CDL Core Files Off-Case Outlines 2013/14
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2013/14 Chicago Debate League Core Files
Off- Case Outlines
I.
NEGATIVE
Disadvantages
DIPLOMATIC CAPITAL 1NC
A)
B)
C)
Uniqueness: President Obama is focused on using his limited diplomatic capital
on resolving problems in the Middle East -- success there will require his full
foreign policy attention.
Link: The plan forces Obama to focus his diplomatic resources on Latin America,
which causes foreign policy overstretch and prevents his ability to deal with the
Middle East.
Impact: Peace process failure causes escalating proliferation and aggression that
causes nuclear war.
CHINA 1NC
A)
B)
C)
D)
Uniqueness: China is engaging with Latin America in order to build international
support for a peaceful rise.
Link: China is expanding its engagement with Latin America because of U.S.
disengagement there. U.S. engagement risks generating hostile, Cold War like
competition between the U.S. and China in Latin America.
Internal Link: China is obsessed with U.S. foreign policy. Even minor shifts
toward control will cause overreactions and alliances designed to counterbalance
U.S. interests.
Impact: Counterbalancing leads to great power wars which will cause extinction.
POLITICS 1NC
A)
B)
C)
D)
Uniqueness: Obama has proposed new climate regulations that will solve U.S.
emissions, and he has the political strength to win the tough battle.
Link: Latin America ranks as a low priority for U.S. foreign policy – Republicans
will battle any new Obama initiative for the region.
Internal Link: A new policy controversy will de-rail Obama’s second-term project
to get climate change regulations passed, which will require all of his current
political capital
Impact
1. Obama’s plan solves global warming because it is comprehensive and targets
the largest source of emissions.
2. Continuing to emit CO2 into the atmosphere will turn the oceans into acid and
destroy the base of the food chain.
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3. Ocean biodiversity is necessary to sustain all life on earth.
CORRUPTION 1NC
A)
B)
C)
Uniqueness: Despite difficulties, Latin American countries are making progress
against corruption.
Link: Foreign aid discourages governments from independently investing in their
countries, leading to increased corruption and distance from the public.
Impact
1.
Increased corruption discourages investment and growth that are necessary
for economic and political stability.
2.
No solvency: Aid only encourages other countries to act like they are
cleaning up, while shifting corruption to more covert mechanisms.
Counterplan
EUROPEAN UNION Counterplan 1NC
1)
Text: [Insert Plan-Specific Text]
2)
Competition: Net Benefits.
The Counterplan is competitive with the plan because it does not use the United
States federal government, which means that all of our disadvantages are netbenefits to the European Union acting by itself. Voting for the Counterplan solves
all or most of the case Harms while avoiding all risk of the disadvantages.
3)
Solvency
The European Union is in an ideal position to engage Latin America
economically. The E.U. can actually effect a superior partnership with Latin
America because it isn’t burdened by a history of subordination and failure in the
region, as is the U.S.
Plan Specific Texts:
A) Mexican Security:
The European Union should substantially increase its economic engagement toward
Mexico by providing financial assistance to Mexico for violence prevention programs
near the border between the United States and Mexico.
B) Venezuelan Democracy:
The European Union should substantially increase its economic engagement toward
Venezuela by providing economic aid tied to verifiable improvements in Venezuelan
election monitoring and election reporting.
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C) Cuban Ethanol:
The European Union should substantially increase its economic engagement toward Cuba
by removing all barriers to the importation of sugar-based ethanol from Cuba into
Europe, and fully guarantee market access with funding.
Topicality
MEXICO SECURITY Topicality 1NC
A)
Interpretation: Economic engagement is for helping countries with their
economies. Assistance to reduce drug crime is security assistance, which is
different.
B)
Violation: The plan is not aid to improve Mexico’s economy. It is for crime
prevention and security training.
Standards for Evaluation
1. Limits: Anything can be classified as “economic engagement” if the only
C)
requirement is that the plan spends money to do it. Limiting down to
assistance targeted for economic development allows for more reasonable
and more fair limits on the topic.
2. Topic Education: The center of this topic is economic cooperation and
development. If the Affirmative can talk about security issues, it diverts
our learning from economic issues to military issues, which makes all
debate topics the same and makes debaters ignorant about economics.
D)
Topicality is a Voting Issue for fairness and education.
VENEZUELAN DEMOCRACY Topicality 1NC
A)
B)
C)
A.
Interpretation: Economic Engagement requires an unconditional transfer of aid
from the United States to another country, regardless of whether the other country
initiates reform.
Violation: The plan is conditional, only giving assistance if Venezuela actually
implements reforms. If Venezuela rejects the offer, no economic assistance is
given.
Standards for Evaluation:
1. Conditionality: Plans must be topical on their face, but the affirmatives
plan only acts to increase American economic engagement under a certain
condition, meaning that it is only conditionally topical. Uncertainty on the
plan’s prima facie topicality means you must vote negative.
2. Topic Explosion: Under an affirmative interpretation, they can try to get
Latin American countries to adopt an infinite range of policies by
conditioning our aid on their adopting them. This explodes the topic, and
is thus both uneducational and competitively unfair.
3. Education: The core of the topic is learning about U.S. aid. If aid doesn’t
need to be transferred, we don’t learn about government interactions.
Topicality is a voting issue for Fairness and Ground.
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CUBA ETHANOL Topicality 1NC
A)
B)
C)
1.
2.
D)
II.
Interpretation: “Increase” means actively making something greater from a
previously existing baseline.
Violation: The Affirmative removes a barrier to economic engagement, but they
do not actively provide additional economic aid that can be measured against a
current, pre-existing baseline.
Standards for Evaluation:
Predictable Ground – Removing a barrier does not provide quantifiable
distinctions from the status quo that our links depend on. Core arguments
like the Corruption Disadvantage require being able to pin the plan to a
stable transfer of resources, and perception-based arguments like the
Politics Disadvantage require allocation of new funds rather than
simple changes to the text of the law.
Effects Topicality – Even if there are material resources transferred
eventually, this requires several steps before the plan becomes topical.
Every step creates unpredictable advantages that they can claim, serves to
broaden the topic unfairly and ungrammatically, and requires the
affirmative to win solvency in order to be topical, even though the plan
has to be topical on its face.
Topicality is a Voting Issue for Fairness and Education.
AFFIRMATIVE
DIPLOMATIC CAPITAL 2AC
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Empirically denied. Their uniqueness evidence is about current negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but their impact evidence is from
1999. Escalation and the ultimate impacts they claim should have happened over
the past 15 years, since we haven’t had a successful peace process in that time.
Non-Unique: Obama is trying to get out of the Middle East.
Case Outweighs: Our Harms scenarios have larger impacts than their
Disadvantage. By solving for our Harms, we are stopping global war. Even if they
win their impact, it is only a regional war that has never escalated because every
country in the Middle East is deterred from attacking the others.
Turn: Winners Win. Other countries are already backlashing against Obama. The
plan provides a foreign policy victory that will create new energy and focus going
forward.
No Internal Link: Every Middle Eastern country is overly focused on domestic
issues and won’t work for peace.
Non-Unique: Overall foreign assistance to every region is declining now.
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No Link: There is no trade-off in pressing for more issues. Adding democracy and
human rights issues to Obama’s agenda will make other security issues more
successful.
Turn: The plan gets smaller issues out of the way, allowing Obama to increase his
diplomatic capital elsewhere.
No Internal Link: Peace talks will fail because neither Israel nor Palestine will
agree to push for peace.
CHINA DA 2AC
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
No Link: Latin America is not important enough to either America or China to
create tension.
Non-Unique: The U.S. is already outspending China in Latin America by more
than 3-to-1.
No Link: Their evidence assumes the plan specifically targets a Chinese policy in
Latin America with the goal of replacing it. China does not have a policy in place
to do what the plan does, so there is no risk of overlap or competition.
Turn: Hegemony
A) Chinese engagement with Latin America decreases American global
influence.
B) Loss of U.S. leadership causes global nuclear war.
No Impact: Security concerns in Latin America will not lead to escalation because
there is plenty of space for cooperation between the U.S. and China.
Non-Unique: Chinese investment in Latin America is not sustainable.
Turn: Chinese investment is a front for Chinese military aggression in the region,
leading to war with the U.S.
POLITICS DA 2AC
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Non-Unique: Obama won’t dedicate political capital to the new rules, and he
doesn’t have enough time to make them strong before they are reversed.
No Link: Obama’s new rules do not go through Congress, so there is no risk of a
fight over the plan having any spillover effect. Even if the plan causes massive
controversy, there is no vote over climate regulations for Congress to backlash on.
Either the regulations are inevitable, or they will fail for reasons the plan has
nothing to do with.
No impact: Obama’s new rules do not change the status quo on climate change.
Non-Unique: A split congress and slow economy mean Republicans are able to
kill off any agenda item Obama pushes.
Link turn: The plan is popular and will boost Obama’s political capital.
[Insert Plan-Specific Link Turn]
Political capital is a myth, there is no such thing as presidential
momentum.
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Obama’s rules allow leeway for polluting companies and do not challenge
fracking, making them ineffective.
Turn: Winners win. Momentum doesn’t exist until a president creates it; by
passing the plan, Obama will create a victory that propels him to other victories.
Non-Unique: Obama’s attempt to side-step Congress, and leaving for an overseas
trip rather than pushing the new rules prove he is not dedicating serious political
capital.
CORRUPTION DA 2AC
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
No Link: Their evidence is generic about foreign aid, not the specific economic
assistance plan we advocate. Our specific solvency evidence is better than their
highly generic evidence. They should have to prove exactly how their
disadvantage links to our specific plan action.
Alternate Causality: There are many structural causes of corruption. The plan
does not make any of these worse. Even if we don’t solve all corruption, we make
the situation better by solving the specific scenarios of our Harms.
Case Outweighs: Our Harms scenarios have larger impacts than their
Disadvantage. By solving for our Harms, we are stopping global war. Even if they
win their impact, it is only a localized civil conflict that does not spill over to any
other regions or connect to U.S. national security. This means our plan has a
much bigger magnitude than their disadvantage
Non-Unique: Our specific country is already very corrupt.
[Insert country-specific evidence for Cuba, Mexico or Venezuela]
Turn: Aid decreases corruption by increasing rules and limits on government
action.
No Link: Their evidence is not causal. Countries receiving aid usually already
have corruption and a lack of business development.
Non Unique: Private businesses are causing corruption, which means the
government will be corrupt regardless of the plan.
Turn: Our plan specifically solves for corruption.
[Insert Country-specific evidence for Cuba, Mexico or Venezuela]
EUROPEAN UNION COUNTERPLAN 2AC
1.
2.
3.
Permutation: Do both. The United States and the European Union should both
give economic assistance. Cooperation solves the Harms better because both
agencies will be giving assistance, and it avoids the links to their disadvantages
because the U.S. can successfully argue that the E.U. is responsible for the plan,
which solves Congressional and international scrutiny.
The Counterplan does not solve our Harms.
[Insert Plan-Specific Solvency Deficit]
International Actor Fiat is illegitimate. This is a voting issue since such a
substantial portion of the negative position and this debate round itself is premised
on a theoretically abusive argument.
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A) Education and Fairness: There are thousands of countries, international
organizations and NGOs that could all do something similar to the plan. There
would be too many agent counterplan options, hurting the education and
fairness of debates. Affirmatives cannot possibly predict or research
responses to.
B) Infinite Regression: Allowing the Negative to test the agent in the
resolution by fiating through any other actor has no objective limit and would
regress to allowing them to fiat a change in action through Latin American
countries themselves, or through the agents with those countries that are
responsible for the Harms, enabling them to win debates by fiat alone.
C) Artificial Ground: No literature writes about their disadvantage in the
context of a foreign country acting, meaning we cannot find specific turns or
links to the Counterplan before the round. This allows them to artificially
outweigh our Affirmative.
D) Our standard is that the Negative should be limited to counterplans that use
the U.S. as its agent.
No Solvency: The E.U.’s economy is too weak to support foreign assistance.
The E.U. economic crisis will delay solvency of the Counterplan by a decade.
Turn: European Leadership.
A) Economic limits are causing trade-offs in E.U. economic assistance away
from low profile regions like Latin America in favor of more important areas
such as the Middle East. The Counterplan forces funding to Latin America,
which undermines E.U. soft power.
B) A strong and credible European Union is necessary to combat global
problems like diseases and economic collapse that will lead to extinction
because no individual country has the capacity to solve.
MEXICO SECURITY Topicality 2AC
1.
2.
3.
We Meet: The plan is assistance designed to improve Mexico’s economy by
cracking down on corruption and drug violence. Our advantages don’t have to be
topical, only the plan, and on face we are economic assistance.
Counter-Interpretation: Economic engagement is economic assistance that helps
with security goals
Counter Standards:
a. Affirmative ground: Their interpretation forces the affirmative to debate
only about the Mexican economy. Interpreting the resolution this way
would make debate stale, and the negative could outweigh affirmatives
with security-based disadvantages. The way to balance the competition,
and to enable students to learn more in debate, is to have a diversity of
Harms scenarios to argue.
4.
b. Education: The topic is about foreign engagement with multiple countries.
If the only arguments every round were generic economy arguments, we
would not learn anything about Mexico, Cuba, or Venezuela.
No abuse: According to our solvency evidence, the plan would be implemented
by USAID, which is the federal agency that administers economic assistance.
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Mixing burdens: They require you to look at our Harms and Solvency before
determining if we are topical. Look at the plan text alone: if the plan gives
financial assistance to one of the three topical countries, then the Affirmative
must be Topical.
Default to reasonability: it’s impossible for the Affirmative to win the round on
topicality, so we should only need to provide a good interpretation rather than the
best one. If both sides have ground and arguments, you should resolve the debate
on substantive issues instead of topicality.
VENEZUELA DEMOCRACY Topicality 2AC
1.
2.
3.
We Meet: Our 1AC proves that Venezuela will accept the aid and meet the
conditions, meaning the plan results in assistance transferring to Venezuela.
Counter-Interpretation: Engagement requires conditioning aid on fulfilling certain
requirements before the assistance is received.
Prefer our Interpretation:
a. Proper Limits: Defining “engagement” as conditional is necessary to focus
the term on core literature. Unconditional assistance is used too
infrequently to make for a debatable topic.
4.
5.
6.
b. Government-specific: Our definition is the one the U.S. federal
government uses. Economic Engagement requires conditioning funds on
policy changes by receiving countries so that democratic changes are
made before funds are received.
There is no topic explosion because economic engagement can include positive
conditions, but not negative ones.
No case meets their interpretation: The Negative could always win that the other
country refuses the aid or fails to implement changes, and this would make every
Affirmative non-topical because no plan can guarantee the other country will
cooperate.
Default to reasonability: it’s impossible for the Affirmative to win the round on
topicality, so we should only need to provide a good interpretation rather than the
best one. If both sides have ground and arguments, you should resolve the debate
on substantive issues instead of topicality.
CUBA ETHANOL Topicality 2AC
1.
2.
3.
We Meet: The plan enables the purchase of sugarcane ethanol from Cuba, which
creates a transfer of resources and an increase in economic assistance. If this
doesn’t meet, then no Cuba affirmative can be topical because the trade embargo
makes every purchase illegal and the Affirmative would lose on basic solvency
take-outs.
Counter-interpretation: “Increase” must be progressive and measured after a
period of time, not immediately after the change. This is the definition that
government agencies use.
Prefer our interpretation:
a. Government context: The U.S. government has determined that
measuring immediately after the change is meaningless because this does
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not take into account the overall changes resulting from the policy. So it
is more reasonable to evaluate the policy after a period of time.
4.
5.
6.
b. Topic Education: Removing trade embargoes are key topic literature in the
context of economic engagement. Topic experts have determined that this
is the most important form of assistance.
Effects Topicality is not a voting issue. Every policy has multiple steps from the
signing of the bill to the delivery of the assistance, including transfer of funds,
verification of delivery, and enforcing the terms. Their interpretation does not
prevent Effects Topicality. And we are not topical by effects; our evidence proves
that ending the embargo creates an immediate market for sugarcane ethanol.
Their interpretation kills ground. Forcing the Affirmative to defend only a transfer
of cash means there would be no solvency deficit to any international actor
counterplan and no link answer to the Spending Disadvantage. Allowing a little
Affirmative flexibility is necessary to balance the debate, and other words in the
resolution limit the number of possible plans.
Default to reasonability: it’s impossible for the Affirmative to win the round on
topicality, so we should only need to provide a good interpretation rather than the
best one. If both sides have ground and arguments, you should resolve the debate
on substantive issues instead of topicality.
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