1AC
Plan
The United States should legalize nearly all marihuana in the United States.
DTOs Adv: 1AC
Drug violence is causing massive instability in Mexico
Carlos Rodriguez 11-9 Opinion editor at The Brownsville Herald “Don’t fail” Posted on Nov 9, 2014
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/opinion/editorials/article_67ab01ec-695a-11e4-a9d7-13a648a3f589.html
if Mexico can’t find some way to control the scourge of drugrelated crime and violence, it risks deteriorating into a failed state .¶ Based on recent events, that failure
might seem closer than ever .¶ People on both sides of the border are still demanding answers after the
mid-October kidnapping and murder of a young Progreso woman, her brothers and boyfriend in the town of Control,
Tamaulipas, between Matamoros and Reynosa.¶ Witness say the siblings, who had gone to Mexico to visit their father, were
kidnapped by members of a special police force created by Matamoros Mayor Leticia Salazar.¶ That crime came on the
heels of a similar action in which 43 students at a teaching college in Iguala, in Guerrero state, were
rounded up shortly after a some city buses were commandeered during a student protest. Apparently, they were
kidnapped by local police and military personnel.¶ Searches for the students, who are presumed dead, have been futile.
Observers in recent years have warned that
Searchers found a mass grave, but the bodies aren’t the students’. ¶ Iguala’s former mayor and his wife, who had gone into hiding
shortly after the students’ sequester, have been arrested in connection to the disappearance. ¶ This is the kind of stuff
we’ve heard mostly in despotic African dictatorships. To hear it could be happening right across
the Rio Grande, in a country that has all the natural resources to be a global economic power, is
both alarming and disappointing.¶ Granted, cartels often scare witnesses , and the news media , into
silence. So the fact that so many people are saying they saw the recent massacres, and point the finger at police units, is
suspect. However, the fact that such accusations are widely believed, and believable, speaks volumes
about the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who was elected largely on a promise to put an end to the violence that
has virtually destroyed the country.¶ Peña Nieto now has to endure widespread heckling and shouts of “Assassin!” at his public
appearances. Unless things change, the president, who’s barely completing the first trimester of his term, could be in for a long four
crime under control is crucial for Mexico’s future, as it surely would increase
foreign investment and improve the economy, which would give the country’s workers options
that are better than becoming mules for the cartels.
years.¶ Bringing
Federal legalization of marijuana is a game-changer for stopping violence in
Mexico—takes a huge chunk out of cartel profits and frees up police resources
Hesson 14 -- immigration editor, covers immigration and drug policy from Washington D.C.
[Ted, "Will Mexican Cartels Survive Marijuana Legalization?" Fusion, fusion.net/justice/story/mexican-cartels-survive-marijuanalegalization-450519, accessed 6-2-14]
1. Mexico is the top marijuana exporter to the U.S. A 2008 study by the RAND Corporation estimated that Mexican
marijuana accounted for somewhere between 40 and 67 percent of the drug in the U.S. The cartel grip on the U.S. market may not
last for long. Pot can now be grown for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, and for medical use in 20 states. For the first
time, American consumers can choose a legal product over the black market counterpart. Beau Kilmer, the co-director of
the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, says that a few states legalizing marijuana won’t eliminate
the flow of the drug from down south, but a change in policy from the federal government would
be a game changer. “Our research also suggests that legalizing commercial marijuana production at the
national level could drive out most of the marijuana imported from Mexico,” he wrote in a 2013 op-ed. 2.
Marijuana makes up more than $1 billion of cartel income Pot isn’t the main source of income for cartels. They
make most of their cash from drugs like cocaine and heroin. But marijuana accounts for 15 to 26 percent of the
cartel haul, according to RAND’s 2008 data. That translates to an estimated $1.1 billion to $2 billion of
gross income. The drop in sales certainly wouldn’t end the existence of drug traffickers — they bring in an estimated $6 billion
to $8 billion annually — but losing a fifth of one’s income would hurt any business. On top of that, Kilmer
says that marijuana likely makes up a higher percentage of the cartel take today than it did back in
2008. So taking away pot would sting even more . 3. Authorities could focus on other drugs
Marijuana made up 94 percent of the drugs seized by Border Patrol in the 2012 fiscal year, judging by
weight. If pot becomes legal in the U.S. and cartels are pushed out of the market, that would allow
law-enforcement agencies to dedicate more resources to combat the trafficking of drugs like
heroin and cocaine.
Most comprehensive studies prove violence will be significantly reduced in the
long-run, and short-term lashout will be limited
Beau Kilmer et al 10, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Brittany M. Bond, Peter H. Reuter (Kilmer--Codirector, RAND Drug Policy
Research Center; Senior Policy Researcher, RAND; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School, Ph.D. in public policy, Harvard
University; M.P.P., University of California, Berkeley; B.A. in international relations, Michigan State University, Caulkins--Stever
Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, Bond--research economist in the Office of the
Chief Economist of the US Department of Commerce's Economics and Statistics Administration, Reuter--Professor in the School of
Public Policy and the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland. “Reducing Drug Trafficking Revenues and Violence
in Mexico Would Legalizing Marijuana in California Help?” RAND occasional paper (peer reviewed),
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP325.pdf
However, there
is at least one countervailing factor that might reduce violence in the short run. Given
that the signal of market decline will be strong and unambiguous, experienced participants might
accept the fact that their earnings and the market as a whole are in decline. This could lead to a
reduced effort on their part to fight for control of routes or officials, since those areas of control
are now less valuable. Of course, that does presume strategic thinking in a population that appears to have a propensity for
expressive and instrumental violence. The natural projection in the long run is more optimistic . Fewer young
males will enter the drug trade, and the incentives for violence will decline as the economic
returns to leader- ship of a DTO fall. 10 However, the long run is indeterminably measured: probably years, and
perhaps many years.
Alternative activities can’t make up for profits—post-prohibition effect on the
mafia proves
Robelo 13 -- Drug Policy Alliance research coordinator
[Daniel, "Demand Reduction or Redirection? Channeling Illicit Drug Demand towards a Regulated Supply to Diminish Violence in
Latin America," Oregon Law Review, 91 Or. L. Rev. 1227, 2013, l/n]
It is also impossible to foresee how regulation would affect levels of violence. Some analysts believe a short-term increase in
violence is possible (as competition over a smaller market could intensify), but that violence in the longer term will decline. n106
Some analysts point out that organized crime may further diversify into other activities, such as extortion and
kidnapping, though these have been shown to be considerably less profitable than drug trafficking.
As one scholar [*1249] notes, given the profitability of the drug trade, "it would take roughly 50,000 kidnappings to equal 10% of
cocaine revenues from the U.S. n107 While the American mafia certainly diversified into other criminal endeavors
after the Repeal of alcohol Prohibition, homicide rates nevertheless declined dramatically. n108
Combining marijuana regulation with medical regulatory models for heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine could strike a major blow
to the corrosive economic power of violent trafficking organizations, diminishing their ability to perpetrate murder, hire recruits,
purchase weapons, corrupt officials, operate with impunity, and terrorize societies. Moreover, these approaches promise concrete
results - potentially significant reductions in DTO revenues - unlike all other strategies that Mexico or the United States have tried to
date. n109 Criminal organizations would still rely on other activities for their income, but they would
be left weaker and less of a threat to security. Furthermore, the U nited S tates and Latin American governments
would save resources currently wasted on prohibition enforcement and generate new revenues in
taxes - resources which could be applied more effectively towards confronting violence and other
crimes that directly threaten public safety. n110
Even modest losses means cartels can’t corrupt the police and judiciary
Usborne 14 [David, "How Central Is Marijuana In The Drug War? Ctd," The Dish, quoted by Andrew Sullivan, 1-11-14,
dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/01/11/how-central-is-marijuana-in-the-drug-war-ctd/, accessed 6-9-14]
A 2012 research paper by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute in Mexico called ‘If Our Neighbours Legalise’, said that the
legalisation of marijuana in Colorado, Washington and California would depress cartel profits by as much as 30 per cent. A 2010
Rand Corp study of what would happen if just California legalised suggests a more modest fall-out. Using consumption in the US as
the most useful measure, its authors posit that marijuana accounts for perhaps 25 per cent of the cartels’
revenues. The cartels would survive losing that, but still. “ That’s enough to hurt , enough to cause massive
unemployment in the illicit drugs sector,” says [fellow at the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center
David] Shirk. Less money for cartels means weaker cartels and less capacity to corrupt the judiciary
and the police in Mexico with crumpled bills in brown envelopes. Crimes like extortion and kidnappings are
also more easily tackled.
Plan creates a reverse gateway effect that reduces demand for harder drugs
Herrington, 12 Luke, Editor-At-Large for E-IR and Assistant Reviews Editor for Special Operations Journal. He is a graduate
student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Kansas where he previously earned an MA in Global and
International Studies, “Marijuana Legalization: Panacea in the War on Drugs or Stoners Blowing Smoke?,” http://www.eir.info/2012/08/24/marijuana-lagalization-panacea-in-the-war-on-drugs-or-stoners-blowing-smoke/, Vitz
Legalization Will Hurt the Cartels A chorus of Latin American leaders think legalization will undermine the cartels, and they advocate
it as a new strategy in the war on drugs. In March, Otto Perez Molina, the president of Guatemala, announced his interest in
legalizing drugs in an effort to fight the cartels, including the Zetas, who were allegedly behind a May 2011 attack that left 27
dismembered workers on a farm in northern Guatemala. Molina, however, is not the only leader to suggest that drug legalization
could help stem the rising tide of drug-related violence in Latin America. In fact, former Mexican President Vicente Fox also supports
the legalization of marijuana, [7] as do César Gaviria, Ernesto Zedillo, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Ricardo Lagos, former
presidents of Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile respectively. [8] The government of Uruguay is also agitating for legalization.
marijuana legalization and regulation may be used to help fight cocaine
use and abuse . The government also says it would sell the drug directly, tracking buyers in the process
There, officials announced that
and limiting the black market’s ability to usurp this new supply. [9] Grillo agrees. He suggests that mass-burnings of marijuana in
Mexico, for instance, a hallmark in source control, do more to illustrate exactly how hulking the narco-economic edifice of the cartel’s
drug industry really is, than it does to elucidate how Mexico constantly hammers their organizations. It also demonstrates that U.S.
demand for product will continue to encourage the flow of marijuana and, by extension, other drugs over the border. Citing a
narrowly defeated attempt by California voters to legalize marijuana, and petitioners in Colorado promoting a referendum to do the
same, Grillo highlights the fact that campaigns for legalization view the Mexican Drug War “as a reason to change U.S. drug laws.”
Moreover, these campaigners argue that “American ganja smokers are giving billions of dollars to psychotic Mexican drug cartels,
[…] and legalization is the only way to stop the war.” [10] Grillo concedes that the cartels have morphed into diversified, 21st century
firms with entrenched profit sources well beyond the scope of the marijuana industry. Nevertheless, he concludes, legalization as a
strategy in the war on drugs could still do more in the effort to undermine cartel profits than the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
(DEA) and the Mexican army ever have. Legalization “might not kill the Mexican cartels,” he says, however it certainly could inflict a
deep wound upon their organizations. Armstrong accuses the U.S. of failure in its war on drugs, and asserts that the violence in
Mexico is only one consequence. Despite the tightening of post-9/11 border regulations, tons of cocaine and marijuana continue to
pass into the U.S. and billions of dollars in illicit money and weapons are passing into Mexico. Traditional policies hardly curb this
two-way flow of illicit traffic, in essence, because secondary and tertiary criminal lieutenants are prepared to fill the void when their
leaders are arrested or killed. Indeed, General Charles H. Jacoby, Jr., the leader of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM),
testified before the U.S. Senate, stating that the “decapitation strategy” may succeed in killing key drug figures, but “it ‘has not had
an appreciable effect’ in thwarting the drug trade.” [11] The Mexican government has even started rethinking its approach. Instead of
focusing on the interdiction of drugs bound for U.S. markets, Mexican authorities are starting to focus more on their citizens’ safety.
Obama Administration officials, for their part, have chastised Latin American leaders for debating the legalization strategy, whilst
also stressing the importance of shared responsibility to the Mexican government. In spite of this, the U.S. has done little on its end
to stem the actual demand for illicit drugs. Armstrong believes U.S. policymakers must launch a serious dialogue here [in America]
on legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, the drugs. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than no solution at all. […] The United
States needs a strategy to win the war or to settle it. [12] Indeed, if shared responsibility means anything, it means that the U.S.
must do its part not to enable the continuation of the drug wars. That means that in addition to the possible legalization or
decriminalization of marijuana (and other drugs for that matter), the U.S. must slow the flood of weapons and cash, the cartels’
raison d’etre. [13] Most importantly, legalization could undermine Latin American cartels by removing from marijuana, the so-called
“gateway effect.” As has happened in other countries, such as Portugal, where decriminalization has been experimented with on a
large scale, isolating marijuana from the black market makes it more difficult for drug dealers to push
“ harder” narcotics on individuals using marijuana. More will be said on this subject below, but for now, suffice it
to say that this has the potential to undermine the cartels—perhaps the foundations of the black market itself—across the board,
from the ground up. [14]
They won’t compete in the legal market
Carpenter 11 – Ted Galen Carpenter, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, “Undermining Mexico’s Dangerous Drug Cartels”, Cato
Policy Analysis, 11-15, http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA688.pdf
Legalizing pot would strike a blow against Mexican traffickers. It
would be difficult for them to compete with American
producers in the American market, given the difference in transportation distances and other
factors . There would be little incentive for consumers to buy their product from unsavory
Mexican criminal syndicates when legitimate domestic firms could offer the drug at a competitive
price—and advertise how they are honest enterprises. Indeed, for many Americans, they could
just grow their own supply—a cost advantage that the cartels could not hope to match.
Mexico instability undermines U.S. leadership and risks global arms races
Robert Haddick, contractor at U.S. Special Operations Command, managing editor of Small Wars Journal, "This Week at War: If
Mexico Is at War, Does America Have to Win It?" FOREIGN POLICY, 9--10--10,
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/10/this_week_at_war_if_mexico_is_at_war_does_america_have_to_win_it, accessed 5-213.
Most significantly, a
strengthening Mexican insurgency would very likely affect America's role in the rest
of the world . An increasingly chaotic American side of the border, marked by bloody cartel wars,
corrupted government and media, and a breakdown in security, would likely cause many in the U nited
S tates to question the importance of military and foreign policy ventures elsewhere in the world.
Should the southern border become a U.S. president's primary national security concern, nervous
allies and opportunistic adversaries elsewhere in the world would no doubt adjust to a distracted
and inward-looking America, with potentially disruptive arms races the result. Secretary Clinton has
looked south and now sees an insurgency. Let's hope that the United States can apply what it has recently learned about
insurgencies to stop this one from getting out of control.
Heg decline causes nuclear war
Metz 13 – Dr. Steven Metz, Director of Research at the Strategic Studies Institute, Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University, and
an MA and BA from the University of South Carolina, “A Receding Presence: The Military Implications of American Retrenchment”,
World Politics Review, 10-22, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13312/a-receding-presence-the-military-implications-ofamerican-retrenchment
M iddle E ast/ N orth A frica region, by contrast, is a part of the world where
American retrenchment or narrowing U.S. military capabilities could have extensive adverse effects . While the
So much for the regions of modest concern. The
region has a number of nations with significant military capability, it does not have a functioning method for preserving order without outside
As U.S. power recedes, it could turn out that American involvement was in fact a deterrent
against Iran taking a more adventurous regional posture, for instance. With the United States gone, Tehran could
become more aggressive, propelling the Middle East toward division into hostile Shiite and Sunni blocs and
encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons . With fewer ties between regional armed forces and the United States, there
also could be a new round of military coups. States of the region could increase pressure on Israel, possibly
leading to pre-emptive military strikes by the Israelis, with a risk of another major war . One of the al-Qaida affiliates
involvement.
might seize control of a state or exercise outright control of at least part of a collapsed state. Or China might see American withdrawal as an
opportunity to play a greater role in the region, particularly in the Persian Gulf. The United States has a number of security objectives in the Middle East
and North Africa: protecting world access to the region's petroleum, limiting humanitarian disasters, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction, limiting the operating space for al-Qaida and its affiliates, sustaining America's commitment to long-standing partners and assuring Israel's
security. Arguments that the U.S. can disengage from the region and recoup savings in defense expenditures assume that petroleum exports would
continue even in the event of domination of the region by a hostile power like Iran or a competitor like China, state collapse or even the seizure of
power by extremists. Whoever exercises power in the region would need to sell oil. And the United States is moving toward petroleum self-sufficiency
or, at least, away from dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But even if the United States could get along with diminished petroleum exports from the
Middle East, many other nations couldn't. The economic damage would cascade, inevitably affecting the United States. Clearly
disengagement
from the Middle East and North Africa would entail significant risks for the U nited S tates. It would be a roll
of the strategic dice. South and Central Asia are a bit different, since large-scale U.S. involvement there is a relatively recent phenomenon. This means
South and Central Asia
two vibrant, competitive and nuclear-armed powers—India and China—as well as one of
the world's most fragile nuclear states, Pakistan. Writers like Robert Kaplan argue that South Asia's importance will continue
that the regional security architecture there is less dependent on the United States than that of some other regions.
also includes
to grow, its future shaped by the competition between China and India. This makes America's security partnership with India crucial. The key issue is
whether India can continue to modernize its military to balance China while addressing its immense domestic problems with infrastructure, education,
income inequality and ethnic and religious tensions. If it cannot, the United States might have to decide between ceding domination of the region to
Central Asia is different. After a decade of U.S. military
a cauldron of extremism and terrorism. America's future role there is in doubt, as it looks like
the United States will not be able to sustain a working security partnership with Afghanistan and Pakistan in the future. At some point one
or both of these states could collapse, with extremist movements gaining control. There is little chance of another
large-scale U.S. military intervention to forestall state collapse, but Washington might feel compelled to act to secure
Pakistan's nuclear weapons if Islamabad loses control of them . The key decision for Washington might someday be
China or spending what it takes to sustain an American military presence in the region.
operations, the region remains
whether to tolerate extremist-dominated areas or states as long as they do not enable transnational terrorism. Could the United States allow a Taliban
state in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, for instance, if it did not provide training areas and other support to al-Qaida? Most likely, the U.S. approach
would be to launch raids and long-distance attacks on discernible al-Qaida targets and hope that such a method best balanced costs and risks. The
Asia-Pacific region will remain the most important one to the United States even in a time of receding American power. The United States retains deep
economic interests in and massive trade with Asia, and has been a central player in the region's security system for more than a century. While
instability or conflict there is less likely than in the Middle East and North Africa, if it happened it would be much more dangerous because of the
economic and military power of the states likely to be involved. U.S. strategy in the Asia-Pacific has been described as a hub-and-spokes strategy "with
the United States as the hub, bilateral alliances as the spokes and multilateral institutions largely at the margins." In particular, the bilateral "spokes"
are U.S. security ties with key allies Australia, Japan and South Korea and, in a way, Taiwan. The United States also has many other beneficial
America's major security
objectives in the Asia-Pacific in recent years have been to discourage Chinese provocation or destabilization as China
rises in political, economic and military power, and to prevent the world's most bizarre and unpredictable nuclear power—North
Korea—from unleashing Armageddon through some sort of miscalculation . Because the U.S. plays a
more central role in the Asia-Pacific security framework than in any other regional security
arrangement, this is the region where disengagement or a recession of American power would have the most farreaching effect. Without an American counterweight, China might become increasingly
aggressive and provocative . This could lead the other leading powers of the region close to China—particularly Japan,
South Korea and Taiwan—to abandon their historical antagonism toward one another and move toward some sort of de
facto or even formal alliance. If China pushed them too hard, all three have the technological capability to develop
and deploy nuclear weapons quickly. The middle powers of the region, particularly those embroiled in disputes with China over the
security relationships in the region, including with Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
resources of the South China Sea, would have to decide between acceding to Beijing's demands or aligning themselves with the Japan-South KoreaTaiwan bloc. Clearly North Korea will remain the most incendiary element of the Asia-Pacific system even if the United States opts to downgrade its
involvement in regional security. The parasitic Kim dynasty cannot survive forever. The question is whether it lashes out in its death throes, potentially
with nuclear weapons, or implodes into internal conflict. Either action would require a significant multinational effort, whether to invade then reconstruct
and stabilize the nation, or for humanitarian relief and peacekeeping following a civil war. Even if the United States were less involved in the region, it
security threats are plausible
and dangerous: protracted internal conflicts that cause humanitarian disasters and provide operating space for extremists (the
Syria model); the further proliferation of nuclear weapons; the seizure of a state or part of a state by extremists that then use the
territory they control to support transnational terrorism; and the old specter of major war between nations. U.S. political
leaders and security experts once believed that maintaining a full range of military capabilities, including the ability to
undertake large-scale, protracted land operations, was an important deterrent to potential opponents.
would probably participate in such an effort, but might not lead it. Across all these regions, four types of
But the problem with deterrence is that it's impossible to prove. Did the U.S. military deter the Soviet seizure of Western Europe, or did Moscow never
intend to do that irrespective of what the United States did? Unfortunately, the only way to definitively demonstrate the value of deterrence is to allow
U.S. power to recede and see if bad things happen. Until recently, the United States was not inclined to take such a risk. But now there is increasing
political support for accepting greater risk by moving toward a cheaper military without a full range of capabilities. Many Americans are willing to throw
the strategic dice. The
recession of American power will influence the evolution of the various regional
security systems, of which history suggests there are three types: hegemonic security systems in which a dominant state assures stability;
balance of power systems where rivals compete but do not dominate; and cooperative systems in which multiple states inside and sometimes outside
a region maintain security and limit or contain conflict. Sub-Saharan Africa is a weak cooperative system organized around the African Union. Even if
there is diminished U.S. involvement, the sub-Saharan African security system is likely to remain as it is. Latin America might have once been a
hegemonic system, at least in the Caribbean Basin, but today it is moving toward becoming a cooperative system with a diminished U.S. role. The
M iddle E ast/ N orth A frica region, South and Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific will probably
move toward becoming balance of power systems with less U.S. involvement. Balances of power can prevent major wars with
adept diplomacy and when the costs of conflict are high, as in Europe during the Cold War, for instance. But catastrophic conflicts can
happen if the balance collapses, as in Europe in the summer of 1914. Power balances work best when one key
same is true of Europe. The
state is able to shift sides to preserve the balance, but there is no candidate to play this role in the emerging power balances in these three regions.
Hence the
balances in these regions will be dangerously unstable .
Global Prohibition: 1AC
Federal legalization sends a global signal in favor of ending drug prohibition—
causes a shift in other countries towards harm reduction strategies
Joshua D. Wild, “The Uncomfortable Truth about the United States’ Role in the Failure of the Global War on Drugs and How It is
Going to Fix It,” SUFFOLK TRANSNATIONAL LAW REVIEW v. 36, Summer 2013, p. 437-446
The War on Drugs' demise started when the bellicose analogy was created. n77 The correct classification of the global drug
problem was and still is as a set of interlinked health and social challenges to be managed, not a war
to be won. n78 The U.S. has worked strenuously for the past fifty years to ensure that all countries
adopt its rigid, prohibitionist approach to drug policy, essentially repressing the potential for
alternative policy development and experimentation. n79 This was an expensive mistake that the U.S.
unfortunately cannot take back. n80 The current emergence from the economic recession of 2008-2009 has set the stage for a
generational, political and cultural shift, placing the U.S. in a unique moment in its history; the necessary sociopolitical context to
revoke its prohibitionist ideals and replace them with more modern policies grounded in health, science and humanity. n81 The
U.S. can remedy its mistake by using its considerable diplomatic influence and international
presence to foster reform in other countries. n82 One way to do this is by capitalizing [*438] on this unique moment
in its existence and experimenting with models of legal regulation, specifically with marijuana because nearly half
of U.S. citizens favor legalization of it. n83 This will help redeem our image internationally and help repair
foreign relations because the monumental scope of the international marijuana market is largely created by the exorbitant
U.S. demand for the drug which partially stems from the illegality of the market. n84 B. Step 1: Recognize the Ineffectiveness of The
Global War on Drugs and Consider Alternatives An objective way to gauge the effectiveness of a drug policy is to examine how the
policy manages the most toxic drugs and the problems associated with them. n85 With that in mind, at the global level,
having one in five intravenous drug users have HIV and one in every two users having Hepatitis C
is clearly an epidemic and not the result of effective drug control policies. n86 The threat of arrest and
punishment as a deterrent from people using drugs is sound in theory, but in practice this hypothesis is tenuous. n87 Countries
that have enacted harsh, punitive laws have higher levels of drug use and related problems than
countries with more tolerant approaches. n88 Additionally, the countries that have experimented with
forms of legal regulation outside of punitive approaches have not seen rises in drug use and
dependence [*439] rates. n89 Therefore, one sensible first step in placing this issue back into a manageable position is for
national governments to encourage other governments to experiment with models of legal regulation of
drugs which fit their context. n90 This will in turn, undermine the criminal market, enhance national security, and allow other
countries to learn from their application. n91 1. Easier to Say Than Do - A Suggestion for Overcoming Difficulties Associated With
Legal Regulation For this movement to be successful and effectively manage the epidemic at hand there must be a broad
consensus around the world that the current drug control policies are morally harmful. n92 This consensus however is precluded by
the stigma and fear associated with more toxic drugs such as heroin. n93 This note does not propose that heroin and other toxic
drugs should be legalized but instead suggests that society and drug policies tend to consolidate and classify all illicit drugs as
equally dangerous. n94 This in turn restrains any progressive debate about experimenting with the regulation of different drugs
under different standards. n95 [*440] Regardless of these false dichotomies, which often restrain progressive debate, it is difficult
not to give credence to the idea of marijuana being socially acceptable when it has been by far the most widely produced and
consumed illicit drug. n96 There is between 125 and 203 million users worldwide and no indication of that number declining. n97
With this many users, it is reasonable to conclude that if the international community could reach a consensus about the moral
noxiousness of any drug control policy, the repression of marijuana would likely be it. n98 Marijuana, arguably socially
acceptable, represents a simple mechanism to enter into the experimentation process with the
legal regulation of drugs. n99 Without advocating for the UN to adopt new commissions or encouraging drastic moves such
as the decriminalization of all illicit substances, the global decriminalization of marijuana would be a relatively minor adjustment
compared to the monumental impact. n100 If national governments were to decriminalize marijuana, the scope of this movement
would essentially eradicate the public health problem of marijuana abuse and the associated criminality because of its illegal status.
n101 Public health problems can be remedied because it will afford governments the ability to regulate the market and control the
quality and price of the drug, essentially removing toxic impurities and setting a price that will diminish an illegal market. n102 This
will in turn diminish the criminal market [*441] by eradicating the need for users to commit crimes to procure marijuana and removing
the economic incentive for other countries to get involved in the drug's market. n103 Without arguing that this is the panacea for the
global war on drugs, proponents of legalization can aptly point to the archaic drug control policies in place and this macro approach
as an effective way to tackle the problem now. n104 C. Step 2: Real Reform - the U.S. Needs to Stand at the Forefront
of Drug Policy Reformation The U.S. wields considerable influence over the rest of the world, so it
is no surprise that its call for the development and maintenance of prohibitive, punitive drug
policies resulted in a majority of the international community following. n105 Conversely, if the U.S.
leads the call for the development and maintenance of more tolerant drug policies grounded in
health, humanity and science, a majority of the international community will also follow. n106 Cultural
shifts do not take place overnight, and the idea of complete U.S. drug policy reformation is too aggressive and stark in contrast to
succeed against modern bureaucracy and political alliances. n107 On the other hand, a more moderate, piecemeal approach could
effectively act as a catalyst for this transformation while simultaneously serving as a case study for opponents of legal regulation.
n108 [*442] If the U.S. is serious about addressing the ineffectiveness of the War on Drugs, then the
federal government must remove marijuana from its list of criminally banned substances. n109 The
tone of the Obama administration is a significant step in this direction. n110 President Obama has explicitly acknowledged the need
to treat drugs as more of a public health problem, as well as the validity of debate on alternatives, but he does not favor drug
legalization. n111 This progressive rhetoric is a significant step in the right direction, but until there is
some real reform confronting the issue, reducing punitive measures and supporting other countries to develop drug
policies that suit their context, there is still an abdication of policy responsibility. n112 1. Starting Small - Potential
Positive Effects of Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana in the U.S. If marijuana was legal in the U.S., it would function similarly to
the market of legal substances such as liquor, coffee and tobacco. n113 Individual and corporate participants in the market would
pay taxes, increasing revenues and saving the government from the exorbitant cost of trying to enforce prohibition laws. n114
Consumers' human rights would be promoted through self-determination, autonomy and access to more accurate information about
the product they are consuming. n115 Additionally, case studies and research suggest that the decriminalization or legalization
[*443] of marijuana reduces the drugs' consumption and does not necessarily result in a more favorable attitude towards it. n116
The legal regulation of marijuana would relieve the current displaced burden the drug places on law enforcement, domestically and
internationally. n117 In the U.S., law enforcement could refocus their efforts away from reducing the marijuana market per se and
instead towards reducing harm to individuals, communities and national security. n118 Abroad, U.S. international
relations would improve because of the reduced levels of corruption and violence at home and
afar. n119 The precarious position repressive policies place on foreign governments when they have to destroy
the livelihoods of agricultural workers would be reduced. n120 Additionally, legalization and regulation
would provide assistance to governments in regaining some degree of control over the regions
dominated by drug dealers and terrorist groups because those groups would lose a major source
of funding for their organizations. n121 2. Health Concerns? - Marijuana in Comparison to Other Similar Legal
Substances The federal government, acknowledging the risks inherent in alcohol and tobacco, argues that adding a third substance
to that mix cannot be beneficial. n122 Adding anything to a class of [*444] dangerous substances is likely never going to be
beneficial; however marijuana would be incorrectly classified if it was equated with those two substances. n123 Marijuana is far less
toxic and addictive than alcohol and tobacco. n124 Long term use of marijuana is far less damaging than long term alcohol or
tobacco use. n125 Alcohol use contributes to aggressive and reckless behavior, acts of violence and serious injuries while
marijuana actually reduces likelihood of aggressive behavior or violence during intoxication and is seldom associated with
emergency room visits. n126 As with most things in life, there can be no guarantee that the legalization or decriminalization of
marijuana would lead the U.S. to a better socio-economical position in the future. n127 Two things however, are certain: that the
legalization of marijuana in the U.S. would dramatically reduce most of the costs associated with the current drug policies,
domestically and internationally, and [*445] if the U.S. is serious about its objective of considering the costs
of drug control measures, then it is vital and rational for the legalization option is considered . n128
D. Why the Time is Ripe for U.S. Drug Policy Reformation The political atmosphere at the end of
World War I and II was leverage for the U.S., emerging as the dominant political, economic and military
power. n129 This leverage allowed it to shape a prohibitive drug control regime that until now has
remained in perpetuity. n130 Today, we stand in a unique moment inside of U.S. history. n131 The
generational, political and cultural shifts that accompanied the U.S. emergence from the "Great
Recession" resulted in a sociopolitical climate that may be what is necessary for real reform. n132
Politically, marijuana has become a hot issue; economically, the marijuana industry is bolstering a faltering economy and socially,
marijuana is poised to transform the way we live and view medicine. n133 The public disdain for the widespread problems
prohibition caused in the early 20th century resulted in the end of alcohol prohibition during the Great Depression. n134 If history
does actually repeat itself than the Great recession may have been much more telling than expected. n135 V. Conclusion The U.S.
and its prohibitionist ideals exacerbated the failure of both the international and its own domestic drug policies. n136 As a result ,
the U.S. should accept accountability for its mistakes by reforming its drug policies in a way that
will help [*446] place the global drug market back into a manageable position. n137 Marijuana is an
actionable, evidence based mechanism for constructive legal and policy reform that through a domino effect
can transform the global drug prohibition regime . n138 The generational, political and cultural shifts that
accompanied the U.S. emergence from the "Great Recession" have resulted in a sociopolitical climate ready for real reform. n139
The U.S. will capitalize on this unique moment by removing marijuana from the list of federally banned substances,
setting the stage for future international and domestic drug policies that are actually effective. n140
China needs to shift to a harm reduction model to avoid economic and social
instability—acting now is key
Verity Robins, “China’s Flawed Drugs Policy,” Foreign Policy Centre, 6—22—11, http://fpc.org.uk/articles/514, accessed 12-2014.
China has woken up to its drug problem, but it is failing woefully in trying to tackle it. Nestled between two major heroin-producing
regions, the Golden Triangle (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam) and the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran), China has
long been a transit path for drugs headed toward the rest of the world. Along an ever-expanding network of routes that lead to
China's international seaports, domestic heroin use is soaring. No longer just a transit country, it now has a sizable user population
of its own. The
rise in domestic heroin addiction has had disastrous social consequences, with an
increase in Chinese drug cultivation and organised criminal activity, as well as a rise in intravenous
drug use and a spiralling HIV/AIDS epidemic. China's role as a drugs conduit has increased considerably over the
past two decades. Throughout the 20th century, opium and later heroin, from the Golden Triangle, was smuggled to Thailand's
seaports and then on to satiate drug markets throughout the world. More effective law enforcement and a stricter drug policy in
Thailand in the late 1980s and early 90s reduced the state as an effective trafficking route. Concurrently, Burmese drug lord Khun
Sa, the prime heroin producer and distributer along the Thai-Burmese border, surrendered to the Burmese authorities. With the
collapse of Khun Sa's army, Burma's foremost heroin trafficking route into Thailand was disrupted. Consequently, China's role as a
narcotics conduit became even more crucial. Well over half the heroin produced in the Golden Triangle now travels through China,
wending its way through southern provinces Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong towards Hong Kong. This shift in regional drug trade
routes coincided with rapid economic development in China's southwest. More robust roads allow for faster and easier
transportation of illicit drugs, while an increased fiscal and technological ability to refine heroin locally has driven down its market
value and increased local consumption. By 1989, the HIV virus was detected amongst injecting drug users in China's most southwesterly province Yunnan. Needle sharing drove the epidemic, and HIV/AIDS rapidly spread to drug users in neighbouring
provinces and along trafficking routes. At the turn of the century, HIV infections had been reported in all 31 provinces, autonomous
regions and municipalities, with drug users accounting for 60-70 per cent of reported cases. While the Chinese government was
slow to engage substantively with a generalised AIDS epidemic in the country, a new administration taking office in 2003 under
President Hu Jintao accelerated the commitment to and implementation of evidence-based HIV policies. Having woken up to the
seriousness of its HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Chinese government sought increasingly progressive means to combat the crisis, calling
on a range of outside actors to implement new and innovative pilot projects. During the 2000s, the government seemingly revoked
its zero-tolerance attitude towards drug users, introducing needle exchange programmes and controlled methadone maintenance
treatments in the most affected areas. While the Chinese government continues to take a pragmatic
approach to its HIV/AIDS crisis, the good work of these projects is offset by the 2008 Narcotics Law
that vastly emphasises law enforcement over medical treatment in the government's response to drug use.
This law calls for the rehabilitation of illicit drug users and for their treatment as patients rather than as criminals, yet the law also
allows for the incarceration - without trial or judicial oversight – of individuals suspected by police of drug use for up to six years in
drug detention centres. To allow for this, the 2008 Narcotics Law considerably enhances police power to randomly search people for
possession of drugs, and to subject them to urine tests for drug use without reasonable suspicion of crime. The law also
empowers the police, rather than medical professionals, to make judgements on the nature of the suspected users' addiction,
and to subsequently assign alleged drug users to detention centres. According to Human Rights Watch, whilst in
detention centres suspected drug users receive no medical care, no support for quitting drugs, and no skills training for re-entering
society upon release. In the name of treatment, suspected drug users are confined under "horrific conditions, subject to cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment, and forced to engage in unpaid labour". Not only is this law ineffective in tackling
China's growing drug problem and rehabilitating its users, but incarceration of suspected addicts
in detention centres represents a serious breach of the basic human rights guaranteed by both China's
domestic and international legal commitments. Furthermore, the law is a counter productive policy for combating
HIV/AIDS in China. The threat of forcible detention only discourages users from seeking
professional help to tackle their addictions, and from utilising needle exchange programmes for fear of incarceration. The
result is to encourage "underground" illicit drug use that leads to needle sharing and hence the
spread of HIV/AIDS. Effective tackling of illicit drug use requires developing voluntary, outpatient
treatment based upon effective, proven approaches to drug addiction. Specific reform of the law should reverse the
expanded police powers to detain suspected users without trial, and implement specific procedural mechanisms to protect the
health and human rights of drug users in a standardised and appropriate way. The Chinese government has sought to work with
outside actors in combating its HIV/AIDS epidemic, particularly in its most affected province Yunnan. The UK Department for
International Development (DfID) has been engaged in HIV/AIDS prevention throughout southwest China since the launch of the
China-UK HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Programme in 2001. DfID's Multilateral Aid Review, published in March this year, cut all
future development aid to China. The discontinuation of DfID projects in southwest China will weaken efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS
and rehabilitate drug users in the region. It also lessens pressure on China to combat these issues in a reasonable and felicitous
way. The international donor community present in China must implement policies that reflect
realities on the ground by ensuring that the health care and treatment of drug users is at the core
of their HIV/AIDS policies. They should also use their position of influence to nudge Beijing to
rectify the flaws in the 2008 Narcotics Law with its negative implications for the human rights of suspected drug users, and
for combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. If the country's skyrocketing number of i ntra v enous drug users
and the resultant HIV/AIDS epidemic are left to fester , it could result in severe health
consequences, economic loss and social devastation . China still has time to act, but it should do
so now before it is too late.
AIDs spread causes extinction
Chaturaka Rodrigo, University Medical Unity, National Hospital of Sri Lanka and Senaka Rajapakse, Department of Clinical
Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, “Current Status of HIV/AIDS in South Asia,’ JOURNAL OF GLOBAL
INFECTIOUS DISEASES, v. 1 n. 2, July-December 2009, pp. 93-101.
Infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and subsequent development of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
(AIDS) poses a significant challenge to modern medicine and humanity. According to the United Nations joint
program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), currently there are 33.2 million adults and children living with HIV/AIDS. The highest number of
patients is reported from sub-Saharan Africa.[1] Outside Africa, Asia
remains a potential breeding ground for an
epidemic. Given the massive population density, an epidemic in India and China will have a huge impact on
the global economy and human survival similar to that of sub-Saharan Africa.[2] It is estimated that in 2007 there
were 4.9 million people with HIV/AIDS in Asia, with 440,000 new infections.[2] Although heterosexual intercourse is considered the
main risk behavior for spread of HIV in Africa, in Asia it is intravenous drug use (IVDU).[3] However, in South Asia, transmission via
sexual contact is predominant.[4] All countries in the South Asian region are still considered to have a low prevalence of HIV, though
numbers are increasing in Pakistan and Nepal.[5] There are many risk factors in the region favoring an
epidemic of HIV, such as illiteracy, poor economic status, poor sanitary and health facilities,
social taboos on discussion of sex and malnutrition. The high prevalence of tuberculosis in the region will play a
significant role in reducing life expectancy should HIV/AIDS rates rise.[6]
Instability causes diversionary wars in the South China Sea
Cole 14
Taipei-based journalist and contributor to The Diplomat who focuses on military issues in Northeast Asia and in the
Taiwan Strait. He previously served as an intelligence officer at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Where Would Beijing
Use External Distractions?, J Michael, http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/where-would-beijing-use-external-distractions/
Throughout history, embattled governments have often resorted to external distractions to tap
into a restive population’s nationalist sentiment and thereby release, or redirect, pressures that otherwise could
have been turned against those in power. Authoritarian regimes in particular, which deny their citizens the right to
punish the authorities through retributive democracy — that is, elections — have used this device to ensure their
survival during periods of domestic upheaval or financial crisis. Would the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), whose legitimacy is so
contingent on social stability and economic growth, go down the same path if it felt that its hold on power were threatened by domestic instability? Building on the premise that
the many contradictions that are inherent to the extraordinarily complex Chinese experiment, and rampant corruption that undermines stability, will eventually catch up with the
CCP, we can legitimately ask how, and where, Beijing could manufacture external crises with opponents against whom nationalist fervor, a major characteristic of contemporary
China, can be channeled. In past decades, the CCP has on several occasions tapped into public outrage to distract a disgruntled population, often by encouraging (and when
necessary containing) protests against external opponents, namely Japan and the United States. While serving as a convenient outlet, domestic protests, even when they
turned violent (e.g., attacks on Japanese manufacturers), were about as far as the CCP would allow. This self-imposed restraint, which was prevalent during the 1980s, 1990s
and 2000s, was a function both of China’s focus on building its economy (contingent on stable relations with its neighbors) and perceived military weakness. Since then, China
has established itself as the world’s second-largest economy and now deploys, thanks to more than a decade of double-digit defense budget growth, a first-rate modern military.
Those impressive achievements have, however, fueled Chinese
nationalism, which has increasingly approached
the dangerous zone of hubris . For many, China is now a rightful regional hegemon demanding respect, which if denied
can — and should — be met with threats, if not the application of force. While it might be tempting to attribute China’s recent
assertiveness in the South and East China Seas to the emergence of Xi Jinping, Xi alone cannot make all the decisions; nationalism
is a component that cannot be dissociated from this new phase in Chinese expressions of its power. As then-Chinese foreign
minister Yang Jiechi is said to have told his counterparts at a tense regional forum in Hanoi in 2010, “There is one basic difference
among us. China is a big state and you are smaller countries.” This newfound assertiveness within its backyard
thus makes it more feasible that, in times of serious trouble at home, the Chinese leadership
could seek to deflect potentially destabilizing anger by exploiting some external distraction .
Doing so is always a calculated risk, and sometimes the gambit fails, as Slobodan Milosevic learned the hard way when he tapped
into the furies of nationalism to appease mounting public discontent with his bungled economic policies. For an external distraction
to achieve its objective (that is, taking attention away from domestic issues by redirecting anger at an outside actor), it must not
result in failure or military defeat. In other words, except for the most extreme circumstances, such as the imminent collapse of a
regime, the decision to externalize a domestic crisis is a rational one: adventurism must be certain to achieve success, which in turn
will translate into political gains for the embattled regime. Risk-taking is therefore proportional to the seriousness of the destabilizing
forces within. Rule No. 1 for External Distractions:
The greater the domestic instability, the more risks a regime
will be willing to take , given that the scope and, above all, the symbolism of the victory in an external scenario must also be
greater. With this in mind, we can then ask which external distraction scenarios would Beijing be the most likely to turn to should
domestic disturbances compel it to do so. That is not to say that anything like this will happen anytime soon. It is nevertheless not
unreasonable to imagine such a possibility. The intensifying crackdown on critics of the CCP, the detention of lawyers, journalists
and activists, unrest in Xinjiang, random acts of terrorism, accrued censorship — all point to growing instability. What follows is a
very succinct (and by no means exhaustive) list of disputes, in descending order of likelihood, which Beijing could use for external
distraction. 1. South China Sea The
S outh C hina S ea, an area where China is embroiled in several
territorial disputes with smaller claimants, is ripe for exploitation as an external distraction .
Nationalist sentiment, along with the sense that the entire body of water is part of China’s
indivisible territory and therefore a “ core interest ,” are sufficient enough to foster a will to fight
should some “incident,” timed to counter unrest back home, force China to react. Barring a U.S. intervention,
which for the time being seems unlikely, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has both the numerical and qualitative advantage
against any would be opponent or combination thereof. The Philippines and Vietnam, two countries which have skirmished with
China in recent years, are the likeliest candidates for external distractions, as the costs of a brief conflict would be low and the
likelihood of military success fairly high. For a quick popularity boost and low-risk distraction, these opponents would best serve
Beijing’s interests.
That goes nuclear
Goldstein 13
(Avery Goldstein, Professor of Global Politics and International Relations, Director of the Center for the Study of
Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania, “China’s Real and Present Danger”, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2013,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139651/avery-goldstein/chinas-real-and-present-danger) gender edited
Uncertainty about what could lead either Beijing or Washington to risk war makes a crisis far
more likely, since neither side knows when, where, or just how hard it can push without the other
side pushing back. This situation bears some resemblance to that of the early Cold War, when it took a number of serious
crises for the two sides to feel each other out and learn the rules of the road. But today’s environment might be even
more dangerous.¶ The balance of nuclear and conventional military power between China and the
United States, for example, is much more lopsided than the one that existed between the Soviet Union and the
United States. Should Beijing and Washington find themselves in a conflict, the huge U.S. advantage in conventional
forces would increase the temptation for Washington to threaten to or actually use force.
Recognizing the temptation facing Washington, Beijing might in turn feel pressure to use its conventional
forces before they are destroyed. Although China could not reverse the military imbalance, it
might believe that quickly imposing high costs on the United States would be the best way to get
it to back off.¶ The fact that both sides have nuclear arsenals would help keep the situation in check, because both sides would
want to avoid actions that would invite nuclear retaliation. Indeed, if only nuclear considerations mattered, U.S.-Chinese crises
would be very stable and not worth worrying about too much. But the
two sides’ conventional forces complicate
matters and undermine the stability provided by nuclear deterrence. During a crisis, either side
might believe that using its conventional forces would confer bargaining leverage, manipulating
the other side’s fear of escalation through what the economist Thomas Schelling calls a “competition in risk-taking.” In a
crisis, China or the United States might believe that it valued what was at stake more than the other
and would therefore be willing to tolerate a higher level of risk. But because using conventional
forces would be only the first step in an unpredictable process subject to misperception ,
missteps, and miscalculation , there is no guarantee that brinkmanship [brinkspersonship] would
end before it led to an unanticipated nuclear catastrophe .¶ China, moreover, apparently believes
that nuclear deterrence opens the door to the safe use of conventional force . Since both countries would
fear a potential nuclear exchange, the Chinese seem to think that neither they nor the Americans would allow a military conflict to
escalate too far. Soviet leaders, by contrast, indicated that they would use whatever military means were necessary if war came -which is one reason why war never came. In addition, China’s official “no first use” nuclear policy, which guides the Chinese
military’s preparation and training for conflict, might reinforce Beijing’s confidence that limited war with the
United States would not mean courting nuclear escalation. As a result of its beliefs, Beijing might
be less cautious about taking steps that would risk triggering a crisis. And if a crisis ensued,
China might also be less cautious about firing the first shot .¶ Such beliefs are particularly
worrisome given recent developments in technology that have dramatically improved the
precision and effectiveness of conventional military capabilities. Their lethality might confer a
dramatic advantage to the side that attacks first, something that was generally not true of conventional military
operations in the main European theater of U.S.-Soviet confrontation. Moreover, because the sophisticated computer and satellite
systems that guide contemporary weapons are highly vulnerable to conventional military strikes or cyberattacks, today’s more
precise weapons might be effective only if they are used before an adversary has struck or
adopted countermeasures. If peacetime restraint were to give way to a search for advantage in a crisis, neither China
nor the United States could be confident about the durability of the systems managing its
advanced conventional weapons.¶ Under such circumstances, both Beijing and Washington would have
incentives to initiate an attack. China would feel particularly strong pressure , since its advanced
conventional weapons are more fully dependent on vulnerable computer networks , fixed radar
sites, and satellites. The effectiveness of U.S. advanced forces is less dependent on these most vulnerable systems. The
advantage held by the United States, however, might increase its temptation to strike first, especially
against China’s satellites, since it would be able to cope with Chinese retaliation in kind.
Legalization of marijuana in Morocco is key to stability—they model US policy
Roslington and Pack 13 (James, PhD candidate in North African history at the University of Cambridge, and Jason, 11-4-13,
"Morocco's Growing Cannabis Debate" Foreign Policy)
mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/11/04/morocco_s_growing_cannabis_debate
Cognizant of developments in the U nited S tates in Colorado and Washington state, Moroccan social media
has been abuzz this summer with a seemingly unlikely possibility: the legalization of cannabis. Activists and
politicians in Morocco are close to firming up a date later this month for the parliament to host a
seminar on the economic implications of legalization. The powerful Party of Authenticity and Modernity will chair
the daylong seminar. This has led some commentators to speculate that the move may even have the
blessing of the monarchy. Morocco regularly vies with Afghanistan for the title of the world's
biggest producer of cannabis -- its output was recently estimated at nearly 40,000 tons annually -- yet open debate on the
role of the plant in the country's economy remains infrequent. In recent years, despite improvements in
production, both small farmers and big producers have seen their cannabis -related income plummet.
Political moves to legalize cannabis are a recognition that Morocco's drug policy has failed. For
decades, farmers in the Rif region in the north have been tacitly allowed to cultivate the herb as an escape from dire poverty. At the
same time, occasional crackdowns and arbitrary detentions of growers ensured that the central state kept a firm grip on the region.
This policy worked well for decades but is now beginning to unravel as profits fall and unrest rises. During the late 1960s, technical
advances meant that farmers could transform the raw product into resin (aka "hash") for export to the European market. When
inexpensive Moroccan hash began to flow northwards in ever increasing quantities, European counter-cultural movements
differentiated themselves from American pot-smoking hippies by mixing hash with tobacco and rolling it into joints. The new
European hash culture spread rapidly due to its bare bones simplicity -- fancy implements like pipes and bongs were not needed. In
the 1980s, the Moroccan cannabis business boomed as big producers and middlemen made fortunes, pouring their profits into
luxury villas and ostentatious displays of wealth. By the 1990s, northern Morocco had become the hash capital of the world. But the
As part of the international war on drugs, Morocco came under pressure to
crack down on cannabis cultivation. European Union coastguards stepped up their patrols looking for drug shipments
good times couldn't last.
from North Africa. There were even claims that Moroccan drug-money was financing terrorism, especially in response to the Madrid
bombings in 2003. Once stemming the Moroccan drug trade could be rhetorically situated as part of President George W. Bush's
Global War on Terror,
the pressure on Morocco to eradicate the cannabis fields in the north became
unbearable. Yet more crucial than geopolitics or government crackdowns, the all-important European market had begun to
change. Evolving tastes played a part: in a world of designer drugs and legal highs, hash became increasingly uncool and prosaic.
As cheap hash lost its cachet, sophisticated consumers switched to high-priced designer strains of pot. Rather than smelling like tar
and looking like packaged mud, they had pleasing aromas, pretty buds, and catchy names like "purple haze." Even more important
than all these changes in consumer taste profiles, European drug gangs have cut net costs to consumers by growing their own
weed in large-scale farms. For example, it is now estimated that 80 percent of cannabis consumed in the Britain is homegrown. The
decreased European demand for imported cannabis has meant trouble for farmers in Morocco. The risks
and rewards of the trade were always unfairly split, with small farmers more exposed to fluctuations in price and police repression
than wealthy middlemen. Complaints about the lack of state investment and systemic police corruption, combined with the
zeitgeist of the "Arab Spring," led to large-scale protests in Morocco during 2011 and 2012. Although the outbursts
have subsided, simmering discontent still mingles with sporadic local protests -- currently focused on the small town of Targuist in
Falling yields and the government's unpopular eradication program formed a
backdrop to the unrest as the protests spread to the heartland of cannabis country in Ketama in
January. The Moroccan government has recognized that whack-a-mole policing, by itself, can no
longer deal with popular discontent. As part of the Moroccan strategy to insulate itself from the unrest plaguing its
the central Rif.
neighbors, the state appears to have switched tack -- now preferring to employ carrots as well as sticks to tighten its political grip
over the restive north. To buttress these efforts, the supreme political authority in Morocco is clearly exploring the possibility of
legislation to legalize cannabis. Legalization would boost tax revenue and prop up the economy of the region .
As early as May 2009, Fouad Ali el Himma, one of the king's closest confidants, called for a national debate on cannabis and an end
to arbitrary detention of its growers. Potentially influenced by trends in places like California, Himma argued that cannabis should be
These ideas are now gaining
momentum with expressions of interest from virtually all the major Moroccan political parties . Even the Islamist
rebranded as a traditional Moroccan herbal palliative rather than an illegal drug.
Party of Justice and Development has cautiously welcomed the draft proposals -- presumably because the party is mindful that it
now occupies a minority presence in the cabinet and could benefit from going with the flow.
Instability in Morocco causes phosphorus shortages which threaten global food
production
Sydney Morning Herald 11 (Quoting Stuart White and Dana Cordell, professors from the Institute for Sustainable Futures,
2-2-11, "Unstable Middle East threatens phosphate" Sydney Morning Herald) news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/unstablemiddle-east-threatens-phosphate-20110202-1ad7m.html
Instability in the Middle East and North Africa could disrupt supplies of phosphate rock and threaten
global food security, say two Australian academics. Phosphorus is an important component of
fertiliser. A high proportion of phosphate rock reserves are in the Middle East and Africa. Professor Stuart White and Dr
Dana Cordell from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney, are among researchers
investigating a possible peak in phosphate rock production before the end of the century. Advertisement Speaking in the United
States at the Sustainable Phosphorus Summit at Arizona State University, they said regional instability was an extra
component in the potential gap between supply and demand in global phosphorus resources.
" Morocco alone controls the vast majority of the world's remaining high-quality phosphate rock,"
Prof White said in a statement. " Even a temporary disruption to the supply of phosphate on the
world market can have serious ramifications for nations' food security. Prof White said that even
before the peak in phosphorus production, there is a prospect of significant rises in prices and a consequent
impact upon farmers and global crop yields.
Food scarcity causes wars that go nuclear
Future Directions International (FDI), Australian research institute, “International Conflict Triggers and Potential Conflict Points
Resulting from Food and Water Insecurity,” WORKSHOP REPORT, Global Food and Water Crisis Research Programme, 5—25—
12, p. 8-9.
There is a growing appreciation that the conflicts in the next century
will most likely be fought over a lack of
resources. Yet, in a sense, this is not new. Researchers point to the French and Russian revolutions as
conflicts induced by a lack of food. More recently, Germany’s World War Two efforts are said to have been
inspired, at least in part, by its perceived need to gain access to more food. Yet the general sense among those that
attended FDI’s recent workshops, was that the scale of the problem in the future could be significantly greater as
a result of population pressures, changing weather, urbanisation, migration, loss of arable land and other farm inputs, and increased
affluence in the developing world. In his book, Small Farmers Secure Food, Lindsay Falvey, a participant in FDI’s March 2012
workshop on the issue of food and conflict, clearly expresses the problem and why countries across the globe are starting to take
note. . He writes (p.36), “…if people are hungry, especially in cities, the state is not stable – riots, violence, breakdown of law and
order and migration result.” “Hunger feeds anarchy.” This view is also shared by Julian Cribb, who in his book, The Coming Famine,
writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the decades that lie ahead, then
wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow .” He continues: “An increasingly credible scenario for
World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their allies, as a festering, self-perpetuating chain
of resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st Century are less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined
sides and huge armies, than a scrappy mass of failed states, rebellions, civil strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked
by bloody competition over dwindling resources.” As another workshop participant put it, people do not go to war to kill; they go to
war over resources, either to protect or to gain the resources for themselves. Another observed that hunger results in passivity not
conflict. Conflict is over resources, not because people are going hungry. A study by the [IPRI] International Peace Research
indicates that where food security is an issue, it is more likely to result in some form of conflict.
Darfur, Rwanda, Eritrea and the Balkans experienced such wars. Governments, especially in developed
countries, are increasingly aware of this phenomenon. The UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA, the [CSIS] US Center for
Strategic and International Studies and the Oslo Peace Research Institute [OPRI], all identify famine as a potential
trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear war.
Institute
Environment: 1AC
Unregulated marijuana cultivation has a massive environmental impact—federal
legalization is key to enable regulatory oversight
Zuckerman 13 (Seth, journalist, 10-31-13, "Is Pot-Growing Bad for the Environment?" The Nation)
www.thenation.com/article/176955/pot-growing-bad-environment?page=0,2
As cannabis production has ramped up in Northern California to meet the demand for medical and blackmarket marijuana, the ecological impacts of its cultivation have ballooned . From shrunken, muddy
streams to rivers choked with algae and wild lands tainted with chemical poisons, large-scale
cannabis agriculture is emerging as a significant threat to the victories that have been won in the region to
protect wilderness, keep toxic chemicals out of the environment, and rebuild salmon runs that had once provided the
backbone of a coast-wide fishing industry. River advocate Scott Greacen has spent most of his career fighting dams and the
timber industry, but now he’s widened his focus to include the costs of reckless marijuana growing. Last year was a time of regionwide rebound for threatened salmon runs, but one of his colleagues walked his neighborhood creek and sent a downbeat report that
only a few spawning fish had returned. Even more alarming was the condition of the creek bed: coated with silt and mud, a sign that
the water quality in this stream was going downhill. “The problem with the weed industry is that its impacts are
severe, it’s not effectively regulated, and it’s growing so rapidly,” says Greacen, executive director of
lack of regulation sets marijuana’s
impacts apart from those that stem from legal farming or logging, yet the 76-year-old federal
prohibition on cannabis has thwarted attempts to hold its production to any kind of
environmental standard . As a result, the ecological impact of an ounce of pot varies
tremendously, depending on whether it was produced by squatters in national forests, hydroponic
operators in homes and warehouses, industrial-scale operations on private land, or conscientious
mom-and-pop farmers. Consumers could exert market power through their choices, if only they
had a reliable, widely accepted certification program, like the ones that guarantee the integrity of organic
agriculture. But thanks to the prohibition on pot, no such certification program exists for cannabis
products. To understand how raising some dried flowers—the prized part of the cannabis plant—can damage the
local ecosystem, you first have to grasp the skyrocketing scale of backwoods agriculture on the
redwood coast. Last fall, Scott Bauer of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife turned a
mapping crew loose on satellite photos of two adjoining creeks. In the Staten Island–sized area
that drains into those streams, his team identified more than 1,000 cannabis farms , estimated to
Friends of the Eel River, which runs through the heart of the marijuana belt. That
produce some 40,000 small-tree-sized plants annually. Bauer holds up the maps, where each greenhouse is marked in blue and
each outdoor marijuana garden in red, with dots that correspond to the size of the operation. It looks like the landscape has a severe
case of Technicolor acne. “In the last couple of years,
the increase has been exponential ,” Bauer says. “On the screen,
you can toggle back and forth between the 2010 aerial photo and the one from 2012. Where there had been one or two sites, now there are ten.” Each of those sites represents
industrial development in a mostly wild landscape, with the hilly terrain flattened and cleared. “When someone shaves off a mountaintop and sets a facility on it,” Bauer says,
“that’s never changing. The topsoil is gone.” The displaced soil is then spread by bulldozer to build up a larger flat pad for greenhouses and other farm buildings. But heavy
winter rains wash some of the soil into streams, Bauer explains, where it sullies the salmon’s spawning gravels and fills in the pools where salmon fry spend the summer.
Ironically, these are the very impacts that resulted from the worst logging practices of the last century. “We got logging to the point that the rules are pretty tight,” Bauer says,
“and now there’s this whole new industry where nobody has any idea what they’re doing. You see guys building roads who have never even used a Cat [Caterpillar tractor].
We’re going backwards.” Then there’s irrigation. A hefty cannabis plant needs several gallons of water per day in the rainless summer growing season, which doesn’t sound like
much until you multiply it by thousands of plants and consider that many of the streams in the area naturally dwindle each August and September. In the summer of 2012, the
two creeks that Bauer’s team mapped got so low that they turned into a series of disconnected pools with no water flowing between them, trapping the young fish in shrinking
ponds. “It’s a serious issue for the coho salmon,” Bauer says. “How is this species going to recover if there’s no water?” The effects extend beyond salmon. During several law
enforcement raids last year, Bauer surveyed the creeks supplying marijuana farms to document the environmental violations occurring there. Each time, he says, he found a
sensitive salamander species above the grower’s water intakes, but none below them, where the irrigation pipes had left little water in the creek. On one of these raids, he
chastised the grower, who was camped out onsite and hailed from the East Coast, new to the four- to six-month dry season that comes with California’s Mediterranean climate.
“I told him, ‘You’re taking most of the flow, man,’ ” Bauer recalls. “’It’s just a little tiny creek, and you’ve got three other growers downstream. If you’re all taking 20 or 30 percent,
pretty soon there’s nothing left for the fish.’ So he says, ‘I didn’t think about that.’ ” While some growers raise their pot organically, many do not. “Once you get to a certain scale,
it’s really hard to operate in a sustainable way,” Greacen says. “Among other things, you’ve got a monoculture, and monocultures invite pests.” Spider mites turn out to be a
particular challenge for greenhouse growers. Tony Silvaggio, a lecturer at Humboldt State University and a scholar at the campus’s year-old Humboldt Institute for
Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research, found that potent poisons such as Avid and Floramite are sold in small vials under the counter at grower supply stores, in defiance of a
state law that requires they be sold only to holders of a pesticide applicator’s license. Nor are just the workers at risk: the miticides have been tested for use on decorative
plants, but not for their impacts if smoked. Otherwise ecologically minded growers can be driven to spray with commercial pesticides, Silvaggio has found in his research. “After
you’ve worked for months, if you have an outbreak of mites in your last few weeks when the buds are going, you’ve got to do something—otherwise you lose everything,” he
says. Outdoor growers face another threat: rats, which are drawn to the aromatic, sticky foliage of the cannabis plant. Raids at growing sites typically find packages of the longacting rodent poison warfarin, which has begun making its way up the food chain to predators such as the rare, weasel-like fisher. A study last year in the online scientific journal
PLOS One found that more than 70 percent of fishers have rat poison in their bloodstream, and attributed four fisher deaths to internal bleeding triggered by the poison they
absorbed through their prey. Deep in the back-country, Silvaggio says, growers shoot or poison bears to keep them from raiding their encampments. The final blow to
environmental health from outdoor growing comes from fertilizers. Growers dump their used potting soil, enriched with unabsorbed fertilizers, in places where it washes into
nearby streams and is suspected of triggering blooms of toxic algae. The deaths of four dogs on Eel River tributaries have been linked to the algae, which the dogs ingest after
swimming in the river and then licking their fur. The cannabis industry—or what Silvaggio calls the “marijuana-industrial complex”—has been building toward this collision with
the environment ever since California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana under state law. Seven years later, the legislature
passed Senate Bill 420, which allows patients growing pot with a doctor’s blessing to form collectives and sell their herbal remedy to fellow patients. Thus were born the
storefront dispensaries, which grew so common that they came to outnumber Starbucks outlets in Los Angeles. From the growers’ point of view, a 100-plant operation no longer
had to be hidden, because its existence couldn’t be presumed illegal under state law. So most growers stopped hiding their plants in discreet back-country clearings or buried
shipping containers and instead put them out in the open. As large grows became less risky, they proliferated—and so did their effects on the environment. Google Earth posted
satellite photos taken in August 2012, when most outdoor pot gardens were nearing their peak. Working with Silvaggio, a graduate student identified large growing sites in the
area, and posted a Google Earth flyover tour of the region that makes it clear that the two creeks Bauer’s team studied are representative of the situation across the region. With
all of the disturbance from burgeoning backwoods marijuana gardens, it might seem that raising cannabis indoors would be the answer. Indoor growers can tap into municipal
water supplies and don’t have to clear land or build roads to farms on hilltop hideaways. But indoor growing is responsible instead for a more insidious brand of damage: an
outsize carbon footprint to power the electric-intensive lights, fans and pumps that it takes to raise plants inside. A dining-table-size hydroponic unit yielding five one-pound
crops per year would consume as much electricity as the average US home, according to a 2012 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy. All told, the carbon footprint
of a single gram of cannabis is the same as driving seventeen miles in a Honda Civic. In addition, says Kristin Nevedal, president of the Emerald Growers Association, “the
tendency indoors is to lean toward chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides to stabilize the man-made environment, because you don’t have the natural beneficials that are
found outdoors.” Nevertheless, the appeal of indoor growing is strong, explains Sharon (not her real name), a single mother who used to raise marijuana in the sunshine but
moved her operation indoors after she split up with her husband. Under her 3,000 watts of electric light, she raises numerous smaller plants in a space the size of two sheets of
plywood, using far less physical effort than when she raised large plants outdoors. “It’s a very mommy-friendly business that provides a dependable, year-round income,” she
says. Sharon harvests small batches of marijuana year-round, which fetch a few hundred dollars more per pound than outdoor-grown cannabis because of consumers’
preferences. Sharon’s growing operation supports her and her teenage daughter in the rural area where she settled more than two decades ago. Add up the energy used by
indoor growers, from those on Sharon’s scale to the converted warehouses favored by urban dispensaries, and the impact is significant—estimated at 3 percent of the state’s
total power bill, or the electricity consumed by 1 million homes. On a local level, indoor cannabis production is blocking climate stabilization efforts in the coastal city of Arcata,
which aimed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent over twelve years. But during the first half of that period, while electricity consumption was flat or declining
slightly statewide, Arcata’s household electrical use grew by 25 percent. City staff traced the increase to more than 600 houses that were using at least triple the electricity of the
average home—a level consistent with a commercial cannabis operation. The city has borne other costs, too, besides simply missing its climate goals. Inexpertly wired grow
houses catch fire, and the conversion of residential units to indoor hothouses has cut into the city’s supply of affordable housing. Last November, city voters approved a stiff tax
on jumbo electricity consumers. Now the city council is working with other Humboldt County local governments to pass a similar tax so that growers can’t evade the fee simply
by fleeing the city limits, says City Councilman Michael Winkler. “We don’t want any place in Humboldt County to be a cheaper place to grow than any other. And since this is
the Silicon Valley of marijuana growing, there are a lot of reasons why people would want to stay here if they’re doing this,” he says. “My goal is to make it expensive enough to
get large-scale marijuana growing out of the neighborhoods.” A tax on excessive electricity use may seem like an indirect way of curbing household cannabis cultivation, but the
city had to back away from its more direct approach—a zoning ordinance—when the federal government threatened to prosecute local officials throughout the state if they
Attempts in neighboring Mendocino County to issue permits
to outdoor growers meeting environmental and public-safety standards were foiled when federal
attorneys slapped county officials with similar warning—illustrating, yet again, the way prohibition
sabotages efforts to reduce the industry’s environmental damage. Indeed, observers cite federal
cannabis prohibition as the biggest impediment to curbing the impacts of marijuana cultivation ,
which continues to expand despite a decades-long federal policy of zero tolerance. “We don’t have a set of best
management practices for this industry, partly because of federal prohibition,” says researcher
Silvaggio. “If a grower comes to the county agricultural commissioner and asks, ‘What are the
practices I can use that can limit my impact?’, the county ag guy says, ‘I can’t talk to you about
that because we get federal money.’ ”
sanctioned an activity that is categorically forbidden under US law.
Illicit marijuana cultivation has put salmon on the brink of extinction in California
and the Pacific Northwest
Bland 14 (Alastair, reporter, 1-13-14, "California's Pot Farms Could Leave Salmon Runs Truly Smoked" National Public Radio)
www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/01/08/260788863/californias-pot-farms-could-leave-salmon-runs-truly-smoked
For many users and advocates of marijuana, the boom in the West Coast growing industry may be all good and groovy. But in
California, critics say the recent explosion of the marijuana industry along the state's North Coast — a
region called the "emerald triangle" — could
put a permanent buzz kill on struggling salmon populations.
The problem? According to critics, marijuana plantations guzzle enormous amounts of water while also
spilling pesticides, fertilizers and stream-clogging sediments into waterways, including the Eel
and the Klamath rivers, that have historically produced large numbers of Chinook salmon and
related species. "The whole North Coast is being affected by these pot growers," says Dave Bitts, a
Humboldt County commercial fisherman and the president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's
Associations. "I have nothing against people growing dope," he says, "but if you do, we want you to grow your crop in a way
that doesn't screw up fish habitat. There is no salmon-bearing watershed at this point that we can afford to
sacrifice." Growers of marijuana often withdraw water directly from small streams and use up to 6
gallons per day per plant during the summer growing season, says Scott Bauer, a fisheries
biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. "When you have 20,000 or 30,000
plants in a watershed, that is a lot of water," Bauer says. But marijuana growers are undeservedly taking the
blame for a problem that is caused by all residents of the North Coast, argues Kristin Nevedal, a founding chairperson with the
Emerald Growers Association. "It's just so easy to point a finger at cannabis growers because it's a federally prohibited substance,"
she tells The Salt. "The truth is, if you flush a toilet in the hills, you're a part of the problem." According to Bauer, 24
tributaries of the Eel River — in which once-enormous spawning runs of Chinook salmon have
nearly vanished — went completely dry in the summer of 2013. Each, Bauer says, was being used
to irrigate pot farms. As a result, Bauer expects to see poor returns of Chinook and Coho salmon,
as well as steelhead, in several years. While 2013 saw record-low precipitation in California, drought, Bauer says, is
only part of the problem, and he still blames marijuana farmers. Taking water from a stream isn't necessarily illegal, though it does
usually require applying with the state for permission. Many farmers go this route, Bauer says. But of the estimated 4,000 pot
growers in Humboldt County alone, "maybe a couple have applied for" water use permits, Bauer says. Marijuana plantations
along the North Coast are proliferating . Bauer, who has closely studied Google Earth images of
the area, estimates that acreage under pot cultivation doubled from 2009 to 2012. Stormer Feiler, a
scientist with California's North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, confirms the same:
"It's like the gold rush," he says. California's Chinook salmon fishery was canceled or shortened
three years in a row beginning in 2008. This occurred following record-low spawning returns in
the Sacramento River, one of the largest salmon-producing watersheds on the West Coast. The
crash was blamed partly on agricultural overuse of the river's water. Since then, the Golden Gate Salmon
Association, a group based in San Francisco, has been advocating for more fish-friendly use of
the river's water —especially limits on how much water can be pumped into farmland. Now, marijuana farms have
emerged as an issue of increasing concern, says the association's executive director, John McManus. "It's not
just the water they're taking out of the streams but the chemicals and nutrients they're putting into
the water," McManus says. Fertilizers that drain into rivers can cause floating carpets of algae to
grow in the water. When these mats begin to decay, the breakdown process steals oxygen from
the water, suffocating fish. Bauer has discovered pools full of dead adult Chinook salmon — fish
full of eggs, he says, that had not yet spawned. As many as a half-million Chinook salmon once
spawned in the Eel River each year. By the 1950s, the fish were almost gone. Since then, the
population has slightly rebounded, and several thousand Chinook now return to the Eel annually.
Scott Greacen, the executive director of Friends of the Eel River, warns that, unless pot growers
are more closely regulated , some of California's North Coast salmon runs could be looking at
extinction.
No alt causes—marijuana is the number one threat to salmon
Harkinson 14 (Josh, reporter, March/April 2014, "The Landscape-Scarring, Energy-Sucking, Wildlife-Killing Reality of Pot
Farming" Mother Jones) www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/marijuana-weed-pot-farming-environmental-impacts
Among the downsides of the green rush is the strain it puts on water resources in a droughtplagued region. Scott Bauer, a biologist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, calculates
that irrigation for cannabis farms has sucked up all of the water that would ordinarily keep local
salmon streams running through the dry season. Marijuana cultivation , he believes, "is a big reason
why" at least 24 salmon and steelhead streams stopped flowing last summer. "I would consider it
probably the No. 1 threat" to salmon in the area , he told me. "We are spending millions of dollars on
restoring streams. We are investing all this money in removing roads and trying to contain
sediment and fixing fish path barriers, but without water there's no fish."
Salmon are a keystone species—preserving their habitat is key to avoid
ecosystem collapse
DOW 05 (Defenders of Wildlife, wildlife conservation organization, “Pacific Salmon“)
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/9F_2005_Pacific_Salmon_Decline_2005.pdf
Pacific salmon are keystone species , which means they are essential components of their
ecosystem. Their absence would result in devastating effects to other plants and wildlife species,
just as the removal of a keystone from a masonry arch results in its collapse. Therefore, the impacts
of the current decline of salmon on the ecology of the Pacific Northwest are staggering . As fewer
fish return each year to spawn, there is less food for the animals that depend on them. More than
22 different animals feed on salmon throughout the fish's life cycle. Such animals include grizzly
bears, orcas and various insects. Salmon ensure the long-term health of ecosystems because
when they die, after spawning in the headwaters of watersheds, their decomposing bodies return
precious nutrients to the environment. Without salmon, fewer nutrients supplied to complex
ecosystems such as the Snake River in Washington means that the biodiversity of that region suffers.
Ecosystem collapse causes extinction—there’s an invisible threshold and it is
irreversible
Diner 94 (Major David N., Judge Advocate General's Corps – United States Army, “The Army and The Endangered Species Act:
Who's Endangering Whom?” Military Law Review, Winter, 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161, Lexis)
The prime reason is the world's survival. Like all animal life, humans live off of other species. At some
point, the number of species could decline to the point at which the ecosystem fails, and then
humans also would become extinct. No one knows how many [*171] species the world needs to
support human life, and to find out – by allowing certain species to become extinct -- would not be
sound policy. In addition to food, species offer many direct and indirect benefits to mankind . 68
2.Ecological Value. -- Ecological value is the value that species have in maintaining the environment. Pest, 69 erosion, and flood
control are prime benefits certain species provide to man. Plants and animals also provide additional ecological
services-- pollution control, 70 oxygen production, sewage treatment, and biodegradation.71
3.Scientific and Utilitarian Value. -- Scientific value is the use of species for research into the physical processes of the world. 72
Without plants and animals, a large portion of basic scientific research would be impossible. Utilitarian value is the direct utility
humans draw from plants and animals. 73 Only a fraction of the [*172] earth's species have been examined, and mankind may
someday desperately need the species that it is exterminating today. To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal
Swamp southeastern shrew 74 could save mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are useless to man in a
direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their extirpations could affect a directly useful
species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a species affects other species dependent on it. 75 Moreover,
as the number of species decline, the effect of each new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. 76 4.Biological
Diversity. -- The main premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. 77As the current mass
extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within
ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious
future implications. 78 [*173] Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species,
filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more
complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is
connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which
if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." 79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially
simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem
failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild
examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with
all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human
extinction . Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the
rivets from an aircraft's wings, n80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.
Legalizing marijuana is key to remove political barriers to the collection of energy
data which is key to solve warming
Elkind 14 (Ethan, Climate Policy Associate with a joint appointment at UC Berkeley School of Law and UCLA School of
Law/taught at UCLA Law School’s Frank Wells Environmental Law Clinic, February 10th 2014, “How Legalizing Marijuana Could
Help Fight Climate Change”, http://legal-planet.org/2014/02/10/how-legalizing-marijuana-could-help-fight-climate-change/, AB)
Now that the two states that just legalized marijuana sent their football teams to the Superbowl this year, it’s clear that the stars
are aligning for legalizing marijuana nationwide. Sure, legalizing marijuana makes fiscal, moral, and
practical sense, but what about the benefits to the environment? Well, it turns out that even the fight against
climate change could potentially be enhanced by making cannabis — and the grow operations that
produce it — legal. It starts with the grow sites. Regular Legal Planet readers may recall co-blogger Rick Frank writing about
the local hazards and pollution caused by illegal grow operations on public lands. But there’s another, potentially broader
environmental issue at stake with legalizing and mainstreaming grow operations: enabling the
improved collection of energy data to help target energy conservation and efficiency programs.
Energy data are critical to the fight against climate change and other harmful forms of air
pollution. Policy makers, especially here in California (as represented by Ken Alex, Legal Planet guest blogger and senior
advisor to Governor Jerry Brown), would like to get a better sense of where the most energy is being used.
If they could access energy data by neighborhoods, industry, and time of use , among other categories,
policy makers could target the most inefficient customers with incentives and rates to become
more efficient. Reducing this electricity usage would have major benefits in terms of reducing air
pollution (including greenhouse gas emissions) from power plants and saving ratepayers money
from the avoided construction of new plants. Not to mention that the customers themselves would benefit
from paying for less electricity. So what is standing in the way of giving policy makers access to the vital data?
Privacy concerns. Even though the energy data are anonymized and aggregated, a vocal segment of ratepayers
doesn’t like even the remote possibility that the government could use these data to know when you’re home, when you leave for
work, or how your business operates. Overall, most people have little to hide when it comes to electricity
usage. But indoor marijuana growers sure do, and they are quietly constituting a major force in
opposition to greater disclosure of energy data. And they have reason for concern. In documented cases, police
have issued subpoenas for electricity data to bust pot growers. This is not a small industry either: a 2012 study by Evan Mills of the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (the Lab was not involved in his work) indicated that these grow operations could
be responsible for up to 2% of nationwide household electricity usage, at a total cost of $6 billion
(in fact, the growers themselves may be our first target for implementing improved efficiency measures, given their potentially
wasteful, unregulated ways). So it’s not a stretch to think that legalizing marijuana nationwide, and allowing
commercial grow operations to proceed in a regulated fashion, could have the additional benefit
of defusing some of the major privacy objections to releasing environmentally beneficial energy
data. Of course, the privacy objections aren’t just limited to marijuana growers, and even with legalization, some residential
growers may still want or need to remain anonymous. But sensible marijuana policies could make a major
difference in alleviating privacy concerns, unlocking the data that can lead to sound and strategic
energy efficiency programs.
Transparency in emissions data is key to solve warming
Fagotto and Graham 13 (Elena, Ph.D. at Erasmus University Rotterdam and senior researcher at Harvard University and
Mary is a research fellow at both KSG and the Georgetown University Law Center“, http://issues.org/23-4/fagotto-2/ , Full
Disclosure: Using Transparency to Fight Climate Change”, November 27th, AB)
An essential first step in any effective climate change policy is to require major contributors to
fully disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. Congressional leaders are finally working
seriously on long term-approaches to counter climate change. But all the major proposals leave a critical
policy gap because they would not take effect for at least five years. Meanwhile, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions continue
to increase, and company executives continue to make decisions that lock in the emissions of future power
plants, factories, and cars. Congress could fill that policy gap now by requiring greater transparency . In
the immediate future, legislating product labeling and factory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions would make
markets work better. Such disclosure would expose inefficiencies and allow investors, business
partners, employees, community residents, and consumers to compare cars, air conditioners, lawn
mowers, and manufacturing plants. As people factored that information into everyday choices,
company executives would have new incentives to cut emissions sooner rather than later. Greater
transparency would also help jump start whatever cap-and-trade or other regulatory approach emerges from the
current congressional debate. A carefully constructed transparency system is therefore an essential element of
U.S. climate change strategy. Such a system would fill a legislative void and provide immediate
benefits as Congress continues its debate. Congress is debating long-term approaches to climate change. Barbara
Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and John Dingell (D-MI), chair of the House Energy
and Commerce Committee, are holding wide-ranging hearings, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (DCA) has created a select committee to
coordinate climate change action in the House. Three major bills propose variations on a cap-and-trade approach to cutting
greenhouse gas emissions. All combine industry emission limits or “caps” with government-created markets for trading emission
permits. The bills differ mainly in the progressive severity of caps and in how they are set. The most ambitious proposal, introduced
by Boxer and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), proposes caps that would reduce emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Ironically,
though, even if the 110th Congress approves some variation on a cap-and-trade approach, the new law will not
create any immediate incentives for manufacturers, power providers, factory farms, and other
major contributors to reduce emissions. If President Bush signed such legislation in 2008, his action would only signal
the beginning of another debate over the rules that would govern the system. That debate is likely to be long and
acrimonious because the fine print of the regulations will determine which companies are the real winners
or losers from government action. Regulations will govern the mechanics of trading emission
permits, the allocation of “caps” among industries and companies, and the timing of compliance—
all costly and contentious issues for energy-intensive businesses. Such delay may be inevitable but its costs will be
high. Even conservative projections conclude that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will continue to
increase rapidly during the next decade and will produce increasingly serious consequences. The
administration’s latest climate action report, circulated in draft, projects that a 19% increase in emissions
between 2000 and 2020 will contribute to persistent drought, coastal flooding, and water shortages in many parts of the country and
around the world. That increase could be as high as 30% under a business-as-usual scenario. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) reports that carbon dioxide emissions, the most common greenhouse gas, increased by 20% from 1990 to 2005, and
emissions of three more potent fluorinated gases, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocompounds, and sulfur hexafluoride, weighted for
their relative contribution to climate change, increased by 82.5%. The
U nited S tates still holds the dubious
distinction of being the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. Each large contributor to increasing
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions has a unique story. Carbon dioxide emissions from generating electricity, responsible for 41% of
total U.S. emissions from fossil fuel combustion in 2005, continue to increase faster than energy use because dramatic increases in
the price of natural gas have led some power providers to increase their reliance on coal. The most recent estimates of the federal
Energy Information Administration project that such emissions will increase 1.2% a year from 2005 to 2030. (The burning of
petroleum and natural gas results in 25% and 45% less carbon emissions per unit respectively than does the burning of coal.)
Power companies are investing now in facilities that will shape the next half-century of electricity generation—and the next halfcentury of greenhouse gas emissions. Many of the more than 100 new coal-fired power plants on the drawing boards will have
useful lives of 50 years or more. Carbon emissions from the incineration of municipal solid waste, not even including paper and yard
trimmings, increased 91% from 1990 to 2005 as more plastics, synthetic rubber, and other wastes from petroleum products were
burned. Carbon emissions from cement manufacture increased 38% as construction activity increased to meet the demands of the
growing U.S. economy. Carbon emissions from the burning of gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel to power cars, trucks, planes, and
other forms of transportation increased 32% during the same period because of increased travel and “the stagnation of fuel
efficiency across the U.S. vehicle fleet,” according to the EPA. Executives will need powerful incentives to alter
current plans in order to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions any time soon.
Most are understandably reluctant to place their companies at a competitive disadvantage by
making bold and often costly emission-cutting moves unilaterally. In fact, the prolonged congressional debate may
make executives more reluctant to act early since their companies may reap large emission-cutting credits once regulations take
effect. So far, neither the administration nor Congress has come up with any way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next
critical years. A carefully constructed transparency system would mobilize the power of public
opinion, inform choice, and help markets work better now. Requiring disclosure for each proposed and
existing major factory and power plant as well as for each new car, truck, furnace, refrigerator, and other energy-intensive product
would expose their relative carbon efficiencies as well as their total contributions to such
emissions. Once disclosed, emissions data could be used by mayors and governors to design and carry out
emission-reduction plans; by local zoning and permitting authorities to place conditions on the
construction or alteration of plants; by investors to more accurately predict material risks; by
consumers to choose among cars, air conditioners, and heating systems; and by employees to decide where they want
to work. Environmental groups, industry associations, and local and national media could use the
information to help to pinpoint the most inefficient factories and cars.
Warming is real, human caused, and causes extinction—acting now is key to
avoid catastrophic collapse
Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and
Human Survival,” BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4—2—14, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510, accessed 8-31-14.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on
its recent update of the physical science of global warming [1], the
IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no
doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival , health, and well-being. The IPCC
has already concluded that it is “ virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate
system” and that it is “ extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average
surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic [1]. Its new report outlines the future threats of
further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea
level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and
violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations [is] at risk.” [2] Such
comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to
human health of the 21st century.” [3] The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for
example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend
on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would
probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. [4]
“ Business as usual ” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per
million (ppm), which is a 40% increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver
global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised
global community.” [5]. The
IPCC warns of “ tipping points ” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead
to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is
now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly
damaging impacts on people around the globe.” [2] And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO)
confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in
global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” [6]
Back to cartels:
Studies show heg solves war
Sempa, assistant US Attorney, 11
(Francis, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, an adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes
University, contributing editor to American Diplomacy, October 2011, “Review of ‘Dangerous Times? The International Politics of
Great Power Peace By Christopher J. Fettweis,’” Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 63, p. 150,
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dangerous+Times%3f+The+International+Politics+of+Great+Power+Peace-a0275489833, DOA: 1031-14, ara)
Forget Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli. Put aside Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman. Close the military academies and war colleges. Shut our
overseas bases. Bring
our troops home. Make dramatic cuts in the defense budget. The end of major
war, and perhaps the end of war itself, is near, according to Tulane assistant professor Christopher Fettweis in his recent book,
Dangerous Times? The International Politics of Great Power Peace. Fettweis is not the first intellectual, nor will he be the last, to proclaim the onset of
perpetual peace. He is squarely in the tradition of Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, and Norman Angell, to name just three. Indeed, in the book’s
introduction, Fettweis attempts to rehabilitate Angell’s reputation for prophecy, which suffered a devastating blow when the Great War falsified his claim
in The Great Illusion that economic interdependence had rendered great power war obsolete. Angell, Fettweis writes, was the first “prominent
constructivist thinker of the twentieth century,” and was not wrong—just ahead of his time (p. 5). Fettweis bases his theory or vision of the
obsolescence of major war on the supposed linear progress of human nature, a major tenet of 20th-century liberalism that is rooted in the rationalist
theories of the Enlightenment. “History,” according to Fettweis, “seems to be unfolding as a line extending into the future—a halting, incomplete,
inconsistent line perhaps, one with frequent temporary reversals, but a line nonetheless.” The world is growing “more liberal and more reliant upon
reason, logic, and science” (p. 217). We
have heard this all before. Human nature can be perfected. Statesmen and leaders will
be guided by reason and science. Such thinking influenced the visionaries of the French Revolution and produced 25 years of war among
the great powers of Europe. Similar ideas influenced President Woodrow Wilson and his intellectual supporters who endeavored at Versailles to
transform the horrors of World War I into a peace that would make that conflict “the war to end all wars.” What followed were disarmament
conferences, an international agreement to outlaw war, the rise of expansionist powers, appeasement by the democracies, and the most destructive
war in human history. Ideas,
which Fettweis claims will bring about the proliferation of peace , transformed
Russia, Germany, and Japan into expansionist, totalitarian powers . Those same ideas led to the Gulag, the
Holocaust, and the Rape of Nanking. So much for human progress. Fettweis knows all of this, but claims that since the end of the
Cold War, the leaders and peoples of the major powers, except the United States, have accepted the idea that
major war is unthinkable. His proof is that there has been no major war among the great powers
for 20 years— a historical period that coincides with the American “unipolar” moment . This is very thin
empirical evidence upon which to base a predictive theory of international relations. Fettweis criticizes
the realist and neorealist schools of thought, claiming that their adherents focus too narrowly on the past behavior of states in the international system.
In his view, realists place too great an emphasis on power. Ideas and norms instead of power, he claims, provide structure to the international system.
Classical geopolitical theorists such as Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Nicholas Spykman, and Colin Gray are dismissed by Fettweis in less
than two pages, despite the fact that their analyses of great power politics and conflict have long been considered sound and frequently prescient.
Realists and classical geopoliticians have more than 2,000 years of empirical evidence to support their
theories of how states and empires behave and how the international system works. Ideas are
important, but power is the governing force in international politics, and geography is the most permanent factor in
the analysis of power. Fettweis makes much of the fact that the countries of Western and Central Europe, which waged war
against each other repeatedly for nearly 400 years, are at peace, and claims that there is little likelihood that they will ever again wage war
against each other. Even if the latter assertion turns out to be true, that does not mean that the end of major war is in sight .
Throughout history, some peoples and empires that previously waged war for one reason or another became pacific without producing worldwide
perpetual peace: the Mongols, Saracens, Ottomans, Dutch, Venetians, and the Spanish Empire come immediately to mind. A Europe at peace does
not translate to an Asia, Africa, and Middle East at peace. In a world in which major wars are obsolete, Fettweis
believes the United States
needs to adjust its grand strategy from vigorous internationalism to strategic restraint. His specific
recommendations include the removal of all U.S. military forces from Europe; an end to our bilateral security guarantees to Japan and South Korea; an
end to our alliance with Israel; an indifference to the balance of power on the Eurasian landmass; a law enforcement approach to terrorism; a drastic
Fettweis is proposing is effectively
an end to what Walter Russell Mead calls “the maritime world order” that was established by Great Britain and maintained first by the
British Empire and then by the United States. It is a world order that has defeated repeated challenges by potential
hegemonic powers and resulted in an unprecedented spread of prosperity and freedom. But all of
that, we are assured, is in the past. China poses no threat. The United States can safely withdraw from
Eurasia. The power vacuum will remain unfilled. Fettweis needs a dose of humility . Sir Halford Mackinder, the greatest of all
cut in military spending; a much smaller Navy; and the abolition of regional combatant commands. What
geopoliticians, was referring to visionaries and liberal idealists like Fettweis when he cautioned, “He would be a sanguine man . . . who would trust the
future peace of the world to a change in the mentality of any nation.” Most profoundly, General Douglas MacArthur, who knew a little bit more about
war and international conflict than Fettweis, reminded the cadets at West Point in 1962 that “only the dead have seen the end of war.”
**Studies show heg solves war
Beede 11 [BENJAMIN R. BEEDE Rutgers, The State University of New JerseyFettweis, Christopher J. 2008. Losing Hurts
Twice as Bad: The Four States to Moving Beyond Iraq. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. 270 pages. ISBN-13: 9780393067613, $25.95 hardcover, p. internet]
Fettweis’ book might easily be dismissed as an intriguing analysis, but one that has been superseded by the advent of the Obama Administration, and
Fettweis made a number of
assumptions that have now been invalidated , moreover, including a continuation of prosperity. Despite its flaws, however, the
the changes in direction that the Obama team has advocated and that it may implement.
book is a provocative contribution to the literature that criticizes the forcefulness of the U.S. foreign and military policy. Fettweis states that his objective
is to analyze the “likely consequences of disaster in Iraq” (16), but he really has two purposes. One is to explain to people in the United States how
they can adjust to the loss of the Iraq war. The second is to persuade readers that the United States can safely reduce its activity in international
affairs. Although the author’s discussion of Iraq must be addressed, this review emphasizes Fettweis’ contention that the United States can safely be
less assertive in world affairs because the world is not as dangerous a place as often claimed, and his closely related point that the public needs to
develop a more discriminating approach to assessing threats from abroad, thereby enabling it to hold its government to higher levels of competency
and accountability. Fettweis’ book title comes from a remark by sports figure Sparky Anderson that “losing hurts twice as bad as winning feels good”
(13). He believes that this observation is valid, and he comes back to those words repeatedly. To support his contention concerning the significance of
Anderson’s statement, Fettweis borrows from the literature of psychology to explain how people experience losses, ranging from having relatives or
friends taken from them by death to having their favorite sports teams lose games. In competitive situations, the harmful psychological effects of losing
are said to be intensified significantly when one adversary or opponent was “supposed” to win because of its strength. The number of instances where
large countries have lost to guerrilla movements demonstrates that perceptions of the military advantages that the seemingly stronger side enjoys may
well be outweighed by other factors, however (see Arreguin-Toft 2005; Record 2007). Fettweis recommends a rapid withdrawal
of the U.S. forces from Iraq. He believes that the Iraq war has “been the worst kind of defeat for the United States: an unnecessary one, in a war that
should never have been fought” (16, emphasis in the original). Not only was the war a huge error, Iraq is in such bad OCTOBER BOOK REVIEWS |
865 shape that the United States cannot do much to assist its reconstruction. A long-term occupation might eliminate many problems in Iraq, but he
doubts the United States will stay long enough to affect major changes in that country. Little harm will come from the withdrawal, despite predictions by
many that there would be civil war in Iraq and a security breakdown in the entire region. Fettweis is not a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs, and his
interest is in the effects the Iraq war is having and will have on the United States, not so much in the Iraq situation. Thus, his book is not comparable to
studies like that by O’Leary (2009). There
are at least two schools of thought about the Iraq war, but Fettweis
ignores this division
of opinion. One school, which includes Fettweis, criticizes the Bush Administration for having rashly invaded Iraq and
for having failed to plan and execute the operation properly. Fettweis writes that “[w]e were led into the Iraq morass not by evil people lying on behalf of
oil companies but by poor strategists with a shallow, naive understanding of international politics” (29). Another school of interpretation views the Iraq
(and Afghanistan) commitments simply as steps in a campaign undertaken to give the United States a lasting hegemony in the world. From the Bush
Administration’s perspective, Iraq might even be considered a success. The executive branch demonstrated once again that it can wage war with few
checks on its actions, and gave the United States a greater presence in the Middle East. The
Obama
Administration
has altered Bush’s
course to some extent, but so far, there has not been a radical shift. Indeed, there has been and remains the possibility of a greater commitment
in the region, especially into Pakistan. Iraq and the United States have agreed to the removal of coalition forces by 2011, but the continued violence in
Iraq and the construction of substantial military bases suggest that a U.S. military presence might continue past 2011. In February 2009, Secretary of
Defense Gates reiterated the Obama Administration’s commitment to 2011, but in late May 2009, the army chief of staff, George Casey, declared that
his service branch, at least, is planning for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for another decade. In any event, there is little prospect for a full
disengagement from southwest Asia any time soon. Given one of the purposes of his book, it is hardly surprising that Fettweis focuses almost entirely
on Iraq. He ignores Afghanistan, except for repeatedly citing the Soviet persistence in trying to hold that country as an example of a great power
making the error of invading a small country in the face of deep nationalism in the latter. He might have been well advised to view the entire area of
southwestern Asia. Ahmed Rashid (2008) has described the U.S. involvement in the region that has extended well beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and
that suffers from the same kinds of misjudgments made in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially an overreliance on military measures and a reluctance to
commit substantial resources to economic development. Fettweis uses Iraq to argue for a strategy of restraint based on his
sanguine view that “we [the United States and, indeed, the entire world] are living in a golden age” (31, emphasis in the original), and that “[g]reat
power conflict today is all but unthinkable; therefore, calculations surrounding the dangers posed by a united Eurasia should change, since the threats
it once posed no longer exist” (208). With the end of the Cold War, the ability of the enemies of the United States to harm this country is quite limited.
Hostile acts can be perpetrated, but such attacks cannot overthrow the United States (31). This strategy is hardly new. Years ago, it was summarized
in these words, “Instead of preserving obsolete Cold War alliances and embarking on an expensive and dangerous campaign for global stability, the
United States should view the collapse of Soviet power as an opportunity to adopt a less interventionist policy” (Carpenter 1992, 167). Despite
the optimistic picture painted by some national security theorists, the world does contain some
dangerous elements . David E. Sanger (2009), for example, presents a chilling picture of nuclear weapons in
very possibly unsteady hands. Much is said in the book concerning national “credibility,” that is, the ability of a country to maintain its
prestige and its reputation for decisive action based on its past performance. Fettweis argues that many governmental leaders, academic
commentators, and journalists have been obsessed with this element of national power and have wanted the United States to deal with virtually any
states that “[f]or some reason, U.S. policymakers seem to be
especially prone to overestimate the threats they face” (116). There is no explanation of why this
should be the case , nor is there any comparison with the propensity of leaders in other countries
to make similar inaccurate projections. Numerous instances can be cited where governmental leaders and commentators have
political crisis that occurs (161-75). Fettweis
argued heatedly for “action” on the ground that “inaction” will damage the reputation of the United States. Early in the Carter Administration, for
example, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski dedicated himself for some time to instigating the dispatch of navy task force to the Horn of
Africa during a period of tension between Ethiopia and Somalia. After failing to persuade the secretaries of state and defense that such action was
necessary, Brzezinski waged a covert effort through the media to bring a decision in favor of his policy (Gardner 2008, 40-2). Two case histories cited
in the book as examples of a disastrous insistence on maintaining credibility are the Spanish and British efforts to hold the Netherlands and the British
colonies that became the United States, respectively. More recent instances that could have been cited are the controversies in the United States
concerning the “loss” of China in the late 1940s and the establishment of a communist regime in Cuba in the late 1950s. Sensitivity concerning Cuba
led in part to the intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, and other episodes where the United States committed itself to fighting insurgencies
in Latin America. OCTOBER BOOK REVIEWS | 867 Concerns about the political impact of the “loss” of Vietnam played a significant role in decisions
to support the Republic of Vietnam. These episodes are largely omitted, though. Fear is a potent political weapon, and foreign threats, whether real or
imaginary, are highly useful within the domestic political arena. Claims of a “missile gap” helped John F. Kennedy win the presidency, for example. The
armed services and the various intelligence agencies are rewarded because of fears of foreign threats. Although the armed forces may be cautious
about entering a given conflict or making other violent moves, they are unlikely to stress the peaceful nature of the world if they want to retain their
budgets and their prestige. Another element in strategy formulation in the United States has been its experience with long-term threats. White (1997)
asserts that the long conflict with the Soviet Union fundamentally structured the discussion and resolution of public policy issues in the United States,
and greatly strengthened the presidency at the expense of Congress and the political parties. Although his book was written before 9/11, his
observation that political activists and the public have become accustomed to protracted battles with foreign enemies makes it easy to understand why
they could readily accept a “long war” against terrorism. Somewhat along the same line, Sherry (1995) maintains that this country has been under
emergency conditions from the Great Depression onward, perhaps even before, permeating the United States with “militarism” in its broadest sense.
Going back even further, some writers have argued that United States’ assertiveness may be traced to the late nineteenth and especially the early
twentieth century. Lears (2009) points critically to Theodore Roosevelt as a key player in this development, and Ninkovich (1999) offers a more
favorable view of the “crisis internationalism” of Woodrow Wilson. Fettweis touches on this history, but he underestimates
the extent
to which the United States has been conditioned to react vigorously to a range of foreign policy
issues, and overestimates the differences in foreign and military policy brought about by changes
from one administration to another. Given this conditioning, changing the mind-sets of both elites and the public may be an
extremely difficult task. To a degree, Fettweis’ arguments resemble those of the “American empire”
theorists, such as Bacevich (2008), Johnson (2006), and Gardner and Young (2005). Critics of the “American empire”
believe that the United States produces much of the unrest and the tension in the world through its unilateral actions
and its emphasis on military power. Fettweis does not go that far, but his advocacy of “strategic restraint” is certainly
compatible with such views. He agrees that the United States’ involvements—especially military commitments—abroad may unsettle
conditions in countries as much as they may stabilize them, but his purpose is primarily to reassure the people of the United States that less assertive
activity by their country will not result in world chaos. Thus he does not have much to say about the motivations of elite figures 868 | POLITICS &
POLICY / October 2011 who advocate an active foreign policy. His argument seems to be that the United States is vastly overextended in its
commitments as a result of a number of individual mistakes stemming from an overconcern with credibility rather than a flawed strategy. Despite his
disclaimers, Fettweis’ words sometimes resemble the arguments of pre-World War II isolationists. Indeed,
throughout the book, the word “internationalists,” which properly describes those concerned with international cooperation, is used to refer to those who
should be termed “interventionists,” whether their motivations are power political, economic, or humanitarian, or a mixture of the three. Fettweis
believes that there was little that the United States could have done to prevent the outbreak of
World War II in Europe, moreover. On the contrary, firmer U.S. support of France and Great Britain
might have encouraged those countries to force Germany to evacuate the newly reoccupied
Rhineland and to render it much more cautious in its later actions. After he successfully implemented his plan to
put troops into the Rhineland in 1936, Hitler told his confidants that a French demand for a withdrawal would have been successful owing to Germany’s
military weakness. Fettweis
even praises the United States because it “had the wisdom to remain neutral
for more than two years” and thus “escaped the worst of the suffering” (206). This is surely wrong. An earlier
involvement in the war would doubtless have reduced U.S. casualties and other costs because invasions of
Europe would have been unnecessary if the French and British had held at least part of the continent, and because Germany might not have
developed a cushion of occupied territories to protect it from land attacks and from air assaults for a time. Whether a public educated by books like this
one would be able to make suitable threat assessments, and thereby be better able to exercise control over governmental actions abroad is another
question. Fettweis’
work may be quite persuasive because he expresses his views clearly and avoids
highly charged language. However, if elites agree about dangers from abroad, then popular opinion may have little effect on policy
making and policy implementation. Fettweis’ thinking is significantly flawed by his assumption that “politics
is, and always will be, the enemy of strategy,” and reiterates his point (26, 157). Fettweis adds that “it would be naive to suggest
that it is possible to keep politics completely separate from strategy, nor would it be fully desirable to do so in a democracy” (26-7), but “for the sake of
this book, we will attempt to clarify the national interest by keeping the two realms separate, to the extent possible” (27). Determining national strategy
is necessarily a highly political act, and it cannot be established without considering the demands of major internal stakeholders. What he terms
“politics” may often be differing opinions based on different data or interpretations of the same data. Political survival is critical for a political leader, and
such leaders can understandably be hesitant in exercising restraint if they believe their opponents will attack them, perhaps decisively, for being “soft”
on the enemies of the day. Fettweis is fond of the term “realist” to OCTOBER BOOK REVIEWS | 869 refer to some defense and foreign policy
analysts, but describing someone as a “realist” may simply mean that the person agrees with the views of the individual applying that description. In
Appropriate policy decisions
are likely to be made on the basis of accurate intelligence and careful assessments rather than
adherence to a general outlook.
certain instances, “realism” can mean being restrained, and, in other instances, being highly assertive.
Back to Prohibition
**The prohibitionist model remains the global norm for drug policy—this prevents
effective implementation of harm reduction strategies
Brian Ford, “From Mountains to Molehills: A Comparative Analysis of Drug Policy,” ANNUAL SURVEY OF INTERNATIONAL &
COMPARATIVE LAW v. 19, Spring 2013, p. 199-201.
This paper examines the debate surrounding the trend of global movements away from prohibition and towards a harms reduction
the prohibitionist model that is, by and large, the global status
quo of how countries deal with drugs. Under the prohibitionist approach, governments criminally
ban the production, trafficking, sale, possession, and use of drugs in an effort to directly combat
the harms associated with drugs. Section I of this paper presents the prohibitionist approach as the international status
approach to drug policy. This paper reviews
quo and [*201] examines the effects and failures of that approach. Section II examines a variety of harms reduction approaches
that attempt to address harms to drug users and society at large through treatment, tolerance, and the recognition of human rights.
However, the
potential successes of harms reduction models are still constrained by the reality of
prohibitionist legal regimes whose stricter criminalization of drugs often contradict and frustrate
the policies and legislative efforts of harms reduction proponents. Because the harms reduction
approaches are restrained by a prohibitionist legal regime that criminalizes their policies,
legalization becomes a necessary step to achieving the goals of harms reduction approaches.
Therefore, section III of this paper presents an alternative to legal systems that ban drugs in order to remove this clash between
prohibitionist and harms reduction policies. Section III lays out three arguments for the legalization of drugs on a global scale. This
paper concludes that a legalization-based approach is the best drug policy. It advocates that governing bodies all
over the world adopt an intelligent, legalized approach to the problem of drugs in society as a more effective approach to
combating the harms of drug addiction and the crimes of the drug trade while upholding human
rights, global equity, and rule of law.
2AC
Neolib K: 2AC
Neoliberalism is self-correcting – consumer-induced responsibility and
regulations effectively limit plundering
Hollender and Breen 10 – * Founder of the American Sustainable Business Council, a progressive alternative to the
Chamber of Commerce, **Editorial Director of the Fast Company
Jeffrey Hollender, Bill Breen, “The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses will Win,” pg. xix
The responsibility revolution is about more than cutting carbon, reducing energy use, monitoring
factories, or donating to charities. It’s about reimagining companies from within : innovating new ways of
working, instilling a new logic of competing, identifying new possibilities for leading, and redefining the very purpose of business.
Consequently, we’ve drawn on the best thinking not only from the corporate responsibility arena, but also from the realms of
strategy, leadership, and management. Others, to whom we are indebted, have developed some of this book’s core principles.
(We will acknowledge them as we present their ideas.) Our intent is to show how an emerging breed of business
revolutionaries is turning theory into practice and building organizations that grow revenue by
contributing to the greater good . This is a book about change, but it seeks to help companies change on the
inside—change their priorities, the way they organize, how they compete, and the way they interact with the world. We fully
concede that many companies, perhaps even most companies, won’t willingly alter their behavior. But they will change
nonetheless, and it won’t be because they’ve suddenly seen the light. It will be because massive numbers of
consumers, a spreading swarm of competitors, values-driven employees, and even that laggard
indicator, the
federal government, makes them change. Change is under way . The responsibility
revolution spreads. Perhaps you’ve seen the insurrection begin to roil your industry, and you’re determined to get out in
front of it. If so, welcome to the cause.
Extinction outweighs
Bostrum 12 (Nick, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford, directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and winner of the Gannon
Award, Interview with Ross Andersen, correspondent at The Atlantic, 3/6, “We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction”,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-human-extinction/253821/)
human extinction risks are poorly
understood and, worse still, severely underestimated by society . Some of these existential risks are fairly well known, especially the
Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, has argued over the course of several papers that
natural ones. But others are obscure or even exotic. Most worrying to Bostrom is the subset of existential risks that arise from human technology, a subset that he expects to
grow in number and potency over the next century.¶ Despite his concerns about the risks posed to humans by technological progress, Bostrom is no luddite. In fact, he is a
longtime advocate of transhumanism---the effort to improve the human condition, and even human nature itself, through technological means. In the long run he sees
technology as a bridge, a bridge we humans must cross with great care, in order to reach new and better modes of being. In his work, Bostrom uses the tools of philosophy and
mathematics, in particular probability theory, to try and determine how we as a species might achieve this safe passage. What follows is my conversation with Bostrom about
some of the most interesting and worrying existential risks that humanity might encounter in the decades and centuries to come, and about what we can do to make sure we
outlast them.¶ Some have argued that we ought to be directing our resources toward humanity's existing problems, rather than future existential risks, because many of the
existential risk mitigation may in fact be a dominant moral
priority over the alleviation of present suffering . Can you explain why? ¶ Bostrom: Well suppose you have a moral
view that counts future people as being worth as much as present people . You might say that fundamentally it doesn't
latter are highly improbable. You have responded by suggesting that
matter whether someone exists at the current time or at some future time, just as many people think that from a fundamental moral point of view, it doesn't matter where
A human life is a human life. If
you have that moral point of view that future generations matter in proportion to their population
numbers, then you get this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a much
higher utility than pretty much anything else that you could do. There are so many people that could come
into existence in the future if humanity survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of years, our descendants
might colonize billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently.
Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will tend to
outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinary standards.
somebody is spatially---somebody isn't automatically worth less because you move them to the moon or to Africa or something.
Combining radical critique with concrete action to address climate change in the
short-term is key to achieve societal transformation
Christian Parenti, Professor, Sustainable Development, School for International Training, Graduate Institute, “Climate Change:
What Role for Reform?” MONTHLY REVIEW v. 65 n. 11, 4—14, http://monthlyreview.org/2014/04/01/climate-change-role-reform,
accessed 4-24-14.
These measures could be realistic and effective in the short term. They are not my preferred version of social
change, nor do they solve all problems. And achieving even these modest emissions reducing reforms will require
robust grassroots pressure. If
capitalism can transition off fossil fuels over the next several decades, that
will merely buy time to continue struggling on all other fronts; most importantly, on all other
fronts of the environmental crisis. The left needs to have credible proposals for dealing with the
short-term aspects of the climate crisis as well as having a systematic critique and vision of long-term
change. Both should be advocated simultaneously , not pitted against each other. We are compelled
by circumstances to operate with multiple timeframes and at multiple scales . Reforms and
reformism is an important part of that. Given the state of the left globally, which outside of Latin America is largely in
disarray, achieving socialism will take a very long time indeed. Thus, the struggle for climate mitigation and adaptation
cannot wait for revolution.
Inequality declining
Perry 9 professor of economics and finance @ Univ of Michigan, M.A. and Ph.D @ George Mason University, MBA in finance
from Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, 12-1-2009 (Mark, “The Rich Are Getting Richer and
the Poor Are Getting Richer”, http://blog.american.com/?p=7694, RBatra)
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released a study on the “Living Conditions in the United States, 2005”
with detailed information on the “Percent of Households Reporting Consumer Durables,” and those percentages are displayed in the
table below for: a) all U.S. households in 2005, b) households with income below the official poverty line in 2005, and c) all
households in 1971. Not surprisingly, the percentage of U.S. households owning basic home appliances increased between 1971
and 2005 for all appliances except traditional telephones, which have gradually been replaced by cell phones. Certain appliances
such as air conditioning, clothes dryers, color TVs, and dishwashers that used to be luxury items owned by a minority of American
households in 1971 became so affordable that by 2005 a large majority of households owned all of those appliances. And some
household items such as microwave ovens, VCRs, computers, and cell phones that were virtually nonexistent in 1971 became so
affordable by 2005 that more than two of every three American households owned those items. But what is even more impressive is
the comparison of the living standards of households living below the poverty line in 2005 to all U.S. households in 1971. By
almost every measure of appliance ownership, poor American households in 2005 had much
better living conditions than the average American household in 1971, since poor households in 2005 had
much higher ownership rates for basic appliances like clothes dryers, dishwashers, color TVs, and air conditioners than all
households did in 1971. As economist Steve Horwitz commented recently about these improvements on the Austrian Economists
blog, “Life for the average American is better today than 35 years ago, life for poor Americans is much better than it was 35 years
ago, and poor Americans today largely live better than the average American did 35 years ago. Hard to square with a narrative of
economic stagnation or decline.” The reasons for the significant improvements in living standards over time for Americans at all
income levels? Entrepreneurial innovation, technology improvements, supply-chain efficiencies,
increases in productivity, and other market-based efficiencies that have continually driven prices
lower and lower over time, measured in what is most important: our time and the amount of labor it takes to earn the money to
purchase goods and services. The chart below shows retail prices for 11 different household appliances in both 1973 (data here)
and 2009 (data here), and the cost of purchasing those appliances measured by the number of “hours of work” at the average
hourly wage in each year (BLS data here: $4.12 per hour in 1973 vs. $18.72 per hour in 2009). The chart shows the
significant reductions in the real cost of basic household appliances between 1973 and today of from -50.7
percent for a basic kitchen stove (70.4 hours of work at the average wage in 1973 vs. 34.7 hours in 2009) to -83.5 percent for color
TVs (97.1 hours in 1973 vs. 16 hours in 2009). In total, to purchase all of those 11 basic household appliances in 1973, it would
have taken 551.1 hours of work (13.8 weeks or 3.4 months) at the average hourly wage. To purchase those same 11 appliances in
2009, it would have only taken 171 hours of work (4.3 weeks or 1.1 month), a whopping 69 percent reduction in the number of hours
worked. Or the typical worker in 1973 would have had to work from January 1 until the second week of April to earn enough income
to purchase those 11 appliances (ignoring taxes), whereas a worker today would only have to work from January 1 until the first few
days of February to earn enough income for those same appliances. Bottom Line: As much as we hear reports about the decline in
median income, economic stagnation, the disappearance of the middle class, and falling real wages, the data tell a much
different story that can be summarized as follows: The rich in America are getting richer and the
poor are getting richer.
Consumption practices are sustainable and prove no environment impact
Norberg 3 (Johan Norberg, Senior Fellow at Cato Institute, “In Defense of Global Capitalism”, p. 223)
It is a mistake, then, to believe that growth automatically ruins the environment. And claims that we
would need this or that number of planets for the whole world to attain a Western standard of consumption—those “ecological
footprint” calculations—are equally untruthful. Such a claim is usually made by environmentalists, and it is concerned, not so
much with emissions and pollution, as with resources running out if everyone were to live as we do in the affluent world.
Clearly, certain of the raw materials we use today, in present day quantities, would not suffice
for the whole world if everyone consumed the same things. But that information is just about as interesting
as if a prosperous Stone Age man were to say that, if everyone attained his level of consumption, there would not be enough
stone, salt, and furs to go around. Raw material consumption is not static. With more and more people
achieving a high level of prosperity, we start looking for ways of using other raw materials.
Humanity is constantly improving technology so as to get at raw materials that were previously
inaccessible, and we are attaining a level of prosperity that makes this possible. New innovations make it
possible for old raw materials to be put to better use and for garbage to be turned into new raw
materials. A century and a half ago, oil was just something black and sticky that people preferred not to step in and definitely
did not want to find beneath their land. But our interest in finding better energy sources led to methods being devised for using
oil, and today it is one of our prime resources. Sand has never been all that exciting or precious, but today it is a vital raw
material in the most powerful technology of our age, the computer. In the form of silicon—which makes up a quarter of the
earth's crust— it is a key component in computer chips. There is a simple market mechanism that averts
shortages. If a certain raw material comes to be in short supply, its price goes up. This makes
everyone more interested in economizing on that resource, in finding more of it, in reusing it,
and in trying to find substitutes for it.
Prior questions will never be fully settled—must take action even under
conditions of uncertainty
Molly Cochran 99, Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Georgia Institute for Technology, “Normative Theory in
International Relations”, 1999, pg. 272
To conclude this chapter, while modernist and postmodernist debates continue, while we are still unsure as
to what we can legitimately identify as a feminist ethical/political concern, while we still are unclear
about the relationship between discourse and experience , it is particularly important for feminists that
we proceed with analysis of both the material (institutional and structural) as well as the discursive. This holds
not only for feminists, but for all theorists oriented towards the goal of extending further moral inclusion
in the present social sciences climate of epistemological uncertainty. Important ethical/ political
concerns hang in the balance. We cannot afford to wait for the meta-theoretical questions to be
conclusively answered . Those answers may be unavailable. Nor can we wait for a credible vision
of an alt ernative institutional order to appear before an emancipatory agenda can be kicked into gear.
Nor do we have before us a chicken and egg question of which comes first: sorting out the
metatheoretical issues or working out which practices contribute to a credible institutional vision.
The two questions can and should be pursued together, and can be via moral imagination. Imagination can
help us think beyond discursive and material conditions which limit us, by pushing the boundaries of those limitations in thought and
examining what yields. In this respect, I believe international ethics as pragmatic critique can be a useful ally to feminist and
normative theorists generally.
No coherent alternative—movements fail
Jones 11 [Owen, Masters at Oxford, named one of the Daily Telegraph's 'Top 100 Most Influential People on the Left' for 2011,
author of "Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class", The Independent, UK, "Owen Jones: Protest without politics will change
nothing", 2011, www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-protest-without-politics-will-change-nothing2373612.html]
My first experience of police kettling was aged 16. It was May Day 2001, and the anti-globalisation movement was at its peak. The
turn-of-the-century anti-capitalist movement feels largely forgotten today, but it was a big deal at the time. To a left-wing teenager
growing up in an age of unchallenged neo-liberal triumphalism, just to have "anti-capitalism" flash up in the headlines was thrilling.
Thousands of apparently unstoppable protesters chased the world's rulers from IMF to World Bank summits – from Seattle to
Prague to Genoa – and the authorities were rattled.¶ Today, as protesters in nearly a thousand cities across the
world follow the example set by the Occupy Wall Street protests, it's worth pondering what happened to
the anti-globalisation movement. Its activists did not lack passion or determination. But they did
lack a coherent alternative to the neo-liberal project. With no clear political direction, the
movement was easily swept away by the jingoism and turmoil that followed 9/11, just two months after
Genoa.¶ Don't get me wrong: the Occupy movement is a glimmer of sanity amid today's economic madness. By descending on the
West's financial epicentres, it reminds us of how a crisis caused by the banks (a sentence that needs to be repeated until it becomes
a cliché) has been cynically transformed into a crisis of public spending. The founding statement of Occupy London puts it
succinctly: "We refuse to pay for the banks' crisis." The Occupiers direct their fire at the top 1 per cent, and rightly so – as US
billionaire Warren Buffett confessed: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're
winning."¶ The Occupy movement has provoked fury from senior US Republicans such as Presidential contender Herman Cain who
– predictably – labelled it "anti-American". They're right to be worried: those camping outside banks threaten to refocus attention on
the real villains, and to act as a catalyst for wider dissent. But
a coherent alternative to the tottering global
economic order remains, it seems, as distant as ever. ¶ Neo-liberalism crashes around, half-dead,
with no-one to administer the killer blow.¶ There's always a presumption that a crisis of capitalism is good news for
the left. Yet in the Great Depression, fascism consumed much of Europe. The economic crisis of the 1970s did lead to a resurgence
of radicalism on both left and right. But, spearheaded by Thatcherism and Reaganism, the New Right definitively crushed its
opposition in the 1980s.This time round, there doesn't even seem to be an alternative for the right to
defeat. That's not the fault of the protesters. In truth, the left has never recovered from being virtually
smothered out of existence . It was the victim of a perfect storm: the rise of the New Right; neoliberal globalisation; and the repeated defeats suffered by the trade union movement.¶ But, above all, it
was the aftermath of the collapse of Communism that did for the left. As US neo-conservative Midge Decter
triumphantly put it: "It's time to say: We've won. Goodbye." From the British Labour Party to the African National
Congress, left-wing movements across the world hurtled to the right in an almost synchronised fashion. It was as though the
left wing of the global political spectrum had been sliced off. That's why, although we live in an
age of revolt, there remains no left to give it direction and purpose.
Alt doesn’t solve the case—institutional focus key
Doran and Barry 6 – worked at all levels in the environment and sustainable development policy arena - at the United
Nations, at the Northern Ireland Assembly and Dáil Éireann, and in the Irish NGO sector. PhD--AND-- Reader in Politics, Queen's
University School of Politics, International Studies, and Philosophy. PhD Glasgow (Peter and John, Refining Green Political
Economy: From Ecological Modernisation to Economic Security and Sufficiency, Analyse & Kritik 28/2006, p. 250–275,
http://www.analyse-und-kritik.net/2006-2/AK_Barry_Doran_2006.pdf)
The aim of this article is to offer a draft of a realistic, but critical, version of green political economy to underpin the economic dimensions
of radical views of sustainable development. It is written explicitly with a view to encouraging others to respond to it in the necessary
collaborative effort to think through this aspect of sustainable development. Our position is informed by two important observations. As a
sign of our times, the crises that we are addressing under the banner of sustainable development (however inadequately) render the
distinction between what is ‘realistic’ and ‘radical’ problematic. It seems to us that the only realistic course is to revisit the most basic
assumptions embedded within the dominant model of development and economics. Realistically the only longterm option available is
radical. Secondly, we cannot build or seek to create a sustainable economy ab nihilo, but must begin —in an
agonistic fashion—from where we are, with the structures, institutions, modes of production, laws,
regulations and so on that we have. We make this point in Ireland with a story about the motorist who stops at the side of
the road to ask directions, only to be told: “Now Ma’m, I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.” ¶ This does not mean simply
accepting these as immutable or set in stone— after all, some of the current institutions, principles and structures
underpinning the dominant economic model are the very causes of unsustainable development— but we do need to
recognise that we must work with (and ‘through’—in the terms of the original German Green Party’s slogan of
“marching through the institutions”) these
existing structures as well as changing and reforming and in
some cases abandoning them as either unnecessary or positively harmful to the creation and maintenance of a sustainable economy and
society. Moreover, we have a particular responsibility under the current dominant economic trends to name the neo-liberal project as the
hegemonic influence on economic thinking and practice. In the words of Bourdieu/Wacquant (2001), neoliberalism is the new ‘planetary
vulgate’, which provides the global context for much of the contemporary political and academic debate on sustainable development. For
example, there is a clear hierarchy of trade (WTO) over the environment (Multilateral Environmental Agreements) in the international
rules-based systems. At the boundaries or limits of the sustainable development debate in both the UK and the European Union it is also
evident that the objectives of competitiveness and trade policy are sacrosanct. As Tim Luke (1999) has observed, the relative success or
failure of national economies in head-to-head global competition is taken by ‘geo-economics’ as the definitive register of any one nationstate’s waxing or waning international power, as well as its rising or falling industrial competitiveness, technological vitality and economic
prowess. In this context, many believe ecological considerations can, at best, be given only meaningless symbolic responses, in the
continuing quest to mobilise the Earth’s material resources. ¶ Our realism is rooted in the demos. The realism with which this
paper is concerned to promote recognises that the path to an alternative economy and society must
begin with a recognition of the reality that most people (in the West) will not democratically vote (or
be given the opportunity to vote) for a completely different type of society and economy
overnight. This is true even as the merits of a ‘green economy’ are increasingly recognised and
accepted by most people as the logical basis for safeguards and guarantees for their basic needs and aspirations (within limits). The realistic
character of the thinking behind this article accepts that consumption and materialistic lifestyles are here to stay.
(The most we can probably aspire to is a widening and deepening of popular movements towards
ethical consumption, responsible investment , and fair trade.) And indeed there is little to be
gained by proposing alternative economic systems which start from a complete rejection of
consumption and materialism. The appeal to realism is in part an attempt to correct the common misperception (and selfperception) of green politics and economics requiring an excessive degree of self-denial and a puritanical asceticism (see Goodin 1992, 18;
Allison 1991, 170– 78). While rejecting the claim that green political theory calls for the complete disavowal of materialistic lifestyles, it is
true that green politics does require the collective re-assessment of such lifestyles, and does require new economic
signals and pedagogical attempts to encourage a delinking—in the minds of the general
populus—of the ‘good life’ and the ‘goods life’. This does not mean that we need necessarily
require the complete and across the board rejection of materialistic lifestyles. It must be the case that there is room
and tolerance in a green economy for people to choose to live diverse lifestyles—some more sustainable than others—so long as these do
not ‘harm’ others, threaten long-term ecological sustainability or create unjust levels of socio-economic inequalities. Thus, realism in this
context is in part another name for the acceptance of a broadly ‘liberal’ or ‘post-liberal’ (but certainly not anti-liberal) green perspective.2¶
1. Setting Out¶ At the same time, while critical of the ‘abstract’ and ‘unrealistic’ utopianism that peppers green and radical thinking in this
area, we do not intend to reject utopianism. Indeed, with Oscar Wilde we agree that a map of the world that does not have utopia on it,
isn’t worth looking at. The spirit in which this article is written is more in keeping with framing green and
sustainability concerns within a ‘concrete utopian’ perspective or what the Marxist geographer David Harvey
(1996, 433–435) calls a “utopianism of process”, to be distinguished from “closed”, blueprint-like and abstract
utopian visions. Accordingly, the model of green political economy outlined here is in keeping with
Steven Lukes’ suggestion that a concrete utopianism depends on the ‘knowledge of a selftransforming present, not an ideal future’ (Lukes 1984, 158).¶ It accepts the current dominance of one
particular model of green political economy—namely ‘ecological modernisation’ (hereafter referred to
EM)—as the preferred ‘political economy’ underpinning contemporary state and market forms of
sustainable development, and further accepts the necessity for green politics to positively
engage in the debates and policies around EM from a strategic (as well as a normative) point of view. However, it
is also conscious of the limits and problems with ecological modernisation, particularly in terms of its
technocratic, supply-side and reformist ‘business as usual’ approach, and seeks to explore the potential to radicalise
EM or use it as a ‘jumping off’ point for more radical views of greening the economy.
Ecological modernisation is a work in progress; and that’s the point. ¶ The article begins by outlining EM in
theory and practice, specifically in relation to the British state’s ‘sustainable development’ policy agenda under New Labour.3 While EM as
currently practised by the British state is ‘weak’ and largely turns on the centrality of ‘innovation’ and ‘eco-efficiency’, the paper then goes
on to investigate in more detail the role of the market within current conceptualisations of EM and other models of green political
economy. In particular, a potentially powerful distinction (both conceptually and in policy debates) between ‘the
market’ and ‘capitalism’ has yet to be sufficiently explored and exploited as a starting point for the
development of radical, viable and attractive conceptions of green political economy as alternatives to both
EM and the orthodox economic paradigm. We contend that there is a role for the market in innovation and as part
of the ‘governance’ for sustainable development in which eco-efficiency and EM of the economy is
linked to non-ecological demands of green politics and sustainable development such as
social and global justice, egalitarianism, democratic regulation of the market and the conceptual (and policy)
expansion of the ‘economy’ to include social, informal and noncash economic activity and a
progressive role for the state (especially at the local/municipal level). Here we suggest that the ‘environmental’
argument or basis of green political economy in terms of the need for the economy to become more resource
efficient, minimise pollution and waste and so on, has largely been won. What that means is that no one is
disputing the need for greater resource productivity, energy and eco-efficiency. Both state and corporate/business
actors have accepted the environmental ‘bottom line’ (often rhetorically, but nonetheless important) as a conditioning factor in the pursuit
of the economic ‘bottom line’.
Add-On: Cyber 2AC
Federal prohibition creates a shortage of cyber workers—causes attacks
Aliya Sternstein 14, Next Gov Senior Correspondent, FEDERAL CYBER HIRING COULD TAKE A HIT UNDER MARIJUANA
MANDATE, March 14, http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2014/03/federal-cyber-hiring-could-take-hit-under-marijuanamandate/80527/
The Obama administration’s policy to uphold a ban on federal employees smoking pot -- even where recreational
marijuana is now legal under state law -- could snuff out efforts to hire nonconventional but trusted hackers to
search for holes in government computer systems. Many of the best of these white hats known as “ethical
hackers ” tend to shy away from the establishment. "It is only recently that I started hearing that this state ban would be a challenge to hiring
ethical hackers," said Kathleen Smith, chief management officer at ClearedJobs.Net, an online forum for cleared security professionals that also hosts job fairs. " The
managers are having a difficult time with balancing between what an employee can do based on
state law -- and what they are banned from doing based on federal law , especially with regards to
cleared work and their security clearance ." A July 2013 blog post on state marijuana laws that appeared on ClearedJobs.Net was the second most
popular story on the site last year. It read: “Those of you with (or planning to obtain) security clearances who have an interest in adding marijuana use to your recreational
pastime may think, ‘Great! If I’m ever in Colorado or Washington State, I can smoke pot without any ramifications!’ Unfortunately, you are wrong!” Colorado on New Year's Day
became the first state to allow the use of marijuana for leisure, and Washington will follow this summer. The federal government effectively criminalized marijuana in 1937. Now
the feds say they will look the other way in states that legalize dope, unless they see drugged driving, distribution to minors or certain other infractions. Or, unless those rolling a
Marijuana is illegal under federal law and the rules prohibiting federal employees from
using it still apply, regardless of state laws ,” a Justice Department spokesperson told Nextgov's sister publication
Government Executive. Officials already had announced that federal employees are barred from inhaling while working in
Colorado or anywhere else where cannabis is legal. Undergraduate code crackers – in high
demand nationwide -- are seeing that some freedoms granted to their neighbors will not apply to them if they join
public service. "When I'm talking to college kids, I tell people: 'You are going to have to think about how you are going to change your life to do this,'" Smith said. A
December 2013 letter to Obama administration officials from the information security trade group (ISC)2 said 61
percent of federal employees surveyed "believe that their agency has too few information security workers to
manage threats now , let alone in the future, yet information security positions are going unfilled ." Federal employers
joint work for them. “
might be able to entice nonconventional computer whizzes with stimulants instead of hallucinogens, Smith said. "What I found with people who like doing cleared work and
working for the government is they like to work on the really cool stuff," said Smith, whose clients include security cleared professionals in the federal government and private
sector. "The price to work on the really cool stuff might be: Some of the recreational drug use I can't do any longer."
Nuclear war
Robert Tilford 12, Graduate US Army Airborne School, Ft. Benning, Georgia, “Cyber attackers could shut down the electric grid
for the entire east coast” 2012, http://www.examiner.com/article/cyber-attackers-could-easily-shut-down-the-electric-grid-for-theentire-east-coa ***we don’t agree with the ableist language
a cyber attack that can take out a civilian power grid, for example could also cripple the
U.S. military .¶ The senator notes that is that the same power grids that supply cities and towns, stores and gas
stations, cell towers and heart monitors also power “ every military base in our country.”¶ “Although bases would be
prepared to weather a short power outage with backup diesel generators, within hours, not days, fuel supplies
would run out”, he said.¶ Which means military command and control centers could go dark .¶ Radar
systems that detect air threats to our country would shut Down completely.¶ “Communication between
commanders and their troops would also go silent. And many weapons systems would be left without
either fuel or electric power”, said Senator Grassley.¶ “So in a few short hours or days, the mightiest military
in the world would be left scrambling to maintain base functions”, he said.¶ We contacted the
Pentagon and officials confirmed the threat of a cyber attack is something very real .¶ Top national
security officials—including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Director of the National Security Agency, the Secretary of Defense, and the
CIA Director— have said, “preventing a cyber attack and improving the nation’s electric grids is among the most urgent
priorities of our country” (source: Congressional Record).¶ So how serious is the Pentagon taking all this?¶ Enough to start, or end a war over it,
for sure.¶ A cyber attack today against the US could very well be seen as an “Act of War” and could be
met with a “full scale” US military response . ¶ That could include the use of “nuclear weapons”, if
To make matters worse
authorized by the President.
Consult CP: 2AC
Nieto says no to US legalization
Washington Post 13, Olga Khazan February 6, 2013, “Mexico’s president opposes legalizing marijuana, calls it ‘a gateway
drug’”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/06/mexicos-president-opposes-legalizing-marijuana-calls-it-agateway-drug/
PIEGEL: Some U.S. states have relaxed the prohibition of marijuana. Doesn't that deprive the drug war of its credibility? Peña
Nieto: It should at least encourage a debate. I'm opposed to legalizing marijuana because it acts as a gateway drug.
[What it means: Marijuana may or may not be a gateway drug. Legalization may or may not bankrupt the cartels. But here Peña
Nieto is reinforcing earlier statements by his administration that legalization in the United States
may undermine efforts to stop the flow of marijuana across the border . Shortly after Colorado and
Washington voted to legalize the drug, Peña Nieto’s top adviser, Luis Videgaray, told a radio station in Mexico:
“Obviously, we can’t handle a product that is illegal in Mexico, trying to stop its transfer to the
United States, when in the United States ... it now has a different status,”.]
Nieto says no to Mexico legalization
By Chris Roberts Investigative Journalist, Mon., Jun. 9 2014 at 4:10 PM “Mexico May Follow U.S. On Marijuana Legalization”
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/06/mexico_may_follow_us_on_mariju.php
Pena Nieto does not feel that way.
He voiced strong support for keeping marijuana production illegal in
Mexico, according to other sources.
Still, hearing the man in charge of Mexico say that it's time to rethink failed policy is a step toward sanity, and possibly fewer panga
boats and catapults sending cartel-grown brick weed into the United States.
OAS says no
Time 13, “OAS to White House and Hemisphere: It’s High Time to Consider Legalizing Pot”, Tim Padgett, May 22, 2013,
http://world.time.com/2013/05/22/key-regional-organization-pushes-white-house-to-debate-legalizing-pot/
So why do we waste so many resources (almost $10 billion each year in the U.S. alone) as well as lives hunting down marijuana
users and sellers? The OAS’s $2 million report “The Drug Problem in the Americas” seems to ask the same thing. It is
not an outright call for marijuana legalization. It is, as Insulza said in Bogotá, “the beginning of a long-awaited
discussion” about “more realistic [drug war] policies.” Most Latin American leaders — whose countries suffer the bloody brunt of the
largely failed U.S.-led drug war — already made it clear to President Obama at last year’s Summit of the Americas in Cartagena,
Colombia, that it’s high time to ask whether marijuana legalization might help reduce drug cartel revenues and therefore drug cartel
mayhem. (Studies indicate it could rob Mexico’s narco-mafias of a third of the estimated $30 billion they rake in each year.) Insulza
acknowledged the current “disposition” throughout the Americas to “deal with the legalization issue,” and he called for “greater
flexibility” on the part of nations like the U.S. The 400-page OAS study itself concludes that trends in the hemisphere “lean toward
decriminalization or legalization of the production, sale and use of marijuana. Sooner or later, decisions in this area will need to be
taken.” Santos, who is widely considered Washington’s closest ally in Latin America today, has not yet endorsed
legalization, but he said the report should help drug-war battered countries like his “seek better solutions” than the conventional
interdiction strategy Washington still pushes. Former presidents of three of Latin America’s largest economies — Brazil, Mexico and
Colombia — have jointly called for marijuana legalization. In the U.S., the states of Washington and Colorado last fall voted to
legalize pot. Now that the OAS has joined that chorus, both the White House and the U.S. Congress need to join the discussion with
more open ears.
“Resolved” doesn’t lock the aff into “certainty”
Merriam Webster ‘9 (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/resolved)
# Main Entry: 1re·solve # Pronunciation: \ri-ˈzälv, -ˈzȯlv also -ˈzäv or -ˈzȯv\ # Function: verb # Inflected Form(s): resolved;
re·solv·ing 1 : to become separated into component parts; also : to become reduced by dissolving or analysis 2 : to form a
resolution : determine 3 : consult, deliberate
Neither does “should”
Encarta World English Dictionary 2005
(http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?refid=1861735294)
used to express the conditionality of an occurrence and suggest it
is not a given, or to indicate the consequence of something that might happen ( used in conditional
expressing conditions or consequences:
clauses )
And resolved doesn’t mean immediate
Online Plain Text English Dictionary
‘9 (http://www.onelook.com/?other=web1913&w=Resolve)
Resolve: “To form a purpose; to make a decision; especially, to determine after reflection; as, to resolve on a better
course of life.”
Consultation causes delays – language disputes and layers of intra-nation
bureaucracy
Grieb 2002 (Kenneth J. Grieb is Professor and Coordinator of International Studies at the University of Wisconsin
Oshkosh. His is a author of several books dealing with Modern Latin American and United States Diplomatic History -Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy – available via:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_gx5215/is_2002/ai_n19132358.)
International relations involve negotiations between the governments of nationstates, which are conducted by their executive branches under the auspices of their heads of
government. Since each state is sovereign, agreement is reached only when the parties involved in an
issue reach unanimous agreement among themselves. Those nations that do not agree with the
consensus among the participants do not sign the resulting agreement and hence are not bound by its provisions. Diplomatic
negotiations are difficult and time-consuming, since all those involved must agree on
every aspect and word of the agreement. When the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted the
Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948 amid the tensions following the Second World War, over 1,400 separate votes were required
before the full declaration was adopted. Achieving unanimous consensus
requires extensive, constant,
and precise communications between the heads of government of the nations involved. Such
communications are conducted through a variety of representatives. The number
and types of such representatives have proliferated throughout history and in particular during the
twentieth century, when rapid communications increased the need for speedy and ongoing contacts. The end of colonialism during the second
half of the twentieth century meant that many more nations and peoples were involved in global and regional issues.
Consultation devastates leadership
Charles
Krauthammer, The Unipolar Moment Revisited, The National Interest, Winter, 2003
America must be guided by its independent judgment, both about its own interest
and about the global interest. Especially on matters of national security, war-making and the deployment of power,
America should neither defer nor contract out decision-making, particularly when the concessions
involve permanent structural constrictions such as those imposed by an International Criminal Court. Prudence, yes. No need to act the
superpower in East Timor or Bosnia. But there is a need to do so in Afghanistan and in Iraq. No need to act the superpower on steel tariffs. But
there is a need to do so on missile defense. The
prudent exercise of power allows, indeed calls for, occasional
concessions on non-vital issues if only to maintain psychological good will. Arrogance
and gratuitous high-handedness are counterproductive. But we should not delude ourselves as to what
psychological good will buys. Countries will cooperate with us, first, out of their
own self-interest and, second, out of the need and desire to cultivate good relations
with the world's superpower. Warm and fuzzy feelings are a distant third. Take counterterrorism. After the attack
on the u.s.s. Cole, Yemen did everything it could to stymie the American
investigation. It lifted not a finger to suppress terrorism. This was under an American administration
that was obsessively accommodating and multilateralist. Today, under the most
unilateralist of administrations, Yemen has decided to assist in the war on terrorism. This was not a
result of a sudden attack of good will toward America. It was a result of the war in Afghanistan, which concentrated the mind of heretofore
recalcitrant states like Yemen on the costs of non-cooperation with the United States.14 Coalitions
are not made by
superpowers going begging hat in hand. They are made by asserting a position and
inviting others to join. What "pragmatic" realists often fail to realize is that unilateralism is the high road
to multilateralism. When George Bush senior said of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait,
"this will not stand", and made it clear that he was prepared to act alone if
necessary, that declaration-and the credibility of American determination to act
unilaterally-in and of itself created a coalition. Hafez al-Asad did not join out of feelings of good will. He joined
because no one wants to be left at the dock when the hegemon is sailing. Unilateralism does not
mean seeking to act alone. One
acts in concert with others if possible. Unilateralism simply
means that one does not allow oneself to be hostage to others. No unilateralist would, say, reject
Security Council support for an attack on Iraq. The nontrivial question that separates unilateralism from multilateralism-and that tests the
"pragmatic realists"-is this: What do you do if, at the end of the day, the Security Council refuses to back you? Do you allow yourself to be
dictated to on issues of vital national-and international-security? The new unilateralism
argues explicitly and
unashamedly for maintaining unipolarity, for sustaining America's unrivaled
dominance for the foreseeable future. It could be a long future, assuming we
successfully manage the single greatest threat, namely, weapons of mass
destruction in the hands of rogue states. This in itself will require the aggressive
and confident application of unipolar power rather than falling back, as we did in the 1990s,
on paralyzing multilateralism. The future of the unipolar era hinges on whether
America is governed by those who wish to retain, augment and use unipolarity to advance not just
American but global ends, or whether America is governed by those who wish to give it up-either
by allowing unipolarity to decay as they retreat to Fortress America, or by passing on the burden by gradually
.
The challenge to
unipolarity is not from the outside but from the inside. The choice is ours. To impiously paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: History has given you
an empire, if you will keep it.
DA: 2AC
Their card says Colorado and Washington thump, relations low, and is
about Calderon, not Nieto
Murray 11, Elliott School of International Affairs/Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (Chad, Mexican Drug
Trafficking Organizations and Marijuana: The Potential Effects of U.S. Legalization,
https://elliott.gwu.edu/sites/elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/acad/lahs/mexico-marijuana-071111.pdf)
Relations between the U.S. and Mexico will deteriorate in the short-term if the U.S.
legalizes marijuana. Relations between the United States and Mexico have improved over the last
decade, and President Obama and President Calderón continue to work diligently to maintain relations and combat drugs. However,
this relationship is likely to decay even if the United States legalizes marijuana in only a de facto
manner on the state level. Last year President Calderón openly expressed his distaste for
Proposition 19 before it was defeated in November. He believes that any form of legalization of marijuana in the
United States would be a sign of hypocrisy
as evident when he stated, “I think they [United States] have very
little moral authority to condemn a Mexican farmer who for hunger is planting marijuana to sustain the insatiable North American
market for drugs.”86 Although President Calderón has acknowledged the fact that the drug policy debate needs to take place, he
has been adamant that legalization in the United States is not the best policy. In addition, other Latin American leaders, such as
Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, have expressed their support of President Calderón‟s position on the legalization of marijuana.
President Calderón and others believe that the legalization of marijuana in the United States would
delegitimize the Mexican war on drugs . Some scholars note that if the United States legalized
marijuana, the Mexican populace would be left wondering, “What team are you [United States]
playing for?” Mexico has spent a lot of blood and treasure fighting against DTOs over the
last few years, and some feel that the legalization of marijuana in the United States, no
matter how well intentioned, would be negating those efforts. Proof of the seriousness of Mexico‟s
dedication to the drug war is evidenced by the recent tensions between the United States and
Mexico.
Relations are resilient
Epatko, 12 – reporter-producer for the PBS NewsHour's foreign affairs beat
[Larisa, "U.S. and Mexico: Ties That Bind," PBS, 6-20-12, www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/us-mexico-ties/, accessed 10-6-14]
U.S. and Mexico: Ties That Bind
As Mexicans move to elect a new president on July 1, whoever wins the keys to the official residence, or Los Pinos, will be tied to
the United States in a number of ways: on border security, as trading partners, and as a top energy supplier to its northern
neighbor.¶ “There’s probably no other country in the world that’s as intertwined with the United States. Our
economies are intertwined; Mexico is now the second destination for U.S. exports and the third largest trading
partner overall,” said Shannon O’Neil, fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.¶ The U.S.
automotive, food, and computer and electronics industries depend on Mexican consumers, said O’Neil. “For 21 out of 50 states,
Mexico is the No. 1 or No. 2 destination for their exports,” she said. “And it’s not just the states on the border that have huge trade
with Mexico, but as far away as New Hampshire, Vermont, Michigan and Indiana.” ¶ Mexico also is a friendly source of
oil, O’Neil noted. It’s the United States’ third largest supplier behind Canada and Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration.¶ “So keeping our lights on and our cars going depend today much on Mexico,” she said.¶
Since the two countries share a border, they also share the problems and responsibilities of regulating the environment, preventing
drug trafficking and maintaining security.¶ Every president of Mexico has had a different take on U.S.
relations, but all of the top contenders in the current race have indicated they will work with the
United States, said O’Neil.¶ The economy in Mexico is recovering faster than the United States. Helping transform Mexico’s
economy is a growing middle class, she said. View a chart of GDP growth in both countries:¶ “Thirty-plus years ago, Mexico was a
commodity-driven, oil-driven, inward-looking economy,” said O’Neil. “Today it is a manufacturing and services-based economy,
export-led with a focus on the U.S. market and that is fundamentally different than just a few decades ago.Ӧ Partly because of
Mexico’s economic growth, immigration between the two countries has slowed to a net zero last year. The slowdown also can be
attributed to a demographic shift in Mexico in the last several years, O’Neil said. “There are fewer Mexicans turning 18 and looking
for jobs than there were in the past. And more and more Mexicans are staying in school longer and investing in their future and
investing in their skills. So they’re not leaving the country. They’re not thinking about going abroad at 15 or 16 anymore, they’re
staying in school.”¶ Mexico is becoming an increasingly urban society as well, said O’Neil. “So the old days of a campesino
(peasant) wearing a sombrero riding a burro — it’s a reality for a few Mexicans now, but very few. It’s a more urban society. And
that’s a total transformation from back in the ’50s or ’60s.”¶ Helping drive the current conditions is a transformed government. “There
are still problems with corruption, accountability and transparency — in particular at the state level,” she said. “But it also is a
democracy. They’re about to have elections that almost everywhere in the world people think are going to be free and fair. And
that’s something new.”
The US will impose anti-dumping duties on mexico in the sugar dispute – that will
kill relations
Jude Webber, Financial Times, Mexico 10-23 “Mexico warns US of retaliation in sugar war” October 23, 2014 7:07 pm
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1f69c20a-5aa6-11e4-8625-00144feab7de.html#axzz3HeLevnfD
hell will break loose” if the US triggers anti-dumping duties on Mexican sugar in the coming days,
Mexico’s economy minister has warned.¶ Ildefonso Guajardo threatened, in an interview with the Financial Times. to
“ All
impose duties on US corn syrup in retaliation.¶ “We have been [in the US, negotiating on sugar] for more than a week. It’s like
pinball. They table something; we respond; we table something,” Mr Guajardo said.¶ The
US D epartment o f C ommerce
has until midnight on Friday to rule on a dumping case brought by US sugar companies. They say the US is
being flooded by cheap Mexican imports and want duties of 17.01 per cent to be imposed on its North
American Free Trade Agreement partner.¶ However, Mr Guajardo said he expected talks to continue over the weekend, with any
announcement likely to be made on Monday. US dumping duties would leave Mexico “no other option” than
to take the case to the W orld T rade O rganisation.¶ The politically powerful sugar industry is one
of the most protected in the US and has a long history of being at the centre of trade battles . Mexico
and the US alone have been battling over their trade in sugar for more than 20 years.¶ Speaking after the inauguration of a Nestlé
plant in central Mexico, Mr Guajardo said: “At this point, I am highly optimistic we will reach an agreement . . . But if they
trigger the dumping case, all hell will break loose and we are going to go to a big fight. Everybody
is going to lose.Ӧ He declined to comment on reports that Mexico was seeking a floor on sugar exports to the US of at least
1m tons. But Mr Guajardo said any restriction on Mexican exports of refined sugar would be unacceptable.¶ Carlos Rello, the head
of Mexico’s state-owned mills, signalled a willingness this month to accept a deal with the US setting a minimum export threshold of
1m-1.3m tons. Mexico has exported 1.8m-1.9m tons in recent years.¶ Mr Guajardo said: “They have to understand, on the US side,
that they are withdrawing, with the mere stroke of a pen, the free access that we have through Nafta to the
US market, [which] by itself, is already a tremendous blow to US-Mexican trade relations.Ӧ The potential
battle over sugar risks deepening a parallel dispute between Mexico and Canada, on the one hand, and the US on
the other, with the Nafta partners embroiled since 2012 in a row over country of origin labelling (Cool) for beef and pork. ¶ Mexico
says that US practice discriminates against its beef and pork exports by reducing prices for its produce in the US.¶ " I’d
rather
go into a terrible fight than get a terrible agreement" ¶ - Ildefonso Guajardo, Mexican economy
minister¶ Tweet this quote¶ In a joint government statement, Canada and Mexico said this week that the WTO had “confirmed
once again what we have known all along: the requirements imposed by the US on beef and pork are a flagrant violation of their
international obligations as a member of the WTO”, and were “clearly protectionist”. ¶ Mr Guajardo said time was running out for the
US and Mexico could impose retaliatory measures in the first half of next year to compensate its ranchers. He signalled that Mexico
could use remedies it said were open to it in this dispute as a means of imposing corn syrup duties.¶ “If there is no
compliance from the US authorities on Cool, there will be the possibility of retaliation by
restricting some US exports to Mexico and imposing new tariffs,” Mr Guajardo said. This could mean
“special tariffs on fructose”, which he said he would be allowed to apply under Mexico’s trade
commitments.¶ The US exports about 1m tons of high fructose corn syrup to Mexico annually – the bulk of its exports of the
product. “I have to look for ways to protect my market,” Mr Guajardo said. “I will use all the room to manoeuvre I can.”¶ Expressing
his frustration with the sugar talks, he said: “It’s always risky when you have discourse in favour of free trade and forces take you
away from free trade, and this is not in the best interest of nations.Ӧ He added that despite the prospect of a trade
spat over sugar, “I’d rather go into a terrible fight than get a terrible agreement”.
Military relations low now—distrust, recent policy leaks doom successful
cooperation endeavors
Oscar R. Martinez 14, Latin American Regional Affairs Strategist at United States Air Force, March 2014, Naval Postgraduate
School, http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/41416/14Mar_Martinez_Oscar.pdf?sequence=1
The current military relations under President Peña-Nieto continue to evolve, however, the security reforms that affect U.S.-Mexico
cooperation under the Mérida Initiate have yet to be announced. Nevertheless, Peña Nieto has pledged to continue U.S.- Mexican
security cooperation, although with more emphasis on reducing the violence in Mexico.112 Recent leaks of sensitive U.S.
information have altered the bilateral cooperation. Consequently, the President Peña Nieto administration
appears more suspicious of overt U.S. involvement in security operations in Mexico than with the
previous government. Additionally, after the presumed release of U.S. government spying on Mexican
government officials, several steps were taken to tighten up the accessibility of U.S. military members in Mexico. According
to Clare Ribando Seelke, “the Mexican government notified U.S. agencies operating in Mexico that
Internal Ministry will be the approving authority on all requests for new Mérida-funded training or
equipment made by Mexican government entities.” 113 Previous and ongoing programs were not affected by this
new policy, and bilateral military cooperation has expanded. The U.S. Army Major General Francis G. Mahon—NORTHCOM’s
Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy—conveys, “during the past two to three years, as the Mexican Army and Mexican Navy have
taken on a larger role beyond internal security issues, our relationship with them has really grown and expanded through security
cooperation.”114 Both administrations continue to advocate bilateral engagements that would help cease the violence in Mexico.115
¶ Despite the increase in military-to-military collaboration in the past few years, some scholars
continue to emphasize a sense of distrust that pervades these two institutions. According to Paz Today
the problems are different; drugs and illegal immigration have supplanted the Axis as the major threat, but curiously enough, the
attitudes of both countries are still the same. The United States regards its neighbor with suspicion and
remains unwilling to share intelligence with the Mexican authorities because it is concerned with
the possibilities of leaks and corruption. Mexico, on the other hand, fears domination by its
neighbor. In the eyes of most Mexican people, the prospect of joint military exercises remains to this day a
source of considerable unease. Overcoming this distrust and fear is a challenge for the future.116 Other
scholars also believe that distrust is the key component that prevents governments from establishing
policies and programs that can close the gap between these two institutions. Some key questions
remain, if indeed the bilateral collaboration between these two institutions is set for the long haul. Are the security cooperation
initiatives bridging the gap of distrust between both entities? Are the BPC mechanisms used by DOD, USNORTHCOM, and the
Security Cooperation Office (SCO) forging an enduring partnership based on trust, and not solely on needs? To answer these
questions, we must analyze the prior and current strategies and policies concerning security cooperation initiatives with Mexico.
Plan boosts relations
Combs and Hakim 14 (Peter, president emeritus at the Inter-American Dialogue, and Cameron, program associate at the
Inter-American Dialogue, 1-26-14, "Why the U.S. should legalize marijuana" Miami Herald)
www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/26/3891371/why-the-us-should-legalize-marijuana.html
Legalization should also contribute to easier relations with Mexico and other neighbors to the
south on issues of public security. To be sure, legal marijuana comes with costs and risks. The American Medical
Association considers cannabis a “ dangerous drug” while the American Psychiatric Association asserts that its use impedes
neurological development in adolescents and can cause the “onset of psychiatric disorders.” Some studies suggest it interferes with
learning and motivation. It should be anticipated that legalization will lead to greater use, at all ages, as marijuana becomes more
accessible and less expensive, and the cultural and social stigmas surrounding its consumption literally go up in smoke. Abuse and
addiction — including among juveniles — will rise as well. But keeping marijuana illegal also carries a high price tag. Particularly
devastating are the human costs of arresting and jailing thousands upon thousands of young Americans each year. Roughly onethird of all U.S. citizens are arrested by age 23. Racial and ethnic minorities are most vulnerable. African-American marijuana users
are over three times more likely to be arrested and imprisoned than whites, even though the two groups consume the drug at
virtually the same levels. With cannabis accounting for roughly half of total drug arrests, legalization would sharply reduce this
egregious disparity. It would also save money by reducing the U.S. prison population. A half a million people were incarcerated for
drug offenses in 2011, a ten-fold jump since 1980 — at an average annual cost per prisoner of more than $20,000 in a minimumsecurity federal facility. Cannabis legalization would also help to lift an unneeded burden from U.S.
foreign policy in Latin America, where Washington’s drug war has long strained diplomatic
relations. Most governments in the hemisphere have concluded that U.S. anti-drug policies are
just not working and, in many places, are actually contributing to mounting levels of crime, violence and
corruption. Colombia has been a notable exception. With U.S. support of nearly $10 billion, the country has become far more secure
in the past dozen years. Yet Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president and arguably Washington’s closest
ally in the region, is now a leading advocate of alternative drug strategies. In an exhaustive report
last year, prompted by President Santos, the O rganization of A merican S tates analyzed a range of alternative
policy approaches, including cannabis legalization. Few Latin American countries are actively contemplating
legalization a la uruguaya. But many have stopped arrests for use and possession of marijuana, and virtually all are keeping a close
Nowhere is there much enthusiasm for cooperating with the U nited
S tates in its continuing efforts to eradicate drug crops and interrupt drug flows. A decision by the
U.S. government to legalize marijuana would be a bold step toward breaking today’s bureaucratic
and political inertia and opening the way for a genuine hemisphere-wide search for alternative
strategies.
watch on developments in Uruguay.
Burnout checks disease
Posner 5—Senior Lecturer, U
Chicago Law. Judge on the US Court of Appeals 7th Circuit. AB from Yale and LLB from Harvard.
(Richard, Catastrophe, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-most-significant.html)
Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of
its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been enormously destructive
plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying the entire
human race. There is a biological reason . Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they
are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do
not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet
infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no danger that AIDS will destroy the entire human race.
The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today
than in the past (except in prehistoric times, when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of
disease), despite wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease.
Terror SHORT 1NC
No WMD Terror
John J. Mearsheimer 14, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of
Chicago, “America Unhinged”, January 2, nationalinterest.org/article/america-unhinged-9639?page=show
Am I overlooking the obvious threat that strikes fear into the hearts of so many Americans, which is terrorism? Not at all. Sure,
the United States has a terrorism problem . But it is a minor threat . There is no question we fell victim to a spectacular
attack on September 11, but it did not cripple the United States in any meaningful way and another attack of
that magnitude is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. Indeed, there has not been a single instance over
the past twelve years of a terrorist organization exploding a primitive bomb on American soil, much less
striking a major blow. Terrorism—most of it arising from domestic groups—was a much bigger problem in the United States
during the 1970s than it has been since the Twin Towers were toppled.¶ What about the possibility that a terrorist
group might obtain a nuclear weapon? Such an occurrence would be a game changer, but the chances of that
happening are virtually nil . No nuclear-armed state is going to supply terrorists with a nuclear weapon
because it would have no control over how the recipients might use that weapon. Political turmoil in a
nuclear-armed state could in theory allow terrorists to grab a loose nuclear weapon, but the United States
already has detailed plans to deal with that highly unlikely contingency.¶ Terrorists might also try to
acquire fissile material and build their own bomb. But that scenario is extremely unlikely as well :
there are significant obstacles to getting enough material and even bigger obstacles to building a
bomb and then delivering it. More generally, virtually every country has a profound interest in making sure
no terrorist group acquires a nuclear weapon, because they cannot be sure they will not be the target
of a nuclear attack, either by the terrorists or another country the terrorists strike. Nuclear terrorism, in short, is not a serious
threat . And to the extent that we should worry about it, the main remedy is to encourage and help other states to place nuclear materials in highly
secure custody.
Mexico not key to US or world, and econ down now- overconfidence in emerging
markets, forecasting errors
Sharma, 14 -- head of Emerging Markets and Global Macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management
[Ruchir, “The Ever-Emerging Markets,” Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2014, ebsco, accessed 9-20-14]
In the middle of the last decade, the average growth rate in
emerging markets hit over seven percent a year for the first
time ever, and forecasters raced to hype the implications. China would soon surpass the United States as an
economic power, they said, and India, with its vast population, or Vietnam, with its own spin on authoritarian capitalism, would be
the next China. Searching for the political fallout, pundits predicted that Beijing would soon lead the new and rising bloc of the
BRICs--Brazil, Russia, India, and China--to ultimate supremacy over the fading powers of the West. Suddenly, the race to coin the
next hot acronym was on, and CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa) emerged from the MIST
(Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey). Today, more than five years after the financial crisis of 2008, much of that
euphoria and all those acronyms have come to seem woefully out of date. The average growth rate in the emerging
world fell back to four percent in 2013. Meanwhile, the BRICs are crumbling, each for its own reasons, and while their summits go
on, they serve only to underscore how hard it is to forge a meaningful bloc out of authoritarian and democratic regimes with clashing
economic interests. As the hype fades, forecasters are left reconsidering the mistakes they made at the
peak of the boom. Their errors were legion. Prognosticators stopped looking at emerging markets as individual
stories and started lumping them into faceless packs with catchy but mindless acronyms. They listened too closely to
political leaders in the emerging world who took credit for the boom and ignored the other global
forces, such as easy money coming out of the United States and Europe, that had helped power growth. Forecasters also
placed far too much predictive weight on a single factor-- strong demographics, say, or globalization-when every shred of research shows that a complex array of forces drive economic growth. Above all,
they made the cardinal error of extrapolation. Forecasters assumed that recent trends would
continue indefinitely and that hot economies would stay hot, ignoring the inherently cyclical nature of both
political andeconomic development. Euphoria overcame sound judgment --a process that has doomed
economic forecasting for as long as experts have been doing it. SINGLE-FACTOR SYNDROME History
shows that straight-line extrapolations are almost always wrong. Yet pundits cannot seem to resist
them, lured on by wishful thinking and fear. In the 1960s, the Philippines won the right to host the headquarters of the Asian
Development Bank based on the view that its fast growth at the time would make the country a regional star for years to come. That
was not to be: by the next decade, growth had stalled thanks to the misguided policies of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos (but the
Asian Development Bank stayed put). Yet the taste for extrapolation persisted, and in the 1970s, such thinking led U.S. scholars
and intelligence agencies to predict that the future belonged to the Soviet Union, and in the 1980s, that it belonged to Japan. Then
came the emerging-market boom of the last decade, and extrapolation hit new heights of irrationality. Forecasters cited the
seventeenth-century economic might of China and India as evidence that they would dominate the coming decade, even the coming
century. The boom also highlighted another classic forecasting error: the reliance on single-factor theories. Because China's boom
rested in part on the cheap labor provided by a growing young population, forecasters started looking for the next hot economy in a
nation with similar demographics--never mind the challenge of developing a strongmanufacturing sector to get everyone a job.
There were the liberals, for whom the key was more transparent institutions that encouraged entrepreneurship--despite the fact that
in the postwar era, periods of strong growth have been no more likely under democratic governments than under authoritarian ones.
And then there were the moralizers, for whom debt is always bad (a bias reinforced by the 2008 credit crisis), even though economic
growthand credit go hand in hand. The problem with these single-factor theories is that they lack any connection to current events or
an appreciation for the other factors that make each country unique. On the one hand, institutions and demographics change too
slowly to offer any clear indication of where an economy is headed. On the other, those forecasters who have argued that certain
national cultures are good or bad for growth miss how quickly culture can change. Consider Indonesia and Turkey, large Muslimmajority democracies where strong growth has debunked the view of Islam as somehow incompatible with development.
Sweeping theories often miss what is coming next. Those who saw geography as the key factor failed to foresee the
strong run of growth during the last decade in some of the most geographically challenged nations on earth, including landlocked
countries such as Armenia, Tajikistan, and Uganda. In remote Kazakhstan, rising oil prices lifted the economy out of its long postSoviet doldrums. The clarity of single-factor theories makes them appealing. But because they ignore the rapid shifts of
globalcompetition, they provide no persuasive scenario on which to base planning for the next five to ten years. The truth is
that economic cycles are short, typically running just three to five years from peak to trough. The competitive landscape
can shift completely in that time, whether through technological innovation or political transformation. HERE AND NOW Indeed,
although forecasters hate to admit it, the coming decade usually looks nothing like the last one, since the next economic stars are
often the last decade's castoffs. Today, for example, formerly stagnant Mexico has become one of the most promising economies in
Latin America. And the Philippines, once a laughingstock, is now among the hottest economies in the world, with growth exceeding
seven percent. Dismissed on the cover of The Economist five years ago as "the world's most dangerous place," Pakistan is
suddenly showing signs of financial stability. It had one of the world's top-performing stock markets last year, although it is being
surpassed by an even more surprising upstart: Greece. A number of market indices recently demoted Greece's status from
"developed market" to "emerging market," but the country has enacted brutal cuts in its government budget, as well as in prices and
wages, which has made its exports competitive again. What these countries' experiences underscore is that political cycles are as
important to a nation's prospects as economic ones. Crises and downturns often lead to a period of reform, which can flower
into a revival or a boom. But
such success can then lead to arrogance and complacency--and the next
downturn. The boom of the last decade seemed to revise that script, as nearly all the emerging nations rose in unison and
downturns all but disappeared. But the big bang of 2008 jolted the cycle back into place. Erstwhile stars such as Brazil, Indonesia,
and Russia are now fading thanks to bad or complacent management. The problem, as Indonesia's finance minister, Muhammad
Chatib Basri, has explained, is that "bad times make for good policies, and good times make for bad policies." The trick
to escaping this trap is for governments to maintain good policies even when times are good--the only way an emerging market has
a chance of actually catching up to the developed world. But doing so proves remarkably difficult. In the postwar era, just about a
dozen countries--a few each in southern Europe (such as Portugal and Spain) and East Asia (such as Singapore and South Korea)-have achieved this feat, which is why a mere 35 countries are considered to be "developed." Meanwhile, the odds are against
many other states' making it into the top tier, given the difficulty of keeping up productivity-enhancing reforms. It is simply human
nature to get fat during prosperity and assume the good times will just roll on. More often than not, success proves fleeting.
Argentina, Greece, and Venezuela all reached Western income levels in the last century but then fell back. Today, in addition to
Mexico and the Philippines, Peru and Thailand are making their run. These four nations share a trait common to many star
economies of recent decades: a charismatic political leader who understands economic reform and has the popular mandate to get
it enacted. Still, excitement should be tempered. Such reformist streaks tend to last three to five years .
So don't expect the dawn of a Filipino or a Mexican century .
Iran: 2AC
Non-unique- GOP has votes now
AFP, 12-31 ["US senator: enough Iran sanctions support to override veto," news.yahoo.com/us-senator-enough-iran-sanctionssupport-override-veto-185533311.html, accessed 1-2-15]
There is sufficient support for expanded sanctions on Iran in the new Republican-controlled US Congress to override veto threats by
President Barack Obama, a senator told radio broadcaster NPR Wednesday. The Obama administration and other global powers
are in the midst of prolonged negotiations with Tehran to end a decade-long standoff over its nuclear activities, which the West sees
as efforts to develop an atomic bomb. The White House has sought to dissuade US lawmakers from passing new sanctions against
Tehran, warning such a move could scupper talks. The powers have set a July 1 deadline for themselves to reach a full technical
accord. The White House wants any deal reached with Iran to be binding on its own, but several US lawmakers have insisted any
pact with Iran must go through Congress, not only Obama. "I think we'll have a super-majority, a veto-proof majority, to impose
additional sanctions on Iran and to require the administration to come before Congress for approval of any deal that he has with
Iran," Senator Marco Rubio told National Public Radio in an interview to air Thursday. Asked whether he would vote for additional
sanctions even if it sank prospects for a nuclear deal, Rubio said: "Yes, because I don't believe there is the prospects for a deal with
Iran." Rubio and other lawmakers, including Senators Mark Kirk and Democrat Robert Menendez, along with House Foreign Affairs
Committee head Ed Royce, say Obama should embrace new sanctions to tighten the economic vice on Iran and force concessions
in the talks. Menendez and Kirk introduced legislation that would see new sanctions imposed if a deal collapses or if Iran is seen as
violating any final nuclear agreement. Rubio said several of his colleagues support passing a bill that would require congressional
approval of an agreement, and that "would trigger sanctions upon a failure of the deal at some point over the next six months."
No bill- Corker ensures GOP will be cautious and slow on Iran- super-charges
thumpers
Atlas 12-4 -- Bloomberg foreign policy senior writer
[Terry, "Corker Signals Caution on Iran Sanctions While Faulting Obama," Bloomberg, 12-4-14, www.bloomberg.com/news/201412-05/corker-signals-caution-on-iran-sanctions-while-faulting-obama.html, accessed 12-30-14]
Corker Signals Caution on Iran Sanctions While Faulting Obama Senator Bob Corker, who’s in line to become chairman
of the Foreign Relations Committee next month, signaled he may move slowly on legislation to impose additional sanctions on Iran
over its nuclear activities. The Tennessee Republican said members of his party should act cautiously on such matters as they
assume the powers of the majority in the Senate. “You realize that you’re in essence, to use a term, firing with real bullets,” he said
in an interview yesterday with Al Hunt for the “Charlie Rose” program on PBS, which is rebroadcast on Bloomberg Television.
Link says Obama wont push
Everything thumps [Keystone, Cuba, immigration, Health Care]
REUTERS, “Republicans Look to Challenge on Energy, Cuba, Immigration,” 1—4—15,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/04/us-usa-congress-agenda-idUSKBN0KD0A120150104
Republicans take full control of the Congress this week with an agenda of trying to force approval of the Keystone
XL oil pipeline and push back on President Barack Obama's sweeping policy shifts on Cuba and immigration. After years
of battles over the budget and other issues, further clashes loom as Republicans who already control the House of Representatives take over
the Senate majority on Tuesday after wins against Obama's Democrats in November's midterm elections. Angry over the president's moves last year to
bypass Congress on issues such as immigration, Republicans have promised to fight him on a range of issues . Obama
has vowed to use his veto pen if Republicans pass legislation he opposes, but he has said he believes he may be able to forge common ground with
them in some areas, including free trade, overhauling the tax code and boosting infrastructure spending.
Reaching deals won't be easy
amid deep mistrust
on both sides. "To suddenly claim you're going to work with members of Congress after years of ignoring them is rather
ludicrous," said Kevin Smith, a spokesman for Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner. Republican Mitch McConnell, who will
become the Senate majority leader, said the American people expect compromise on key issues despite divided government. "They want us to look for
things to agree on and see if we can make some progress for the country," he said in a pre-recorded interview aired on CNN's State of the Union
program on Sunday. But issues facing Congress will likely be
contentious . McConnell has said the first item on his agenda
will be legislation to force approval of TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline, which has been under review by the Obama
administration for years, would help transport oil from Canada's oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Many Democrats see the project as a threat to the
environment but supporters say it will create jobs and increase North American energy security. A similar bill on Keystone failed late last year and it is
unlikely that Republicans, even with their new majority, could muster the votes needed to overcome an Obama veto. The new Senate Energy
Committee Chairwoman, Lisa Murkowski, plans a vote on Thursday by her panel on the issue. As the new Congress convenes, Obama will set out on
a three-day road trip on Wednesday to Michigan, Arizona and Tennessee to tout his economic record and highlight his own agenda for 2015.
Republican aides said efforts
early
to weaken Obama's signature healthcare law were also high on their priorities. Another
legislative fight will come when Congress considers funding for the D epartment of H omeland S ecurity. A
$1.1 trillion government spending bill passed in mid-December funds government through September, except for the DHS, which is funded only until
Feb. 27. That was an effort by conservative Republicans to block money for implementation of Obama’s executive order that grants temporary relief
from deportation to some undocumented immigrants. Republicans have also discussed using the fight over the homeland security agency as a vehicle
for challenging Obama's landmark move last month to normalize ties with Cuba.
Cromnibus thumps- Obama bucked dems, spills over
Everett, 12-11 -- Politico congressional reporter
[Burgess, and Edward-Issac Dovere, "Liberals: Obama Abandoned Us," Politico, 12-11-14, www.politico.com/story/2014/12/liberalsobama-abandoned-us-113516.html, accessed 1-2-15]
Liberals: Obama abandoned us
The left revolts, saying Obama gave up too easily on spending bill. The White House’s aggressive push to salvage a spending bill
on Capitol Hill left liberal lawmakers feeling burned by President Barack Obama — and raised significant doubts about their
desire to cooperate heading into next year’s Republican takeover of Congress. Democrats will need every vote they can muster
next year as the GOP plans to attack liberal priorities on health care, energy and financial regulation in 2015. But Thursday’s
deadline drama offered no signal of party unity, only fresh reminders of the post-election divisions between a president who’s
looking to govern during his last two years in office and a newly invigorated populist wing of the party, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.). The $1.1 trillion spending bill passed the House late Thursday, with 57 Democrats voting for the bill while 139 voted
against it — with many liberals seething over a provision that rolled back a key financial regulation that is part of the Dodd-Frank
law.
TPA thumps Dems link
Jack Torry 1/3, “Obama’s shift on trade angers Democrats; Fight likely over Trans-Pacific pact,” 2015,
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/national-govt-politics/obamas-shift-on-trade-angers-democrats/njfNb/
President Barack Obama, who during his 2008 campaign spoke of entire cities in the Midwest “devastated” by international trade,
is emerging as a champion of the type of agreements he once insisted led to jobs being shipped
overseas. With Republicans now in control of the U.S. Senate and House, Obama is expected to forge an alliance
with GOP lawmakers such as Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio and House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp., to gain
approval of broad authority he wants to negotiate and win congressional passage of a sweeping freetrade deal with 12 Pacific-rim countries. The outreach to Republicans combined with Obama’s changed
rhetoric on international trade has frustrated Democrats such as Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who has been a
fierce critic of trade deals such as the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, Permanent Normal
Trade Relations with China in 2000, and the 2004 Central American Free Trade Agreement. In a speech last month to some of the
nation’s leading chief executive officers, Obama broke from anti-trade orthodoxy to say “while there’s no doubt that some
manufacturing moved offshore in the wake” of NAFTA and trade status with China, “more of those jobs were lost because of
automation and capital investment.” “Those who oppose these trade deals ironically are accepting a status quo that is more
damaging to American workers,” Obama told the business executives, saying he would “engage directly with our friends in labor and
our environmental organizations” to make certain new deals require foreign competitors to operate under similar environmental and
labor standards as the United States. Obama’s push for what has become known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP,
has run smack into intense opposition from his longtime Democratic allies , particularly those such as
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Niles, who said he was “not an isolationist, but there has got to be a level playing field.” “I love the president,”
Ryan said. “He’s done a lot for manufacturing. He’s helped us in Youngstown and he understands the value of manufacturing. But
on this particular issue, he is not fully seeing what we should be doing with the American economy.” Former Democratic Gov. Ted
Strickland, who is considering a run for the U.S. Senate in 2016, said that “trade can be good and helpful and it can create jobs, but
my concern has been while I was in Congress and the governor’s office that the trade deals we have negotiated have not been by
and large good for the country.” “I understand that the president would try and get this passed mostly with
Republican votes,” Strickland said. “I would hope that would not happen because it would be demoralizing to the
Democratic base .” Gradual shift Obama’s shift on trade has been gradual. After promising in a 2008 Democratic presidential
debate in Cleveland to “use the hammer of a potential opt-out” of NAFTA “as leverage to ensure we get labor and environmental
standards that are enforced,” Obama dropped the matter when he assumed the presidency in 2009. In 2011, he successfully urged
Congress to approve free-trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. Last year during his State-of-the-Union, Obama asked
Congress for trade promotion authority, a request promptly rejected by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. For
business-oriented Republicans, the first step will be an effort to pass what is known in legislative shorthand as “fast-track” authority.
That would mean once Obama and his advisers complete negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, Congress would only
have the power either to approve it or reject rather than change it with amendments. Brown is vowing a fight. In a statement, he
said, “The numbers don’t lie. Since we have passed NAFTA and CAFTA, we’ve seen our trade deficit explode, leaving Ohio jobs
and Ohio manufacturers in the crosshairs.” Brown insisted that Obama wants “trade and I want more of it. But before we pass more
NAFTA-style trade deals, let’s focus on American jobs and competitiveness first,” adding that “our trade policy should allow us to
export Ohio products, not Ohio jobs.” By contrast, Republicans are more receptive to Obama. At a news conference last month,
Boehner pointed out he has wanted to pass fast-track authority for the past three years but complained that Obama has
been hesitant to ask for it. This year,
Boehner said that Obama will have to “build bipartisan support to get it
passed .” Portman, who served in 2005 and 2006 as U.S. trade representative under President George W. Bush, said he backs
“policies that increase U.S. exports and strongly enforce international trade rules, which go hand-in-hand.” He added: “We must
aggressively tear down foreign barriers to American exports.”
PC is irrelevant—politicians vote based on self-interest
Drum 14 (Kevin, political writer, 8-20-14, "Barack Obama Loathes Congress as Much as You Do" Mother Jones)
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/barack-obama-loathes-congress-much-you-do
I'd probably give a little more credit to schmoozing than this. But only a very little. At the margins, there are probably times when
having a good relationship with a committee chair will speed up action or provide a valuable extra vote or two on a bill or a nominee.
And Obama has the perfect vehicle for doing this regularly since he loves to play golf. But for the most part Klein is right. There's
very little evidence that congressional schmoozing has more than a tiny effect on things.
Members of Congress vote the way they want or need to vote, and if they respond to anyone, it's
to party leaders, interest groups, and fellow ideologues. In days gone by, presidents could coerce
votes by working to withhold money from a district, or by agreeing to name a crony as the local
postmaster, but those days are long gone. There's really very little leverage that presidents have
over members of Congress these days, regardless of party.
Alt cause- sanctions relief doom deal- waivers fail
Fikenscher, 14 -- Harvard International Security Program research fellow
[Sven-Eric, and Robert J. Reardon is Assistant Professor of Political Science in the School of Public and International Affairs at
North Carolina State University, "The Fool's Errand for a Perfect Deal with Iran," The Washington Quarterly, Fall 2014, 37:3,
https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/Fikenscher-Reardon_Fall2014.pdf, accessed 1-1-15]
In addition to the above issues—all of which are concessions Iran will be asked to make—similar questions exist on whether the
P5+1 can deliver the sort of sanctions relief necessary to convince Iran to agree to a deal. The United States, which is responsible
for most of the economic sanctions against Iran, has particularly targeted investments in Iran’s oil and gas sector, its banking sector,
and Iranian imports of refined petroleum. Washington has also orchestrated severe restrictions on the purchase of Iranian oil
through third-party sanctions.22 However, the United States has not been alone in these efforts: in one of the most harmful moves
against Iran’s economy, the EU imposed an embargo on Iranian oil in 2012 and also targeted the banking sector. The combination
of these sanctions has delivered a serious blow to Iran, whose oil exports have dropped to less than half of their pre-sanctions
levels, and whose currency has lost most of its value. Hassan Rouhani won Iran’s presidential election in June 2013 largely
on the claim that he could negotiate sanctions relief, and rolling back sanctions has been the central Iranian
demand in talks with the P5+1.23 The Obama administration has hailed the implementation of tough international sanctions as a
policy victory, and a central driver for bringing Iran to the negotiating table and agreeing to the JPA. However, now that the
sanctions are in place, the administration’s hands are tied in terms of lifting them. The administration has within its discretion the
ability to lift sanctions imposed by Executive Order (which, however, only applies to some punitive measures) and to provide limited
sanctions relief by issuing waivers. However, the permanent lifting of many sanctions already in place would require Congressional
action.24 Legislative action to remove sanctions is unlikely, as sanctions enjoy broad, bipartisan support, and there is stiff
Congressional opposition to concessions which leave more than a token enrichment capability intact in Iran.25 The sort of major,
irreversible concessions which the P5+1 demand from Iran would almost certainly require a more credible form of sanctions relief
than presidential waivers. In addition, it is unlikely that Western firms will be willing to commit themselves to long-term projects in
Iran that require major initial sunk costs—as most projects to tap Iran’s vast and largely untapped gas reserves would require—in
the absence of the sort of credible commitment to rolling back sanctions that legislation would provide.
Strikes won’t escalate
Matthew Kroenig 12 Matthew Kroenig is a Stanton nuclear security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an assistant
professor of government at Georgetown University. From July 2010 to July 2011, he was a Council on Foreign Relations
International Affairs Fellow in the Department of Defense, where he worked on Middle East defense policy and strategy. Previously,
in 2005, he worked as a strategist in the Office of the Secretary of Defense “Why Attacking Iran Is A Good Idea” March 21, 2012
http://postwarwatch.com/2012/03/21/matthew-kroenig-attacking-iran/
The United States would try to build international support for an attack, to build a coalition, or even call for a
vote in the UN Security Council. China and Russia would almost certainly veto such a measure, so it is very unlikely
there could be a Security Council Resolution. But the US could build an international coalition with the British,
the French, and other allies to support an attack. The question is, what would China and Russia do, would
they support Iran? They are not formal allies of Iran. They have been less than amicable with Iran;
Russia and China would almost certainly protest a US strike, yet it is unlikely that they could or
would retaliate in a meaningful way against the United States economically or militarily: I think they would
lodge a diplomatic protest, but that is all.
1AR
SV
The causality of their impact is backwards
Beauchamp, 12/11/13 [“5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The Best Year In Human, Zack, Reporter/Blogger for
ThinkProgress.org. He previously contributed to Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish at Newsweek/Daily Beast, and has also written for
Foreign Policy and Tablet magazines. Zack holds B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from Brown University and an M.Sc in
International Relations from the London School of Economics. He grew up in Washington,
DC.History”,http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/12/11/3036671/2013-certainly-year-human-history/#]
Between the brutal civil war in Syria, the government shutdown and all of the deadly dysfunction it represents, the NSA spying revelations, and massive inequality, it’d be easy
We have every reason to believe that 2013 was ,
the best year on the planet for humankind. Contrary to what you might have heard, virtually all of the most important
forces that determine what make people’s lives good — the things that determine how long they
live, and whether they live happily and freely — are trending in an extremely happy direction. While
it’s possible that this progress could be reversed by something like runaway climate change, the effects will have to
be dramatic to overcome the extraordinary and growing progress we’ve made in making the world
a better place. Here’s the five big reasons why. 1. Fewer people are dying young, and more are living longer. The greatest story in recent human history is the
simplest: we’re winning the fight against death. “There is not a single country in the world where infant or child
mortality today is not lower than it was in 1950,” writes Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist who works on
global health issues. The most up-to-date numbers on global health, the 2013 World Health Organization (WHO)
statistical compendium, confirm Deaton’s estimation. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of children who died before their fifth
to for you to enter 2014 thinking the last year has been an awful one. But you’d be wrong.
in fact,
birthday dropped by almost half. Measles deaths declined by 71 percent, and both tuberculosis and maternal deaths by half again. HIV, that modern plague, is also being held
And that’s not only true in
rich countries: life expectancy has gone up between 1990 and 2011 in every WHO income bracket.
back, with deaths from AIDS-related illnesses down by 24 percent since 2005. In short, fewer people are dying untimely deaths.
The gains are even more dramatic if you take the long view: global life expectancy was 47 in the early 1950s, but had risen to 70 — a 50 percent jump — by 2011. For even
more perspective, the average Briton in 1850 — when the British Empire had reached its apex — was 40. The average person today should expect to live almost twice as long
as the average citizen of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country in 1850. In real terms, this means millions of fewer dead adults and children a year, millions fewer
people who spend their lives suffering the pains and unfreedoms imposed by illness, and millions more people spending their twilight years with loved ones. And the trends are
all positive — “progress has accelerated in recent years in many countries with the highest rates of mortality,” as the WHO rather bloodlessly put it. What’s going on? Obviously,
it’s fairly complicated, but the most important drivers have been technological and political innovation. The Enlightenment-era advances in the scientific method got people doing
high-quality research, which brought us modern medicine and the information technologies that allow us to spread medical breakthroughs around the world at increasingly faster
rates. Scientific discoveries also fueled the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern capitalism, giving us more resources to devote to large-scale application of live-saving
technologies. And the global spread of liberal democracy made governments accountable to citizens, forcing them to attend to their health needs or pay the electoral price. We’ll
see the enormously beneficial impact of these two forces, technology and democracy, repeatedly throughout this list, which should tell you something about the foundations of
human progress. But when talking about improvements in health, we shouldn’t neglect foreign aid. Nations donating huge amounts of money out of an altruistic interest in the
welfare of foreigners is historically unprecedented, and while not all aid has been helpful, health aid has been a huge boon. Even Deaton, who wrote one of 2013′s harshest
assessments of foreign aid, believes “the case for assistance to fight disease such as HIV/AIDS or smallpox is strong.” That’s because these programs have demonstrably
saved lives — the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a 2003 program pushed by President Bush, paid for anti-retroviral treatment for over 5.1 million
we’re outracing the Four Horseman, extending our lives
faster than pestilence, war, famine, and death can take them. That alone should be enough to say
the world is getting better. 2. Fewer people suffer from extreme poverty, and the world is getting happier. There are
fewer people in abject penury than at any other point in human history, and middle class people
enjoy their highest standard of living ever. We haven’t come close to solving poverty: a number of African countries in particular have chronic
people in the poor countries hardest-hit by the AIDS epidemic. So
problems generating growth, a nut foreign aid hasn’t yet cracked. So this isn’t a call for complacency about poverty any more than acknowledging victories over disease is an
: as a whole, the world is much richer in 2013 than it was before.
721 million fewer people lived in extreme poverty ($1.25 a day) in 2010 than in 1981, according to a new
World Bank study from October. That’s astounding — a decline from 40 to about 14 percent of the
world’s population suffering from abject want. And poverty rates are declining in every national
income bracket: even in low income countries, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty ($1.25 a day in 2005 dollars) a day gone down from 63 in 1981
to 44 in 2010. We can be fairly confident that these trends are continuing . For one thing, they survived the
Great Recession in 2008. For another, the decline in poverty has been fueled by global economic growth, which looks to be continuing: global GDP grew by
argument against tackling malaria. But make no mistake
2.3 percent in 2012, a number that’ll rise to 2.9 percent in 2013 according to IMF projections. The bulk of the recent decline in poverty comes form India and China — about 80
percent from China *alone*. Chinese economic and social reform, a delayed reaction to the mass slaughter and starvation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, has been the engine of
poverty’s global decline. If you subtract China, there are actually more poor people today than there were in 1981 (population growth trumping the percentage declines in
poverty). But we shouldn’t discount China. If what we care about is fewer people suffering the misery of poverty, then it shouldn’t matter what nation the less-poor people call
home. Chinese growth should be celebrated, not shunted aside. The poor haven’t been the only people benefitting from global growth. Middle class people have access to an
ever-greater stock of life-improving goods. Televisions and refrigerators, once luxury goods, are now comparatively cheap and commonplace. That’s why large-percentage
improvements in a nation’s GDP appear to correlate strongly with higher levels of happiness among the nation’s citizens; people like having things that make their lives easier
and more worry-free. Global economic growth in the past five decades has dramatically reduced poverty and made people around the world happier. Once again, we’re better
off. 3. War is becoming rarer and less deadly. APTOPIX Mideast Libya CREDIT: AP Photo/ Manu Brabo Another massive conflict could overturn the global progress against
war, too, may be losing its fangs
disease and poverty. But it appears
. Steven Pinker’s 2011 book The Better Angels Of Our Nature is the gold standard
in this debate. Pinker brought a treasure trove of data to bear on the question of whether the world has gotten more peaceful, and found that, in the long arc of human history,
both war and other forms of violence (the death penalty, for instance) are on a centuries-long downward slope. Pinker summarizes his argument here if you don’t own the book.
the worldwide rate of death from interstate and civil war
combined has juddered downward…from almost 300 per 100,000 world population during World
War II, to almost 30 during the Korean War, to the low teens during the era of the Vietnam War, to
Most eye-popping are the numbers for the past 50 years; Pinker finds that “
single digits in the 1970s and 1980s, to less than 1 in the twenty-first century .” Here’s what that looks like
graphed: Pinker CREDIT: Steven Pinker/The Wall Street Journal So it looks like the smallest percentage
Did 2013 give us any reason to
believe that Pinker and the other scholars who agree with him have been proven wrong?
Probably not. The academic debate over the decline of war really exploded in 2013, but the “declinist” thesis has fared pretty well. Challenges to Pinker’s conclusion
of humans alive since World War II, and in all likelihood in human history, are living through the horrors of war.
that battle deaths have gone down over time have not withstood scrutiny. The most compelling critique, a new paper by Bear F. Braumoeller, argues that if you control for the
larger number of countries in the last 50 years, war happens at roughly the same rates as it has historically. There are lots of things you might say about Braumoeller’s
argument, and I’ve asked Pinker for his two cents (update: Pinker’s response here). But most importantly, if battle deaths per 100,000 people really has declined, then his
argument doesn’t mean very much. If (percentage-wise) fewer people are dying from war, then what we call “war” now is a lot less deadly than “war” used to be. Braumoeller
suggests population growth and improvements in battle medicine explain the decline, but that’s not convincing: tell me with a straight face that the only differences in deadliness
between World War II, Vietnam, and the wars you see today is that there are more people and better doctors. There’s a more rigorous way of putting that: today, we see many
more civil wars than we do wars between nations. The former tend to be less deadly than the latter. That’s why the other major challenge to Pinker’s thesis in 2013, the
deepening of the Syrian civil war, isn’t likely to upset the overall trend. Syria’s war is an unimaginable tragedy, one responsible for the rare, depressing increase in battle deaths
from 2011 to 2012. However, the overall 2011-2012 trend “fits well with the observed long-term decline in battle deaths,” according to researchers at the authoritative Uppsala
Conflict Data Program, because the uptick is not enough to suggest an overall change in trend. We should expect something similar when the 2013 numbers are published.
Why are smaller and smaller percentages of people being exposed to the horrors of war? There are lots of reasons one could point to, but two of the biggest ones are the
spread of democracy and humans getting, for lack of a better word, better. That democracies never, or almost never, go to war with each other is not seriously in dispute: the
statistical evidence is ridiculously strong. While some argue that the “democratic peace,” as it’s called, is caused by things other than democracy itself, there’s good
experimental evidence that democratic leaders and citizens just don’t want to fight each other. Since 1950, democracy has spread around the world like wildfire. There were
only a handful of democracies after World War II, but that grew to roughly 40 percent of all by the end of the Cold War. Today, a comfortable majority — about 60 percent — of
all states are democracies. This freer world is also a safer one. Second — and this is Pinker’s preferred explanation — people have developed strategies for dealing with war’s
causes and consequences. “Human ingenuity and experience have gradually been brought to bear,” Pinker writes, “just as they have chipped away at hunger and disease.” A
series of human inventions, things like U.N. peacekeeping operations, which nowadays are very successful at reducing violence, have given us a set of social tools increasingly
War’s decline isn’t accidental, in other words. It’s by design. 4. Rates of murder
and other violent crimes are in free-fall. Britain Unrest CREDIT: Akira Suemori/AP Photos Pinker’s trend against violence isn’t limited just to war.
well suited to reducing the harm caused by armed conflict.
It seems likes crimes, both of the sort states commit against their citizens and citizens commit against each other, are also on the decline. Take a few examples. Slavery, once
commonly sanctioned by governments, is illegal everywhere on earth. The use of torture as legal punishment has gone down dramatically. The European murder rate fell 35fold from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century (check out this amazing 2003 paper from Michael Eisner, who dredged up medieval records to estimate European
homicide rates in the swords-and-chivalry era, if you don’t believe me).
The decline has been especially marked in recent years.
Though homicide crime rates climbed back up from their historic lows between the 1970s and 1990s, reversing progress made since the late 19th century, they have collapsed
worldwide in the 21st century. 557,000 people were murdered in 2001 — almost three times as many as were killed in war that year. In 2008, that number was 289,000, and the
homicide rate has been declining in 75 percent of nations since then. Statistics from around the developed world, where numbers are particularly reliable, show that it’s not just
homicide that’s on the wane: it’s almost all violent crime. US government numbers show that violent crime in the United States declined from a peak of about 750 crimes per
100,000 Americans to under 450 by 2009. G7 as a whole countries show huge declines in homicide, robbery, and vehicle theft. So even in countries that aren’t at poor or at war,
most people’s lives are getting safer and more secure. Why? We know it’s not incarceration. While the United States and Britain have dramatically increased their prison
populations, others, like Canada, the Netherlands, and Estonia, reduced their incarceration rates and saw similar declines in violent crime. Same thing state-to-state in the
United States; New York imprisoned fewer people and saw the fastest crime decline in the country. The Economist’s deep dive into the explanations for crime’s collapse
provides a few answers. Globally, police have gotten better at working with communities and targeting areas with the most crime. They’ve also gotten new toys, like DNA
testing, that make it easier to catch criminals. The crack epidemic in the United States and its heroin twin in Europe have both slowed down dramatically. Rapid gentrification
has made inner-city crime harder. And the increasing cheapness of “luxury” goods like iPods and DVD players has reduced incentives for crime on both the supply and demand
sides: stealing a DVD player isn’t as profitable, and it’s easier for a would-be thief to buy one in the first place. But there’s one explanation The Economist dismissed that strikes
me as hugely important: the abolition of lead gasoline. Kevin Drum at Mother Jones wrote what’s universally acknowledged to be the definitive argument for the lead/crime link,
and it’s incredibly compelling. We know for a fact that lead exposure damages people’s brains and can potentially be fatal; that’s why an international campaign to ban leaded
gasoline started around 1970. Today, leaded gasoline is almost unheard of — it’s banned in 175 countries, and there’s been a decline in lead blood levels by about 90 percent.
Drum marshals a wealth of evidence that the parts of the brain damaged by lead are the same ones that check people’s aggressive impulses. Moreover, the timing matches up:
crime shot up in the mid-to-late-20th century as cars spread around the world, and started to decline in the 70s as the anti-lead campaign was succeeding. Here’s close the
relationship is, using data from the United States: Lead_Crime_325 Now, non-homicide violent crime appears to have ticked up in 2012, based on U.S. government surveys of
victims of crime, but it’s very possible that’s just a blip: the official Department of Justice report says up-front that “the apparent increase in the rate of violent crimes reported to
police from 2011 to 2012 was not statistically significant.” So we have no reason to believe crime is making a come back, and every reason to believe the historical decline in
5. There’s less racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination in the world.
Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and other forms of
discrimination remain, without a doubt, extraordinarily powerful forces. The statistical and experimental evidence is
criminal violence is here to stay.
Nelson Mandela CREDIT: Theana Calitz/AP Images
overwhelming — this irrefutable proof of widespread discrimination against African-Americans, for instance, should put the “racism is dead” fantasy to bed. Yet the need to
Over the centuries, humanity has made extraordinary
progress in taming its hate for and ill-treatment of other humans on the basis of difference alone.
Indeed, it is very likely that we live in the least discriminatory era in the history of modern
civilization. It’s not a huge prize given how bad the past had been, but there are still gains worth celebrating. Go back 150 years in time and the point should be
obvious. Take four prominent groups in 1860: African-Americans were in chains, European Jews were
routinely massacred in the ghettos and shtetls they were confined to, women around the world
were denied the opportunity to work outside the home and made almost entirely subordinate to
their husbands, and LGBT people were invisible. The improvements in each of these group’s
statuses today, both in the United States and internationally, are incontestable. On closer look, we have reason to
believe the happy trends are likely to continue. Take racial discrimination. In 2000, Harvard sociologist Lawrence Bobo penned a
combat discrimination denial shouldn’t blind us to the good news.
comprehensive assessment of the data on racial attitudes in the United States. He found a “national consensus” on the ideals of racial equality and integration. “A nation once
comfortable as a deliberately segregationist and racially discriminatory society has not only abandoned that view,” Bobo writes, “but now overtly positively endorses the goals of
racial integration and equal treatment. There is no sign whatsoever of retreat from this ideal, despite events that many thought would call it into question. The magnitude,
steadiness, and breadth of this change should be lost on no one.”
The norm against overt racism has gone global . In her book on the
international anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, Syracuse’s Audie Klotz says flatly that “the illegitimacy of white minority rule led to South Africa’s persistent diplomatic,
cultural, and economic isolation.” The belief that racial discrimination could not be tolerated had become so widespread, Klotz argues, that it united the globe — including
governments that had strategic interests in supporting South Africa’s whites — in opposition to apartheid. In 2011, 91 percent of respondents in a sample of 21 diverse countries
said that equal treatment of people of different races or ethnicities was important to them. Racism obviously survived both American and South African apartheid, albeit in more
subtle, insidious forms. “The death of Jim Crow racism has left us in an uncomfortable place,” Bobo writes, “a state of laissez-faire racism” where racial discrimination and
disparities still exist, but support for the kind of aggressive government policies needed to address them is racially polarized. But there’s reason to hope that’ll change as well:
two massive studies of the political views of younger Americans by my TP Ideas colleagues, John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, found that millenials were significantly more racially
tolerant and supportive of government action to address racial disparities than the generations that preceded them. Though I’m not aware of any similar research of on a global
scale, it’s hard not to imagine they’d find similar results, suggesting that we should have hope that the power of racial prejudice may be waning. The story about gender
discrimination is very similar: after the feminist movement’s enormous victories in the 20th century, structural sexism still shapes the world in profound ways, but the cause of
gender equality is making progress. In 2011, 86 percent of people in a diverse 21 country sample said that equal treatment on the basis of gender was an important value. The
U.N.’s Human Development Report’s Gender Inequality Index — a comprehensive study of reproductive health, social empowerment, and labor market equity — saw a 20
percent decline in observable gender inequalities from 1995 to 2011. IMF data show consistent global declines in wage disparities between genders, labor force participation,
and educational attainment around the world. While enormous inequality remains, 2013 is looking to be the worst year for sexism in history. Finally, we’ve made astonishing
progress on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination — largely in the past 15 years. At the beginning of 2003, zero Americans lived in marriage equality states; by
the end of 2013, 38 percent of Americans will. Article 13 of the European Community Treaty bans discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, and, in 2011, the UN
Human Rights Council passed a resolution committing the council to documenting and exposing discrimination on orientation or identity grounds around the world. The public
opinion trends are positive worldwide: all of the major shifts from 2007 to 2013 in Pew’s “acceptance of homosexuality” poll were towards greater tolerance, and young people
these victories are partial and
by no means inevitable . Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination aren’t just “going away” on their own. They’re losing their hold on us
because people are working to change other people’s minds and because governments are passing laws aimed at promoting equality. Positive trends don’t
mean the problems are close to solved, and certainly aren’t excuses for sitting on our hands. That’s
everywhere are more open to equality for LGBT individuals than their older peers. best_year_graphics-04 Once again,
true of everything on this list. The fact that fewer people are dying from war and disease doesn’t lessen the moral imperative to do something about those that are; the fact that
But too often, the worst parts about
the world are treated as inevitable , the prospect of radical victory over pain and suffering dismissed as utopian fantasy. The
overwhelming force of the evidence shows that to be false. As best we can tell, the reason humanity is getting better is because
people are getting richer and safer in their homes isn’t an excuse for doing more to address poverty and crime.
humans have decided to make the world a better place. We consciously chose to develop lifesaving medicine and build freer political systems; we’ve passed laws against
workplace discrimination and poisoning children’s minds with lead. So far, these choices have more than paid off. It’s up to us to make sure they continue to.