works
and under what conditions. We conclude that debates between advocates of different research methods (for example,
the quantitative-qualitative debate) are unproductive except in the context of a search for ways in which different
methods can complement each other. Because there is no single best way to develop knowledge, the search for
generic knowledge about international conflict resolution should adopt an epistemological strategy of triangulation,
sometimes called “critical multiplism.”53 That is, it should use multiple perspectives, sources of data, constructs,
interpretive frameworks, and modes of analysis to address specific questions on the presumption that research
approaches that rely on certain perspectives can act as partial correctives for the limitations of approaches that rely
on different ones. An underlying assumption is that robust findings (those that hold across studies that vary along
several dimensions) engender more confidence than replicated findings (a traditional scientific ideal, but not
practicable in international relations research outside the laboratory). When different data sources or methods
converge on a single answer, one can have increased confidence in the result. When they do not converge, one can
interpret and take into account the known biases in each research approach. A continuing critical dialogue among
analysts using different perspectives, methods, and data could lead to an understanding that better approximates
international relations than the results coming from any single study, method, or data source.
Security Inevitable
Security inevitable
Guzzini, Senior Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute, 98 Associate Professor of
Political Science, International Relations, and European Studies at the Central European University in Budapest,
1998 (Stefano, Realism in International Relations, p. 212)
Therefore, in a third step, this chapter also claims that it is impossible just to heap realism onto the dustbin of
history and start anew.
This is a non-option. Although realism as a strictly causal theory has been a disappointment, various realist
assumptions are well alive in the minds of many practitioners and observers of international affairs. Although it
does not correspond to a theory which helps us to understand a real world with objective laws, it is a worldview which suggests thoughts about it, and which permeates our daily language for making sense of it. Realism
has been a rich, albeit very contestable, reservoir of lessons of the past, of metaphors and historical analogies,
which, in the hands of its most gifted representatives, have been proposed, at times imposed, and reproduced as
guides to a common understanding of international affairs. Realism is alive in the collective memory and selfunderstanding of our (i.e. Western) foreign policy elite and public whether educated or not. Hence, we cannot
but deal with it. For this reason, forgetting realism is also questionable. Of course, academic observers should
not bow to the whims of daily politics. But staying at distance, or being critical, does not mean that they should
lose the capacity to understand the languages of those who make significant decisions not only in government,
but also in firms, NGOs, and other institutions. To the contrary, this understanding, as increasingly varied as it
may be, is a prerequisite for their very profession. More particularly, it is a prerequisite for opposing the more
irresponsible claims made in the name although not always necessarily in the spirit, of realism.
Without alternative security policy options the security sector will be dominated by the most conservative
policymakers.
Olav. F. Knudsen, Prof @ Södertörn Univ College, ‘1 [Security Dialogue 32.3, “Post-Copenhagen Security Studies:
Desecuritizing Securitization,” p. 366]
A final danger in focusing on the state is that of building the illusion that states have impenetrable walls, that they
have an inside and an outside, and that nothing ever passes through. Wolfers’s billiard balls have contributed to this
misconception. But the state concepts we should use are in no need of such an illusion. Whoever criticizes the
field for such sins in the past needs to go back to the literature. Of course, we must continue to be open to a frank
and unbiased assessment of the transnational politics which significantly in- fluence almost every issue on the
domestic political agenda. The first decade of my own research was spent studying these phenomena – and I
disavow none of my conclusions about the state’s limitations. Yet I am not ashamed to talk of a domestic political
agenda. Anyone with a little knowledge of Euro- pean politics knows that Danish politics is not Swedish politics is
not German politics is not British politics. Nor would I hesitate for a moment to talk of the role of the state in
transnational politics, where it is an important actor, though only one among many other competing ones. In the
world of transnational relations, the exploitation of states by interest groups – by their assumption of roles as
representatives of states or by convincing state representatives to argue their case and defend their narrow interests
– is a significant class of phenomena, today as much as yesterday. Towards a Renewal of the Empirical Foundation
for Security Studies Fundamentally, the sum of the foregoing list of sins blamed on the Copen- hagen school
amounts to a lack of attention paid to just that ‘reality’ of security which Ole Wæver consciously chose to leave
aside a decade ago in order to pursue the politics of securitization instead. I cannot claim that he is void of interest
in the empirical aspects of security because much of the 1997 book is devoted to empirical concerns. However, the
attention to agenda-setting – confirmed in his most recent work – draws attention away from the important issues
we need to work on more closely if we want to contribute to a better understanding of European security as it is
currently developing. That inevitably requires a more consistent interest in security policy in the making – not just
in the development of alternative security policies. The dan- ger here is that, as alternative policies are likely to fail
grandly on the political arena, crucial decisions may be made in the ‘traditional’ sector of security policymaking,
unheeded by any but the most uncritical minds.
AT Impacts
AT No Value to Life
Security allows for emancipation that creates surival
Ken Booth, visiting researcher - US Naval War College, 2005, Critical Security Studies and World Politics, p. 22
The best starting point for conceptualizing security lies in the real conditions of insecurity suffered by people and collectivities. Look around.
What is immediately striking is thatsome degree of insecurity, as a life-determining condition, is universal. To the extent an
individualor groupis insecure, to the extent their life choices and changes are taken away; thisis because of the
resources and energy they need to invest in seeking safety from domineering threats –whether these are the lack of food for
one’s children, or organizing to resist a foreign aggressor.The corollary of the relationship between insecurity and a determined
life is that a degree of security creates life possibilities. Security might therefore be conceived as synonymous with
opening up space in people’s lives. This allows for individual and collective human becoming–the capacity to have some
choice about living differently–consistent with the same but different search by others.Two interrelated conclusion follow from this.
First, security can be understood as an instrumental value; it frees its possessors to a greater or lesser extent from life-determining constraints and
so allows different life possibilities to be explored. Second,security is not synonymous simply with survival. One can survive without
being secure (the experience of refugees in long-term camps in war-torn parts of the world, for example). Security is therefore more than
mere animal survival(basic animal existence). It is survival-plus, the plus being the possibility to explore human
becoming. As an instrumental value, security is sought because it free people(s)to some degree to do other than deal
with threats to their human being. The achievementof a levelof security–and security is always relative –gives to individuals
and groups some time, energy, and scope to choose to be or become,other than merely survivingas human biological
organisms. Security is an important dimension of the process by which the human species can reinvent itselfbeyond the
merely biological.
Life has intrinsic value that is unattached to instrumental capacity
Penner 5 (Melinda, Director of Operations – STR, “End of Life Ethics: A Primer”, Stand to Reason,
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5223)
Intrinsic value is very different. Things with intrinsic value are valued for their own sake. They don’t have to
achieve any other goal to be valuable. They are goods in themselves. Beauty, pleasure, and virtue are likely
examples. Family and friendship are examples. Something that’s intrinsically valuable might also be instrumentally
valuable, but even if it loses its instrumental value, its intrinsic value remains. Intrinsic value is what people mean
when they use the phrase "the sanctity of life." Now when someone argues that someone doesn’t have "quality of
life" they are arguing that life is only valuable as long as it obtains something else with quality, and when it can’t
accomplish this, it’s not worth anything anymore. It's only instrumentally valuable. The problem with this view is
that it is entirely subjective and changeable with regards to what might give value to life. Value becomes a
completely personal matter, and, as we all know, our personal interests change over time. There is no grounding for
objective human value and human rights if it’s not intrinsic value. Our legal system is built on the notion that
humans have intrinsic value. The Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that each person is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights...." If human beings
only have instrumental value, then slavery can be justified because there is nothing objectively valuable that requires
our respect. There is nothing other than intrinsic value that can ground the unalienable equal rights we recognize
because there is nothing about all human beings that is universal and equal. Intrinsic human value is what binds our
social contract of rights. So if human life is intrinsically valuable, then it remains valuable even when our capacities
are limited. Human life is valuable even with tremendous limitations. Human life remains valuable because its value
is not derived from being able to talk, or walk, or feed yourself, or even reason at a certain level. Human beings
don’t have value only in virtue of states of being (e.g., happiness) they can experience.
Value to life can’t be calculated
Schwartz 2 (Lisa, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine – Dartmouth College Medical School, et al., Medical
Ethics: A Case Based Approach, www.fleshandbones.com/readingroom/pdf/399.pdf)
The first criterion that springs to mind regarding the value of life is usually the quality of the life or lives in question:
The quality of life ethic puts the emphasis on the type of life being lived, not upon the fact of life. Lives are not all
of one kind; some lives are of great value to the person himself and to others while others are not. What the life
means to someone is what is important. Keeping this in mind it is not inappropriate to say that some lives are of
greater value than others, that the condition or meaning of life does have much to do with the justification for
terminating that life.1 Those who choose to reason on this basis hope that if the quality of a life can be measured
then the answer to whether that life has value to the individual can be determined easily. This raises special
problems, however, because the idea of quality involves a value judgment, and value judgments are, by their
essence, subject to indeterminate relative factors such as preferences and dislikes. Hence, quality of life is difficult
to measure and will vary according to individual tastes, preferences and aspirations. As a result, no general rules or
principles can be asserted that would simplify decisions about the value of a life based on its quality.
AT Root Cause
No single cause of violence
Muro-Ruiz 2 (Diego, London School of Economics, “The Logic of Violence”, Politics, 22(2), p. 116)
Violence is, most of the time, a wilful choice, especially if it is made by an organisation. Individuals present the
scholar with a more difficult case to argue for. Scholars of violence have now a wide variety of perspectives they
can use – from sociology and political science, to psychology, psychiatry and even biology – and should escape easy
judgements. However, the fundamental difficulty for all of us is the absence of a synthetic, general theory able of
integrating less complete theories of violent behaviour. In the absence of such a general theory, researchers should
bear in mind that violence is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that resists mono-causal explanations.
Future research on violence will have to take in account the variety of approaches, since they each offer some
understanding of the logic of violence.
AT Structural Violence
Nuke war outweighs structural violence – prioritizing structural violence makes preventing war impossible
Boulding 78 (Ken, is professor of economics and director, Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, University
of Michigan, “Future Directions in Conflict and Peace Studies,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 22, No. 2
(Jun., 1978), pp. 342-354)
Galtung is very legitimately interested in problems of world poverty and the failure of development of the really poor. He tried to
amalga- mate this interest with the peace research interest in the more narrow sense. Unfortunately, he did this by downgrading the study
of inter- national peace, labeling it "negative peace" (it should really have been labeled "negative war") and then developing the
concept of "structural violence," which initially meant all those social structures and histories which produced an expectation of life less
than that of the richest and longest-lived societies. He argued by analogy that if people died before the age, say, of 70 from avoidable causes, that
this was a death in "war"' which could only be remedied by something called "positive peace." Unfortunately, the concept of structural violence
was broadened, in the word of one slightly unfriendly critic, to include anything that Galtung did not like. Another factor in this situation was
the feeling, certainly in the 1960s and early 1970s, that nuclear deterrence was actually succeeding as deterrence and that the problem of
nuclear war had receded into the background. This it seems to me is a most dangerous illusion and diverted conflict and peace
research for ten years or more away from problems of disarmament and stable peace toward a grand, vague study of world
developments, for which most of the peace researchers are not particularly well qualified. To my mind, at least, the
quality of the research has suffered severely as a result.' The complex nature of the split within the peace research community is
reflected in two international peace research organizations. The official one, the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), tends to be
dominated by Europeans somewhat to the political left, is rather, hostile to the United States and to the multinational cor- porations, sympathetic
to the New International Economic Order and thinks of itself as being interested in justice rather than in peace. The Peace Science Society
(International), which used to be called the Peace Research Society (International), is mainly the creation of Walter Isard of the University of
Pennsylvania. It conducts meetings all around the world and represents a more peace-oriented, quantitative, science- based enterprise, without
much interest in ideology. COPRED, while officially the North American representative of IPRA, has very little active connection with it and
contains within itself the same ideological split which, divides the peace research community in general. It has, however, been able to hold
together and at least promote a certain amount of interaction between the two points of view. Again representing the "scientific" rather than the
"ideological" point of view, we have SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, very generously (by the usual peace research
stand- ards) financed by the Swedish government, which has performed an enormously useful service in the collection and publishing of data on
such things as the war industry, technological developments, arma- ments, and the arms trade. The Institute is very largely the creation of Alva
Myrdal. In spite of the remarkable work which it has done, how- ever, her last book on disarmament (1976) is almost a cry of despair over the
folly and hypocrisy of international policies, the overwhelming power of the military, and the inability of mere information, however good, go
change the course of events as we head toward ultimate ca- tastrophe. I do not wholly share her pessimism, but it is hard not to be a little
disappointed with the results of this first generation of the peace research movement. Myrdal called attention very dramatically to the appalling
danger in which Europe stands, as the major battleground between Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union if war ever should break out.
It may perhaps be a subconscious recognition-and psychological denial-of the sword of Damocles hanging over Europe that has made the
European peace research movement retreat from the realities of the international system into what I must unkindly describe as fantasies of justice.
But the American peace research community, likewise, has retreated into a somewhat niggling scientism, with sophisticated meth- odologies and
not very many new ideas. I must confess that when I first became involved with the peace research enterprise 25 years ago I had hopes that it
might produce some- thing like the Keynesian revolution in economics, which was the result of some rather simple ideas that had never really
been thought out clearly before (though they had been anticipated by Malthus and others), coupled with a substantial improvement in the
information system with the development of national income statistics which rein- forced this new theoretical framework. As a result, we have
had in a single generation a very massive change in what might be called the "conventional wisdom" of economic policy, and even though this
conventional wisdom is not wholly wise, there is a world of difference between Herbert Hoover and his total failure to deal with the Great
Depression, simply because of everybody's ignorance, and the moder- ately skillful handling of the depression which followed the change in oil
prices in 1-974, which, compared with the period 1929 to 1932, was little more than a bad cold compared with a galloping pneumonia. In the
international system, however, there has been only glacial change in the conventional wisdom. There has been some improvement. Kissinger was
an improvement on John Foster Dulles. We have had the beginnings of detente, and at least the possibility on the horizon of stable peace between
the United States and the Soviet Union, indeed in the whole temperate zone-even though the tropics still remain uneasy and beset with arms
races, wars, and revolutions which we cannot really afford. Nor can we pretend that peace around the temper- ate zone is stable enough so that we
do not have to worry about it. The qualitative arms race goes on and could easily take us over the cliff. The record of peace research in the last
generation, therefore, is one of very partial success. It has created a discipline and that is something of long-run consequence, most certainly for
the good. It has made very little dent on the conventional wisdom of the policy makers anywhere in the world. It has not been able to prevent an
arms race, any more, I suppose we might say, than the Keynesian economics has been able to prevent inflation. But whereas inflation is an
inconvenience, the arms race may well be another catastrophe. Where, then, do we go from here? Can we see new horizons for peace and conflict
research to get it out of the doldrums in which it has been now for almost ten years? The challenge is surely great enough. It still remains true that
war, the breakdown of Galtung's "negative peace," remains the greatest clear and present danger to the human race,
a danger to human survival far greater than poverty, or injustice, or oppression, desirable and necessary as it is
to eliminate these things. Up to the present generation, war has been a cost and an inconven- ience to the human race, but it has rarely been
fatal to the process of evolutionary development as a whole. It has probably not absorbed more than 5% of human time, effort, and resources.
Even in the twenti- eth century, with its two world wars and innumerable smaller ones, it has probably not acounted for more than 5% of deaths,
though of course a larger proportion of premature deaths. Now, however, advancing technology is creating a situation where in the
first place we are developing a single world system that does not have the redundancy of the many isolated systems
of the past and in which therefore if any- thing goes wrong everything goes wrong. The Mayan civilization could collapse in
900 A.D., and collapse almost irretrievably without Europe or China even being aware of the fact. When we had a number of iso- lated systems,
the catastrophe in one was ultimately recoverable by migration from the surviving systems. The one-world system, therefore, which science,
transportation, and communication are rapidly giving us, is inherently more precarious than the many-world system of the past. It is
all the more important, therefore, to make it internally robust and capable only of recoverable catastrophes. The necessity
for stable peace, therefore, increases with every improvement in technology, either of war or of peacex
War turns structural violence not vice versa
Goldstein 2001 – IR professor at American University (Joshua, War and Gender, p. 412, Google Books)
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace. Many peace
scholars and activists support
the approach, “if you want peace, work for justice.” Then, if one believes that sexism contributes to war, one can
work for gender justice specifically (perhaps. among others) in order to pursue peace. This approach brings strategic allies to the
peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on the assumption that injustices cause war. The evidence in this book
suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way. War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism,
gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influence wars’ outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war
has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices.9 So, “if you want peace, work for peace.” Indeed, if you
want justice (gender and others), work for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis, from types of
individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes towards war and the military
may be the most important way to “reverse women’s oppression.” The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace
movement energy, allies, and moral grounding, yet, in light of this book’s evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of
war seems to be empirically inadequate.
AT Specific Links
AT Topic Links
It’s either engagement or isolation – trade creates autonomy and expands rights
Etzioni 4 -- professor of International Relations at the George Washington University (Amitai, 2004, "The
Emerging Global Normative Synthesis," The Journal of Political Philosophy, 12(2),
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/etzioni/A318.pdf)
C. ENGAGE OR ISOLATE? AN EMPIRICAL RESPONSE Both those who favor isolating authoritarian regimes (North Korea, Cuba, etc.) and
those who favor engaging them have similar goals--changing these regimes to make more room for autonomy, especially for human rights,
although typically other policy goals are also involved, for instance, efforts to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass desecration. (The term
engagement is used to refer to fostering travel, trade, cultural exchanges, visits from leaders, and diplomatic relations, while isolation entails
curtailing all of these.) Although neither camp sets out to advance the normative synthesis laid out in this essay, the effect of increasing autonomy
in these societies would be to move them in the said direction. Both camps argue for the policy approach they favor in the name of normative
principles. For instance, those who favor engagement argue that it is more conducive to peace; those who favor isolation claim that it
'generates the needed pressures to advance human rights. The
debate would benefit by a greater reliance on empirical
evidence , which strongly suggests that under most conditions engagement is much more effective than isolation. It is
almost enough to list the regimes that have been isolated and those that have been engaged (or compare the periods they were isolated versus
engaged) to document the point, even though there are significant differences among the various societies involved.36 The United States
isolated Castro's Cuba for four decades, banning trade with and travel to and from Cuba, as well as exerting pressure on other societies
to follow the same course. However, Cuba resisted for more than a generation, granting its people more rights, democratic
reforms, and opening markets. Saddam's Iraq and North Korea are two other authoritarian regimes that were isolated ;
still they persisted for decades. China was first isolated and yielded little, but following Nixon's "opening", the country gradually
changed, making much more room for economic autonomy, as well as for some political autonomy. The same holds for North
Vietnam. The fifteen Soviet Republics changed even more, including on the political front, largely after they were engaged rather than when they
were isolated. The dramatic .change in South Africa from apartheid , in which the overwhelming majority was denied most measures
of autonomy, to the current regime also followed a shift from isolation to engagement. However, those who oppose engagement
have argued that after years of engagement China is no closer to valuing the freedoms Americans do and that isolation has been effective in
wresting concessions out of Beijing.3? Senator Jesse Helms, a strong supporter of the isolation tactic, lists Switzerland, Nigeria, the former Soviet
Union, Poland and Guatemala among the countries that have modified their behavior in responset o actual or threatened United Statess
anctions.38H owever, a detailed examination of these situations will show that in most cases the isolation measures, and their effects, were
limited (for example, getting Switzerland to change its banking laws), while engagement had much more encompassing effects. Moreover,
engagement does not mean that no sanctions can be imposed; sanctions are imposed, for instance, by the World Trade Organization when trade
agreements are violated. The reasons engagement is often so much more effective, and that it entails neither a violation of
principles (for example, our commitments to human rights) nor endangers our security (as we learn to screen those we let in much
better), need not be explored here. The only key point relevant to the present analysis is that engagement has, and one must expect will
continue to do so, encouraged authoritarian societies to introduce more autonomy-and thus move them toward the global
synthesis. The proper measure of progress , though, is not whether they become exact or even close copies of the American regime,
but whether they find their own balanced combination of a strong autonomy with social order , largely based on soft power.
China Threat Good
Recognizing conflict as one possible outcome for U.S. –China relations doesn’t essentialize Chinese
behavior—avoids self-fulfilling prophecy.
Andrew LEONARD Senior Technology Writier @ Salon 8-21-‘9 “Hu Jintao is no Kaiser Wilhelm”
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/08/21/hu_jintao_is_the_new_kaiser_wilhelm/
I don't think Hu Jintao makes a good Kaiser Wilhelm and I think it is foolhardy to predict what will happen with the
kind of thunderous certainty that is Ferguson's stock-in-trade. A superpower clash, whether economic or military,
between the U.S. and China is in no one's interest. World War I, of course, wasn't ultimately in anyone's interest
either, but Europe seems to have learned from its 20th century mistakes, at least so far, so maybe we can too. I'm
with James Fallows; just to assert that a disastrous divorce is inevitable is positively dangerous because it ignores a
world of other possibilities, anhd constricts our freedom to move.
Even historians -- or especially historians -- recognize that world events are shaped in part by deep economic,
demographic, and technical trends, but only in part. Real human beings make real decisions that have real effects.
(Cf: LBJ in 1964, Bush-Cheney in 2001, JFK-Khrushchev in 1962, etc.) If we recognize that a collision with China
is possible, but only one of several possibilities, then we act so as to reduce that possibility and increase the
probability of better outcomes. If we think breakup is inevitable, as Ferguson is arguing, then the odds of a
collision in fact occurring become higher than they would otherwise be. (Because each side interprets the other's
moves in the darkest way and responds in kind.)
Environmental Security Good
Securitizing the environment is good – builds public awareness to solve
Matthew 2, Richard A, associate professor of international relations and environmental political at the University of
California at Irvine, Summer (ECSP Report 8:109-124)
In addition, environmental security's language and findings can benefit conservation and sustainable development."' Much
environmental security literature emphasizes the importance of development assistance, sustainable livelihoods , fair
and reasonable access to environmental goods, and conservation practices as the vital upstream measures that in the long run
will contribute to higher levels of human and state security. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are examples of bodies that have been quick to
recognize how the language of environmental security can help them. The scarcity/conflict thesis has alerted these
groups to prepare for the possibility of working on environmental rescue projects in regions that are likely to exhibit high
levels of related violence and conflict. These groups are also aware that an association with security can expand their acceptance
and constituencies in some countries in which the military has political control, For the first time in its history; the
contemporary environmental movement can regard military and intelligence agencies as potential allies in the struggle
to contain or reverse humangenerated environmental change. (In many situations, of course, the political history of the military--as
well as its environmental record-raise serious concerns about the viability of this cooperation.) Similarly, the language of security has
provided a basis for some fruitful discussions between environmental groups and representatives of extractive
industries. In many parts of the world, mining and petroleum companies have become embroiled in conflict. These companies
have been accused of destroying traditional economies, cultures, and environments; of political corruption; and of using private
militaries to advance their interests. They have also been targets of violence, Work is now underway through the
environmental security arm of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to address these issues
with the support of multinational corporations. Third, the general conditions outlined in much environmental security research
can help organizations such as USAID, the World Bank, and IUCN identify priority cases--areas in which investments are
likely to have the greatest ecological and social returns. For all these reasons, IUCN elected to integrate environmental security into
its general plan at the Amman Congress in 2001. Many other environmental groups and development agencies are taking this perspective
seriously (e.g. Dabelko, Lonergan& Matthew, 1999). However, for the most part these efforts remain preliminary.' Conclusions Efforts to
dismiss environment and security research and policy activities on the grounds that they have been unsuccessful are
premature and misguided . This negative criticism has all too often been based on an excessively simplified account of the research
findings of Homer-Dixon and a few others. Homer-Dixon’s scarcity-conflict thesis has made important and highly visible contributions to the
literature, but it is only a small part of a larger and very compelling theory. This broader theory has roots in antiquity and speaks to
the pervasive conflicts and security implications of complex nature-society relationships. The theory places incidents of
violence in larger structural and historical contexts while also specifying contemporarily significant clusters of variables. From this more
generalized and inclusive perspective, violence and conflict are revealed rarely as a society’s endpoint and far more often as parts of complicated
adaptation processes. The contemporary research on this classical problematic has helped to revive elements of security discourse and analysis
that were marginalized during the Cold War. It has also made valuable contributions to our understanding of the
requirements of human security, the diverse impacts of globalization, and the nature of contemporary transnational
security threats. Finall,y environmental security research has been valuable in myriad ways to a range of academics,
policymakers, and activists, although the full extent of these contributions remains uncertain, rather than look for reasons to
abandon this research and policy agenda, now is the time to recognize and to build on the remarkable achievements of
the entire environmental security field.
Heg Good
Total rejection of hegemony increases imperialism. The plan’s reformation of leadership solves the impact
Christian REUS-SMIT IR @ Australian Nat’l ‘4 American Power and World Order p. 121-123
My preference here is to advocate a forward-leaning, prudential strategy of institutionally governed change. By
`forward-leaning', I mean that the progressive realization of cosmopolitan values should be the measure of successful politics in international society. As long as gross violations of basic human rights mar global social life, we, as
individuals, and the states that purport to represent us, have obligations to direct what political influence we have to
the improvement of the human condition, both at home and abroad. I recommend, however, that our approach be
prudent rather than imprudent. Historically, the violence of inter-state warfare and the oppression of imperial rule
have been deeply corrosive of basic human rights across the globe. The institutions of international society, along
with their constitutive norms, such as sovereignty, non-intervention, self-determination and limits on the use of
force, have helped to reduce these corrosive forces dramatically. The incidence of inter-state wars has declined
markedly, even though the number of states has multiplied, and imperialism and colonialism have moved from
being core institutions of international society to practices beyond the pale. Prudence dictates, therefore, that we lean
forward without losing our footing on valuable institutions and norms. This means, in effect, giving priority to
institutionally governed change, working with the rules and procedures of international society rather than against
them. What does this mean in practice? In general, I take it to mean two things. First, it means recognizing the
principal rules of international society, and accepting the obligations they impose on actors, including oneself. These
rules fall into two broad categories: procedural and substantive. The most specific procedural rules are embodied in
institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, which is empowered to 'determine the existence of any
threat to peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression' and the measures that will be taken 'to maintain or restore
international peace and security'.28 More general, yet equally crucial, procedural rules include the cardinal principle
that states are only bound by rules to which they have consented. Even customary international law, which binds
states without their express consent, is based in part on the assumption of their tacit consent. The substantive rules of
international society are legion, but perhaps the most important are the rules governing the use of force, both when
force is permitted (jus ad bellum) and how it may be used (jus in bello). Second, working with the rules and
procedures of international society also means recognizing that the principal modality of innovation and change
must be communicative. That is, establishing new rules and mechanisms for achieving cosmopolitan ends and
international public goods, or modifying existing ones, should be done through persuasion and negotiation, not
ultimatum and coercion. A premium must be placed, therefore, on articulating the case for change, on recognizing
the concerns and interests of others as legitimate, on building upon existing rules, and on seeing genuine
communication as a process of give and take, not demand and take. Giving priority to institutionally governed
change may seem an overly conservative strategy, but it need not be. As explained above, the established procedural
and substantive rules of international society have delivered international public goods that actually further
cosmopolitan ends, albeit in a partial and inadequate fashion. Eroding these rules would only lead to increases in
inter-state violence and imperialism, and this would almost certainly produce a radical deterioration in the
protection of basic human rights across the globe. Saying that we ought to preserve these rules is prudent, not conservative. More than this, though, we have learnt that the institutions of international society have transformative
potential, even if this is only now being creatively exploited.
Warming Reps Good
Catastrophic warming reps are good—it’s the only way to motivate response—their empirics are attributable
to climate denialism
Romm 12 (Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York
Times columnist Tom Friedman called "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named one of the 25 “Best
Blogs of 2010.″ In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 “people who are reinventing America.”
Time named him a “Hero of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.” Romm
was acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1
billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American
Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT., 2/26/2012, “Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The
Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate”,
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscars-media-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsdaymessages-on-climate/#more-432546)
The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages
has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive ! These
myths are so deeply ingrained in the environmental and progressive political community that when we finally had a serious shot at a climate bill,
the powers that be decided not to focus on the threat posed by climate change in any serious fashion in their $200 million communications effort
(see my 6/10 post “Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?“). These myths are so deeply ingrained in
the mainstream media that such messaging, when it is tried, is routinely attacked and denounced — and the flimsiest
studies are interpreted exactly backwards to drive the erroneous message home (see “Dire straits: Media blows the story of
UC Berkeley study on climate messaging“) The only time anything approximating this kind of messaging — not “doomsday” but what I’d call
blunt, science-based messaging that also makes clear the problem is solvable — was in 2006 and 2007 with the release of An Inconvenient Truth
(and the 4 assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and media coverage like the April 2006 cover of Time). The
data suggest that strategy measurably moved the public to become more concerned about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study
here). You’d think it would be pretty obvious that the public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains
why they should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast literature on advertising and
marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated messages have any chance of sinking in and moving the
needle. Because I doubt any serious movement of public opinion or mobilization of political action could possibly
occur until these myths are shattered, I’ll do a multipart series on this subject, featuring public opinion analysis, quotes by leading
experts, and the latest social science research. Since this is Oscar night, though, it seems appropriate to start by looking at what messages the
public are exposed to in popular culture and the media. It ain’t doomsday. Quite the reverse, climate change has been mostly an
invisible issue for several years and the message of conspicuous consumption and business-as-usual reigns supreme.
The motivation for this post actually came up because I received an e-mail from a journalist commenting that the “constant repetition of
doomsday messages” doesn’t work as a messaging strategy. I had to demur, for the reasons noted above. But it did get me thinking about what
messages the public are exposed to, especially as I’ve been rushing to see the movies nominated for Best Picture this year. I am a huge movie
buff, but as parents of 5-year-olds know, it isn’t easy to stay up with the latest movies. That said, good luck finding a popular movie in recent
years that even touches on climate change, let alone one a popular one that would pass for doomsday messaging. Best Picture nominee The Tree
of Life has been billed as an environmental movie — and even shown at environmental film festivals — but while it is certainly depressing,
climate-related it ain’t. In fact, if that is truly someone’s idea of environmental movie, count me out. The closest to a genuine popular climate
movie was the dreadfully unscientific The Day After Tomorrow, which is from 2004 (and arguably set back the messaging effort by putting the
absurd “global cooling” notion in people’s heads! Even Avatar, the most successful movie of all time and “the most epic piece of environmental
advocacy ever captured on celluloid,” as one producer put it, omits the climate doomsday message. One of my favorite eco-movies, “Wall-E, is
an eco-dystopian gem and an anti-consumption movie,” but it isn’t a climate movie. I will be interested to see The Hunger Games, but I’ve read
all 3 of the bestselling post-apocalyptic young adult novels — hey, that’s my job! — and they don’t qualify as climate change doomsday
messaging (more on that later). So, no, the movies certainly don’t expose the public to constant doomsday messages on climate. Here are the
key points about what repeated messages the American public is exposed to:
The broad American public is exposed to virtually
no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on climate change in popular culture (TV and the movies and even online).
There is not one single TV show on any network devoted to this subject, which is, arguably, more consequential than any other preventable issue
we face. The same goes for the news media, whose coverage of climate change has collapsed (see “Network News
Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011“). When the media do cover climate change in recent years, the overwhelming
majority of coverage is devoid of any doomsday messages — and many outlets still feature hard-core deniers. Just
imagine what the public’s view of climate would be if it got the same coverage as, say, unemployment, the housing
crisis or even the deficit? When was the last time you saw an “employment denier” quoted on TV or in a newspaper? The public is
exposed to constant messages promoting business as usual and indeed idolizing conspicuous consumption . See, for
instance, “Breaking: The earth is breaking … but how about that Royal Wedding? Our political elite and intelligentsia, including
MSM pundits and the supposedly “liberal media” like, say, MSNBC, hardly even talk about climate change and when they do, it
isn’t doomsday. Indeed, there isn’t even a single national columnist for a major media outlet who writes primarily on
climate. Most “liberal” columnists rarely mention it. At least a quarter of the public chooses media that devote a vast amount of
time to the notion that global warming is a hoax and that environmentalists are extremists and that clean energy is a joke. In the MSM,
conservative pundits routinely trash climate science and mock clean energy. Just listen to, say, Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe mock
clean energy sometime. The major energy companies bombard the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of
repetitious pro-fossil-fuel ads. The environmentalists spend far, far less money. As noted above, the one time they did
run a major campaign to push a climate bill, they and their political allies including the president explicitly did NOT
talk much about climate change, particularly doomsday messaging Environmentalists when they do appear in popular
culture, especially TV, are routinely mocked. There is very little mass communication of doomsday messages online .
Check out the most popular websites. General silence on the subject, and again, what coverage there is ain’t doomsday messaging. Go to the front
page of the (moderately trafficked) environmental websites. Where is the doomsday? If you want to find anything approximating even
modest, blunt, science-based messaging built around the scientific literature, interviews with actual climate scientists
and a clear statement that we can solve this problem — well, you’ve all found it, of course, but the only people who see it
are those who go looking for it. Of course, this blog is not even aimed at the general public. Probably 99% of Americans haven’t even
seen one of my headlines and 99.7% haven’t read one of my climate science posts. And Climate Progress is probably the most widely read,
quoted, and reposted climate science blog in the world. Anyone dropping into America from another country or another planet
who started following popular culture and the news the way the overwhelming majority of Americans do would get
the distinct impression that nobody who matters is terribly worried about climate change. And, of course, they’d be
right — see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2.” It is total BS that somehow the American public has been
scared and overwhelmed by repeated doomsday messaging into some sort of climate fatigue. If the public’s
concern has dropped — and public opinion analysis suggests it has dropped several percent (though is bouncing back a tad) — that is
primarily due to the conservative media’s disinformation campaign impact on Tea Party conservatives and to
the treatment of this as a nonissue by most of the rest of the media, intelligentsia and popular culture .