Georgia GH – GSU Neg Cards
Rd 2 Neg vs George Mason DM – Weed
1NC
1
Aff needs to specify HOW they plan to legalize marijuana - specification MATTERS in the context of
marijuana legalization – the terms themselves are too ambiguous
Kleiman 13 (Mark, Prof of Public Policy @ UCLA + Drug Policy Expert, "How to legalize cannabis,"
http://www.samefacts.com/2013/12/drug-policy/how-to-legalize-cannabis/)
Debating whether to legalize pot is increasingly pointless. Unless there’s an unexpected shock to public opinion, it’s going to
happen, and sooner rather than later. The important debate now is how to legalize it. The results of legalization depend
strongly on the details of the post-prohibition tax and regulatory regimes . In the current situation, continued prohibition
might be the worst option. Full commercial legalization on the alcohol model might well be the second-worst. But that’s the way we’re heading.
I’m preparing an essay about designing a post-prohibition regime. After the jump is a set of topic sentences and paragraphs for sections of that
essay, not yet in a well-defined order. (UPDATE: Numbers inserted to facilitate comments.) Substantive comments are welcome. Rant and snark
will be ruthlessly zapped. 1. We probably should legalize cannabis. Prohibition is now breaking down. $35B/yr. is a lot of money to give to
criminals, and no one has a plausible plan to shrink the illicit market under prohibition. Even where “medical marijuana” has degenerated into
system when anyone can buy a user license from a crooked doctor, the voters still like it. Arguably, prohibition was worth trying. But it’s time to
go home. 2. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Cannabis legalization will reduce criminal revenue, intrusive enforcement, arrest,
incarceration, and disorder around illicit markets, and enhance personal liberty, consumer choice, and respect for the law, and probably reduce
bloodshed in Mexico. It might foster safer and more beneficial practices of cannabis use. 3. Legalization will certainly increase drug abuse,
including heavy use by minors. Every adult is a potential source of leakage to minors. And if we insist on making minors consume illicitlyproduced pot, we reserve 20-25% of the market for criminals. Much better to tolerate leakage and have a grey-market supply to minors like the
current system that provides them with alcohol. 4. The polarized nature of the debate means that both sides wind up spending lots of time denying
the obvious. 5. Good design tries to get as much of the advantages, and as little of the disadvantages, as possible. 6. The policies most likely to
help control increases in drug abuse are taxation and other efforts to keep prices high, rules about consumer information (labeling and marketing),
and “nudge” strategies to enhance consumer mindfulness. 7. It matters a lot whether, under conditions of legality, cannabis turns out to be a
substitute for alcohol or instead a complement. Right now, no one knows the answer, which might not be the same for all parts of the population
or the same in the long run as in the short run. 8. Analysis can help, but there’s no substitute for experience. The trick is not to get locked in to a
set of bad policies. We need a process designed to learn from mistakes. 9. Neither “cannabis” nor “legalization” names its object
with enough specificity. Lots of different things are legalization . Lots of different things are cannabis.
Voter for fairness – makes it impossible to be negative because we can’t garner stable neg offense against an
ambiguous legal procedure
2
Securitizing illegal economies conflates terror with social protest – state devalues marginalized groups
Ferradas 13 -- Associate Prof @ Dept of Anthropology, Binghamton Univ (Carmen A., 10/28/2013, "The Nature of
Illegality Under Neoliberalism and Post-Neoliberalism," PoLAR 36(2), Galileo)
Outbursts of social upheaval such as food riots and massive social protests at the turn of the millennium had become conflated with
other forms of violence, such as international terrorism. Increasingly, most aspects of the informal economy have become either linked to the
illegal or, even worse, have been presented as illegal themselves, and a discourse of security has come to dominate
hegemonic representations of the individuals at the margins of society . Rather than not being fully modern because they had a different “culture” or failed
to integrate into a modern economy, the migrants and poor of today are increasingly portrayed as outlaws, criminals that need to be closely
“secured” through various forms of policing. These portrayals are not new; we have ample evidence from the past showing us how the poor were perceived as dangerous
classes. Fears and negative constructions of the weak intensify when social inequality and unemployment becomes rampant as is the case today. Security state apparatus and various
media venues often conflate terrorism, drug trafficking, and various economic activities of the informal economy. They
rarely question, however, the dubious operations of global corporations with the support of complicit state powers. The international legal system rarely criminalizes such activities even though
they often impinge on state sovereignty and citizen rights. In the San Juan de Dios market case, discussed by Aguiar (this issue), we see how the media and national and transnational actors increasingly depict those involved in piracy
as also engaged in drug trafficking. His analysis shows that this is not always the case. Although he does not deny this might indeed happen in some cases, his ethnographic work demonstrates that many of the individuals involved in
piracy in this market were former fayuqueros (individuals involved in the smuggling of goods, particularly electronics) who were compelled to adapt to the new market conditions. According to him, many of them operate individually
and are not part of organized networks. Once electronics were available on credit with the lifting of protective measures under neoliberalism, the profitable smuggling of electronics from the United States declined abruptly. The case
he describes is similar to what happened in Argentina and Brazil as soon as the two countries signed the Mercosur agreements and also embraced open market policies. For a brief period (late 1990s and early 2000s), the economy of
the Paraguayan border cities such as Ciudad del Este and Encarnación was negatively affected as Argentines and Brazilians could buy manufacturer-guaranteed imported goods on credit without risking being caught at the border
while smuggling goods. These conditions have recently changed as the two countries have entered a post-neoliberal phase characterized among other things by greater restrictions on imports (see Jusionyte, this issue). These recent
changes make it clear that we cannot examine the emergence of illegalities in a linear fashion. The nature of the illegal shifts to adapt to the changing circumstances of nation-states and international conditions. Jusionyte and to a
besides often reproducing the official
discourse that defines what is legal and illegal, they also “produce legitimacy when they avoid, or speak around, the issues deemed uncomfortable for the local
lesser extent Aguiar examine how the media are implicated in processes of the production of the illegal. In the case of Puerto Iguazú, Jusionyte argues that
community due to the lack of social consensus over their moral and legal quality.” She emphasizes how journalists are forced to juggle their multiple positions in the Iguazú community. Besides being producers of representations of
journalists
use the public sphere tactically. In their portrayal of the frontier, she says, they construct some illegalities and obstruct others . The media are not
alone in remaining silent on some aspects of illegality. Polson shows how social analysts neglect addressing the production process of the marijuana
economy. This silence obviously has some effects as it conceals the existence of the drug war rentier nexus. Most studies either focus on the consumer side or demonize the producers without examining how the latter are
the place, they are also participants in the petty border trade of the frontier economy. This pushes them to manipulate the boundaries of the legal both in their professional and personal lives. She believes that local
entangled in a system in which the risks and benefits are unequally distributed. His study pushes us to analyze more carefully how apparently licit and legal real estate interests might be highly dependent on the need to put illegally
obtained money into circulation. This link is obvious in Argentina's current economic situation. It is estimated that around 9 billions of dollars of the nearly 180 billions of dollars that are part of the capital drain are invested in
The role played by transnational forms of
power is too often overlooked in work on illegality. In the case of the Triple Frontier, the sources of negative constructions have often
stemmed from the security apparatus of the United States, particularly in everything that pertains to the demonization of the area as one of the axes of evil. The
linkage between terrorism and various forms of illegal trade is part of this narrative . Although this was not part of my research at that
property abroad. This money laundered outside Argentina exceeds the estimates for the national debt estimated in 140 billions of dollars.
time, shortly after the September 11 events in the United States, residents of Puerto Iguazú and Foz do Iguaçu, commented on how US envoys tried to shape local journalists’ reporting. Even though at some points representatives of
the Argentine and Brazilian states might have echoed these supranational constructions, for the most part, and particularly during the last decade, authorities from both nations generally challenged them. They have particularly
representatives of the US State Department
established between forms of social protest and terrorism.
objected to the linkages
often
An Agenda to Research Illegality This Symposium addresses the irony of an increase in regulation and control at a time when the dominant paradigm has emphasized freedom, circulation and flows. Individuals and things that until
quite recently were outside the radar of the law have become subject to tight forms of inspection and discipline. The resurgence of populism and the abandonment of the Washington Consensus in South America are often associated
with what some call the post-neoliberal. Various scholars have recently analyzed the revival of supposedly defunct state redistributive and protective measures (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2012; Leiva 2008; MacDonald and Ruckert 2009;
works focus mainly in exploring the transformations in forms of governance and the political economy. They seek to identify alternatives to market
liberalism (Rovira Kaltwasser 2007) and to understand the current expansion of the nation state. However, to my knowledge, we still have not
examined ethnographically how the changing role of the state might entail new forms of illegality and criminalization. The brief analysis in this
Merino 2011). Most of the
essay suggests that we should examine more closely how the new class and state alliances are producing new politics of blame not necessarily targeted to those traditionally excluded. We should be wary, however, to think of these
Comaroff (2012:6–7) have recently challenged us to narrate world historical processes
from its undersides because they believe “the present reveals itself more starkly from the antipodes.” By examining the South African
developments as representing a stage in the configuration of illegalities. Comaroff and
case in particular, they delve into the inequities of the Post-colony and show us that the promise of a better future with neoliberal capitalism did not materialize. The current processes examined in this Symposium suggest that there
Depending on what vantage point we choose, we might foresee a future
of individuals outlawed and reduced to bare life or we might imagine a more equitable world in which the rich, for a change, might also be subjected to forms of discipline and
might be more than one vantage point to examine the present and possible futures.
control.
Enframing of security makes macro-political violence inevitable
Burke 7 – Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales
(Anthony, Theory & Event, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason,”
Project MUSE)
threats, insecurities
and political manipulation, or the play of institutional, economic or political interests (the 'military-industrial complex'). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be discounted, but they flow
over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only come to form a powerful structure of common sense but
the apparently solid ground of the real itself. In this light, the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-making and
justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are more than merely arguments, rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly they mobilise forms of
knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media, citizens, bureaucracies and military forces
This essay develops a theory about the causes of war -- and thus aims to generate lines of action and critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based either on a given sequence of events,
with organising systems of belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than that. They are truthsystems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in modernity: ontologies, statements about truth
and being which claim a rarefied privilege to state what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I am
thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement about the nature and ideality of being (in this case political being, that of the
nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and
application of strategic knowledge for the use of armed force, and the creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security
and national survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or positivistic inquiry into the
fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of things inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential
attributes'.17 In contrast, drawing on Foucauldian theorising about truth and power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a claim to
the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity, existence and action; one that is not essential or
timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and conflictual
socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'18 in its most sweeping and powerful form. I see such a drive for ontological
certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it takes the form of the existential and rationalist ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and
exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that confines
it within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in
the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation with violence: the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual
structure that generates violence. Here we are witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an
ontology of violence (the national security state). When we consider their relation to war, the two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and
doubly in combination) tends both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in scale and duration, or in unintended
effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost
and with limited impact -- it permeates being. This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger), showing how they
crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz. This creates both a profound ethical and
pragmatic problem. The ethical problem arises because of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image
of technology and being in which humans are merely utilitarian instruments for use, control and destruction, and
force -- in the words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the linear system
of effects imagined in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon
itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction. In the era of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt
(that violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn against those that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are
made to coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21 What I am trying to
describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by security,
statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of
knowledge with particular systemic roles and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity.
Positivistic or scientific claims to epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and
political action, which in turn support larger ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a
common horizon of certainty that is one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more
totalising and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being) has analytical
The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy doctrine) claims
positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a
desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national existence, security, or order. However in practice, technique quickly passes
into ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence which
itself admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict, and the
resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy
claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for an ultimate purpose (securing being)
that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a technique not merely becomes an instrument of state power but
ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have
no essence or integrity outside their value as objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology
immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis
value, it tends to break down in action.
generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized manoeuvres in
the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the
"deterrent power" that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that
these dual ontologies of war link being, means, events and decisions into a single, unbroken chain whose very
process of construction cannot be examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S.
neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in his 2002 West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached from strong
ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war on terror'.24 Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that
obsessive ontological commitments have led to especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25 However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to disentangle strategic from existential
without interrogating more deeply how they form a conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's
thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will continue to
be made. The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the national security state and the
violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out
reason, and to open up choice in that way. However
every other possibility of revealing being', how can they be escaped? 26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is there any scope for
agency and resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the political -- needs to be respected and understood. However, we are far from
powerless in the face of them. The need is to critique dominant images of political being and dominant ways of
securing that being at the same time, and to act and choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global rule of the political. Friend and Enemy:
Violent Ontologies of the Nation-State In his Politics Among Nations Hans Morgenthau stated that 'the national interest of a peace-loving nation can only be defined in terms of national security, which is the irreducible minimum that
diplomacy must defend with adequate power and without compromise'. While Morgenthau defined security relatively narrowly -- as the 'integrity of the national territory and its institutions' -- in a context where security was in
practice defined expansively, as synonymous with a state's broadest geopolitical and economic 'interests', what was revealing about his formulation was not merely the ontological centrality it had, but the sense of urgency and priority
he accorded to it: it must be defended 'without compromise'.27 Morgenthau was a thoughtful and complex thinker, and understood well the complexities and dangers of using armed force. However his formulation reflected an
security was conceived in modern political thought as an
existential condition -- a sine qua non of life and sovereign political existence -- and then married to war and
instrumental action, it provides a basic underpinning for either the limitless resort to strategic violence without
effective constraint, or the perseverance of limited war (with its inherent tendencies to escalation) as a permanent feature of
politics. While he was no militarist, Morgenthau did say elsewhere (in, of all places, a far-reaching critique of nuclear strategy) that the 'quantitative and qualitative competition for conventional weapons is a rational instrument
influential view about the significance of the political good termed 'security'. When this is combined with the way in which
of international politics'.28 The conceptual template for such an image of national security state can be found in the work of Thomas Hobbes, with his influential conception of the political community as a tight unity of sovereign and
people in which their bodies meld with his own to form a 'Leviathan', and which must be defended from enemies within and without. His image of effective security and sovereignty was one that was intolerant of internal difference
and dissent, legitimating a strong state with coercive and exceptional powers to preserve order and sameness. This was a vision not merely of political order but of existential identity, set off against a range of existential others who
were sources of threat, backwardness, instability or incongruity.29 It also, in a way set out with frightening clarity by the theorist Carl Schmitt and the philosopher Georg Hegel, exchanged internal unity, identity and harmony for
permanent alienation from other such communities (states). Hegel presaged Schmitt's thought with his argument that individuality and the state are single moments of 'mind in its freedom' which 'has an infinitely negative relation to
itself, and hence its essential character from its own point of view is its singleness': Individuality is awareness of one's existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states,
each of which is autonomous vis-a-vis the others...this negative relation of the state to itself is embodied in the world as the relation of one state to another and as if the negative were something external.30 Schmitt is important both
for understanding the way in which such alienation is seen as a definitive way of imagining and limiting political communities, and for understanding how such a rigid delineation is linked to the inevitability and perpetuation of war.
Schmitt argued that the existence of a state 'presupposes the political', which must be understood through 'the specific political distinction...between friend and enemy'. The enemy is 'the other, the stranger; and it sufficient for his
nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in an extreme case conflicts with him are possible'.31 The figure of the enemy is constitutive of the state as 'the specific entity of a
people'.32 Without it society is not political and a people cannot be said to exist: Only the actual participants can correctly recognise, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict...to judge
whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence.33 Schmitt links this stark ontology to war when he states that the political is
only authentic 'when a fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to the whole nation,
becomes public by virtue of such a relationship...in its entirety the state as an organised political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction'.34 War, in short, is an existential condition: the entire life of a human being is a
struggle and every human being is symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is
the existential negation of the enemy.35 Schmitt claims that his theory is not biased towards war as a choice ('It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but devastating war and every political deed a military action...it
When such a theory takes the form of a social discourse
(which it does in a general form) such an ontology can only support , as a kind of originary ground, the basic Clausewitzian assumption that
war can be a rational way of resolving political conflicts -- because the import of Schmitt's argument is that such 'political' conflicts are ultimately expressed through the
neither favours war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism') but it is hard to accept his caveat at face value.36
possibility of war. As he says: 'to the enemy concept belongs the ever-present possibility of combat'.37 Where Schmitt meets Clausewitz, as I explain further below, the existential and rationalistic ontologies of war join into a closed
This closed circle of existential and strategic reason generates a number of dangers. Firstly, the
emergence of conflict can generate military action almost automatically simply because the world is conceived in
terms of the distinction between friend and enemy; because the very existence of the other constitutes an
unacceptable threat, rather than a chain of actions, judgements and decisions. (As the Israelis insisted of Hezbollah, they 'deny our right to exist'.) This effaces agency, causality
and responsibility from policy and political discourse: our actions can be conceived as independent of the
conflict or quarantined from critical enquiry, as necessities that achieve an instrumental purpose but do not
contribute to a new and unpredictable causal chain. Similarly the Clausewitzian idea of force -- which, by transporting a Newtonian category from the natural into the
social sciences, assumes the very effect it seeks -- further encourages the resort to military violence. We ignore the complex history of a
conflict, and thus the alternative paths to its resolution that such historical analysis might provide, by
portraying conflict as fundamental and existential in nature; as possibly containable or exploitable, but
always irresolvable. Dominant portrayals of the war on terror, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, are arguably examples of such ontologies in action. Secondly, the militaristic force of such an ontology is visible, in
circle of mutual support and justification.
Schmitt, in the absolute sense of vulnerability whereby a people can judge whether their 'adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life'.38 Evoking the kind of thinking that would become controversial in the Bush doctrine,
Hegel similarly argues that: ...a state may regard its infinity and honour as at stake in each of its concerns, however minute, and it is all the more inclined to susceptibility to injury the more its strong individuality is impelled as a result
of long domestic peace to seek and create a sphere of activity abroad. ....the state is in essence mind and therefore cannot be prepared to stop at just taking notice of an injury after it has actually occurred. On the contrary, there arises
Identity, even more than physical security or autonomy, is put at stake in such
thinking and can be defended and redeemed through warfare (or, when taken to a further extreme of an absolute demonisation and dehumanisation of the other, by mass
in addition as a cause of strife the idea of such an injury...39
killing, 'ethnic cleansing' or genocide). However anathema to a classical realist like Morgenthau, for whom prudence was a core political virtue, these have been influential ways of defining national security and defence during the
twentieth century and persists into the twenty-first. They infused Cold War strategy in the United States (with the key policy document NSC68 stating that 'the Soviet-led assault on free institutions is worldwide now, and ... a defeat of
free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere')40 and frames dominant Western responses to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and like groups (as Tony Blair admitted in 2006, 'We could have chosen security as the battleground. But
we didn't. We chose values.')41 It has also become influential, in a particularly tragic and destructive way, in Israel, where memories of the Holocaust and (all too common) statements by Muslim and Arab leaders rejecting Israel's
existence are mobilised by conservatives to justify military adventurism and a rejectionist policy towards the Palestinians. On the reverse side of such ontologies of national insecurity we find pride and hubris, the belief that martial
preparedness and action are vital or healthy for the existence of a people. Clausewitz's thought is thoroughly imbued with this conviction. For example, his definition of war as an act of policy does not refer merely to the policy of
cabinets, but expresses the objectives and will of peoples: When whole communities go to war -- whole peoples, and especially civilized peoples -- the reason always lies in some political situation and the occasion is always due to
some political object. War, therefore, is an act of policy.42 Such a perspective prefigures Schmitt's definition of the 'political' (an earlier translation reads 'war, therefore, is a political act'), and thus creates an inherent tension between
its tendency to fuel the escalation of conflict and Clausewitz's declared aim, in defining war as policy, to prevent war becoming 'a complete, untrammelled, absolute manifestation of violence'.43 Likewise his argument that war is a
'trinity' of people (the source of 'primordial violence, hatred and enmity'), the military (who manage the 'play of chance and probability') and government (which achieve war's 'subordination as an instrument of policy, which makes it
subject to reason alone') merges the existential and rationalistic conceptions of war into a theoretical unity.44 The idea that national identities could be built and redeemed through war derived from the 'romantic counter-revolution' in
philosophy which opposed the cosmopolitanism of Kant with an emphasis on the absolute state -- as expressed by Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Bismarkian Realpolitik and politicians like Wilhelm Von Humbolt. Humbolt, a Prussian
minister of Education, wrote that war 'is one of the most wholesome manifestations that plays a role in the education of the human race', and urged the formation of a national army 'to inspire the citizen with the spirit of true war'. He
stated that war 'alone gives the total structure the strength and the diversity without which facility would be weakness and unity would be void'.45 In the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel made similar arguments that to for individuals
to find their essence 'Government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by war'.46 The historian Azar Gat points to the similarity of Clausewitz's arguments that 'a people and a nation can hope for a strong position in
the world only if national character and familiarity with war fortify each other by continual interaction' to Hegel's vision of the ethical good of war in his Philosophy of Right.47 Likewise Michael Shapiro sees Clausewitz and Hegel as
alike in seeing war 'as an ontological investment in both individual and national completion...Clausewitz figures war as passionate ontological commitment rather than cool political reason...war is a major aspect of being.'48 Hegel's
text argues that war is 'a work of freedom' in which 'the individual's substantive duty' merges with the 'independence and sovereignty of the state'.49 Through war, he argues, the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their
indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so the corruption in nations would be the product of a prolonged,
let alone 'perpetual' peace.50 Hegel indeed argues that 'sacrifice on behalf of the individuality of the state is a substantial tie between the state and all its members and so is a universal duty...if the state as such, if its autonomy, is in
jeopardy, all its citizens are duty bound to answer the summons to its defence'.51 Furthermore, this is not simply a duty, but a form of self-realisation in which the individual dissolves into the higher unity of the state: The intrinsic
worth of courage as a disposition of mind is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualise this end, and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality. This
form of experience thus contains the harshness of extreme contradictions: a self-sacrifice which yet is the real existence of one's freedom; the maximum self-subsistence of individuality, yet only a cog playing its part in the mechanism
of an external organisation; absolute obedience, renunciation of personal opinions and reasonings, in fact complete absence of mind, coupled with the most intense and comprehensive presence of mind and decision in the moment of
acting; the most hostile and so most personal action against individuals, coupled with an attitude of complete indifference or even liking towards them as individuals.52 A more frank statement of the potentially lethal consequences of
patriotism -- and its simultaneously physical and conceptual annihilation of the individual human being -- is rarely to be found, one that is repeated today in countless national discourses and the strategic world-view in general. (In
contrast, one of Kant's fundamental objections to war was that it involved using men 'as mere machines or instruments'.53) Yet however bizarre and contradictory Hegel's argument, it constitutes a powerful social ontology: an
the
nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core element of politics. It does not explain why so many policymakers
think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married to a more rationalistic form of strategic thought that claims to link
violent means to political ends predictably and controllably, and which, by doing so, combines military action and national
purposes into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire to decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it is helpful to
apparently irrefutable discourse of being. It actualises the convergence of war and the social contract in the form of the national security state. Strategic Reason and Scientific Truth By itself, such an account of
focus on the modernity of this ontology -- one that is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological progress, and in its insistence on imposing images of scientific truth from the physical
one of the reasons Clausewitz
was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed to have chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological
outlook associated with the industrial revolution'.54 Set into this epistemological matrix, modern politics and
government engages in a sweeping project of mastery and control in which all of the world's resources -- mineral,
animal, physical, human -- are made part of a machinic process of which war and violence are viewed as
normal features. These are the deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of the most revealing contemporary examples comes from the writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a
sciences (such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For example, the military theorist and historian Martin van Creveld has argued that
Harvard professor and later U.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. He wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945 U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the
ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in emerging countries'. This 'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of power in foreign
Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the United States, but
in a particular epistemology (theory of knowledge) . Kissinger asserted that the West is 'deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge
policy'.55
consists of recording and classifying data -- the more accurately the better'. This, he claimed, has since the Renaissance set the West apart from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that have escaped the early impact of
Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost entirely internal to the observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for control was beset by a corrosive
anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons proliferation and constant military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and militancy of new post-colonial states, order and mastery were harder to define
and impose. He worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had 'encouraged political multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is difficult to
achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience' (emphasis added). He mourned that 'the greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order'.57 Here were
the driving obsessions of the modern rational statesman based around a hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For the two decades after 1945, our international activities were based on the assumption that
technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct "operational" concept of international order has proved too
simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. Our deepest challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though overwhelming military
Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for order and certainty continually
confront chaos, resistance and uncertainty: clay that won't be worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that refuse to
surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons of the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words. Yet as his sinister, Orwellian
exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world' demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This is a vicious, historic irony: a desire to control nature,
technology, society and human beings that is continually frustrated, but never abandoned or rethought. By 1968 U.S.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the rationalist policymaker par excellence, had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not
prevail in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's refusal to accept this conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to condemn
hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of Cambodia to two more decades of horror and misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another
strength will remain with the two superpowers.58
Republican Administration crowned more than decade of failed and destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In this struggle with the lessons of Vietnam,
we are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a craving for order,
control and certainty in the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that
Kissinger's thinking -- and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was embedded in instrumental images of
technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of power and an image of social and political order. In his essay 'The
Government of Subject Races' Cromer envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as best achieved by a
central authority working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine'.60 Kissinger analogously invoked the
revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical transformation,
virtues of 'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that technological progress no longer brought untroubled control: the Westernising 'spread of technology and its associated
rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of reality'.61 We sense the rational policymaker's frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a machine, ordered by a form of power and governmental reason which
deploys machines and whose desires and processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine. Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a seat of power in the
West and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it from the East -- human material, material wealth, knowledge,
This desire for order in the shadow of
chaos and uncertainty -- the constant war with an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern
thought, and was a major impetus to the development of technological reason and its supporting theories of
knowledge. As Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the 'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern strategy, foreign policy and
Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the apparently stable soil of natural science, in the hope of finding immovable
and unchallengeable roots there. While this process has origins in ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the Renaissance. The key
figures in this process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a hunger for political and ontological certainty, a
positivist epistemology and a naïve faith in the goodness of invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order,
and with it a new human power over the world, through a new empirical methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the
senses and the understanding. With this method, he argued, we can 'derive hope from a purer alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted'.63 In a similar move, Descartes sought
to conjure certainty from uncertainty through the application of a new method that moved progressively out from a
few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a divinely granted faculty of judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics
formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos.64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that
scientists should privilege 'objective', quantifiable qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative
what have you -- is processed by the machine, then converted into more power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance.62
analysis could science attain certain knowledge of the world'.65 Such doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth were to have powerful echoes in the 20th Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis, game theory, cybernetics and
computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of matter and energy and applied the most advanced applications of
mathematics and computing to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a terrible irony: as even Morgenthau understood, the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the
control of the weapons themselves, into political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method not merely as way of achieving a purer access to truth and epistemological certainty, but as liberating a new
power that would enable the creation of a new kind of Man. He opened the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and human power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a firmer foundation,
and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative comparison between 'men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the
new Indies' -- one that echoes in advance Kissinger's distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of empirical science: anyone making this comparison, he remarked,
'will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man'.68 We may be forgiven for blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man' was indeed in the process of stealing a new fire from the heavens and seizing God's power over the
world for itself. Not only would the new empirical science lead to 'an improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation of the Fall of Adam: For man, by the
fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not become entirely and
utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, 'in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford
mankind in some degree his bread...69 There is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement -- one that, in many ways, came to characterise western modernity itself, and which is easily recognisable in a generation of
modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam was the Judeo-Christian West's primal creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship and ambivalence. Bacon forecast
here a return to Eden, but one of man's own making. This truly was the death of God, of putting man into God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of faith could disguise the awesome epistemological violence
which now subordinated creation to man. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As such, there is nothing but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most
what would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over
creation'? If the new method and invention brought modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation, communications, education and comfort, it also enabled the Armenian
genocide, the Holocaust and two world wars; napalm, the B52, the hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and
military strategy. Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching inventions -- radar, television, rocketry, computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national
security and militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass -- brought in their wake upheaval
distinguished of human actions...inventions are a blessing and a benefit without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And
slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new
empirical science would be ambivalence as much as certainty; degradation as much as enlightenment; the
destruction of nature as much as its utilisation. Doubts and Fears: Technology as Ontology If Bacon could not reasonably be expected to foresee many of these developments, the idea that
and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery; navigation,
scientific and technological progress could be destructive did occur to him. However it was an anxiety he summarily dismissed: ...let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and sciences becoming depraved to malevolent or
luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good; talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches, light itself...Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that
after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion.71 By the mid-Twentieth Century,
, such fears could no longer
be so easily wished away, as the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer recognised. He said in a 1947 lecture: We felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting and
in the end in large measure achieving the realization of atomic weapons...In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no over-statement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they
empire over creation -- his discovery of the innermost secrets of
brought destruction and horror. Scientific powers
that had been consciously applied in the defence of life and in the hope of its betterment now threatened its total
and absolute destruction. This would not prevent a legion of scientists, soldiers and national security policymakers later attempting to apply Bacon's faith in invention and Descartes' faith in mathematics to
cannot lose.72 Adam had fallen once more, but into a world which refused to acknowledge its renewed intimacy with contingency and evil. Man's
matter and energy, of the fires that fuelled the stars -- had not 'enhanced human power and dignity' as Bacon claimed, but instead
make of the Bomb a rational weapon. Oppenheimer -- who resolutely opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb -- understood what the strategists could not: that the weapons resisted control, resisted utility, that 'with the release
of atomic energy quite revolutionary changes had occurred in the techniques of warfare'.73 Yet Bacon's legacy, one deeply imprinted on the strategists, was his view that truth and utility are 'perfectly identical'.74 In 1947
Oppenheimer had clung to the hope that 'knowledge is good...it seems hard to live any other way than thinking it was better to know something than not to know it; and the more you know, the better'; by 1960 he felt that 'terror
attaches to new knowledge. It has an unmooring quality; it finds men unprepared to deal with it.'75 Martin Heidegger questioned this mapping of natural science onto the social world in his essays on technology -- which, as 'machine',
has been so crucial to modern strategic and geopolitical thought as an image of perfect function and order and a powerful tool of intervention. He commented that, given that modern technology 'employs exact physical science...the
technology and its relation to science, society
and war cannot be reduced to a noiseless series of translations of science for politics, knowledge for force, or force
for good. Instead, Oppenheimer saw a process frustrated by roadblocks and ruptured by irony; in his view there was no smooth, unproblematic
translation of scientific truth into social truth, and technology was not its vehicle. Rather his comments raise profound and painful ethical questions that resonate with terror and uncertainty. Yet this has not
prevented technology becoming a potent object of desire, not merely as an instrument of power but as a promise and
conduit of certainty itself. In the minds of too many rational soldiers, strategists and policymakers, technology brings with it the truth of its
enabling science and spreads it over the world. It turns epistemological certainty into political certainty; it turns
control over 'facts' into control over the earth. Heidegger's insights into this phenomena I find especially telling and disturbing -- because they underline
the ontological force of the instrumental view of politics. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger's striking argument was that in the modernising
West technology is not merely a tool, a 'means to an end'. Rather technology has become a governing image of the
modern universe, one that has come to order, limit and define human existence as a 'calculable coherence of
forces' and a 'standing reserve' of energy . Heidegger wrote: 'the threat to man does not come in the first instance from the
potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence .'77
This process Heidegger calls 'Enframing' and through it the scientific mind demands that 'nature reports itself in
some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and remains orderable as a system of information'. Man is
not a being who makes and uses machines as means, choosing and limiting their impact on the world for his ends;
rather man has imagined the world as a machine and humanity everywhere becomes trapped within its logic. Man,
he writes, 'comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall...where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.
Meanwhile Man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.'78 Technological man not only becomes the name for a project of
lordship and mastery over the earth, but incorporates humanity within this project as a calculable resource. In
strategy, warfare and geopolitics human bodies, actions and aspirations are caught, transformed and
perverted by such calculating, enframing reason: human lives are reduced to tools, obstacles, useful or
obstinate matter. This tells us much about the enduring power of crude instrumental versions of strategic thought, which relate not merely to the actual use of force but to broader geopolitical strategies that see, as
limited war theorists like Robert Osgood did, force as an 'instrument of policy short of war'. It was from within this strategic ontology that figures like the Nobel prize-winning economist
Thomas Schelling theorised the strategic role of threats and coercive diplomacy, and spoke of strategy as 'the power to hurt'.79 In the 2006 Lebanon war we can
deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science'.76 Yet as the essays and speeches of Oppenheimer attest,
see such thinking in the remark of a U.S. analyst, a former Ambassador to Israel and Syria, who speculated that by targeting civilians and infrastructure Israel aimed 'to create enough pain on the ground so there would be a local
political reaction to Hezbollah's adventurism'.80 Similarly a retired Israeli army colonel told the Washington Post that 'Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy
price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-
the available critical, interpretive or
languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform or
refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question
here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought
and remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war
doctrines seek mainly to improve the accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart
from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory .82 In the case
land.'81 Conclusion: Violent Ontologies or Peaceful Choices? I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that
performative
of a theorist like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences
have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat and espouses a moral community that
stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires
the resort to war as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a
performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I suspect that
The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of
'human beings as we know them' -- which ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates
(indeed reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an ontology of being for one of
becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new possibilities through agonistic relation to others,
provides a less destructive and violent way of acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference.85 My argument here, whilst
normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and
rational instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and community -- my analysis
even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the is.
Neither the progressive flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an
international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the conceptual
and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come, against everything Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress,
modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not
simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing ...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility
does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation.
that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic
the challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government,
technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our entire
space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -- militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert
intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive not merely from particular
choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical' discourses of
scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment images of being. Confined within such an
epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers' choices become necessities, their actions become
inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die . Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which
builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained
through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may
simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing
cascade of discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses,
however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does, admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it
is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are
utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark
ontology of the friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and
power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that
choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making
even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to
produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities .88) There seems no point in
following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique.
However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the
modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that
would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his
decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that,
faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that
policy choices could aim to bring into
being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the
space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a
very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the
choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully,
questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and autonomy? Do
they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and environmental price?
Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and
effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and
consequences which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and
more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and
violence? Will our thought?
Reject the affirmative’s security discourse – this untimely intervention is the only chance for a counterdiscourse
Calkivik 10 – PhD in Poli Sci @ Univ Minnesota (Emine Asli, 10/2010, "DISMANTLING SECURITY," PhD
dissertation submitted to Univ Minnesota for Raymond Duvall,
http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/99479/1/Calkivik_umn_0130E_11576.pdf)
It is this self-evidence of security even for critical approaches and the antinomy stemming from dissident voices reproducing the language of those they dissent from that constitutes the starting point for this chapter, where I elaborate
the suggestion to dismantle security was itself deemed as an
untimely pursuit in a world where lives of millions were rendered brutally insecure by poverty, violence, disease, and ongoing
political conflicts. Colored by the tone of a call to conscience in the face of the ongoing crisis of security, it was not the time, interlocutors argued, for self-indulgent critique. I will argue that it is the
element of being untimely, the effort, in the words of Walter Benjamin, “to brush history against the grain” that gives critical thinking its
power.291 It might appear as a trivial discussion to bring up the relation between time and critique because conceptions of critical thinking in the discipline of International Relations already possess the notion that critical
on the meaning of dismantling security as untimely critique. As mentioned in the vignette in the opening section,
thought needs to be untimely. In the first section, I will tease out what this notion of untimeliness entails by visiting ongoing conversations within the discipline about critical thought and political time. Through this discussion, I hope
to clarify what sets apart dismantling security as untimely critique from the notion of untimeliness at work in critical international relations theory. The latter conception of the untimely, I will suggest, paradoxically calls on critical
This notion of the untimely demands that
critique be strategic and respond to political exigency, that it provide answers in this light instead of raising more questions about which questions could be raised or what
thought to be “on time” in that it champions a particular understanding of what it means for critical scholarship to be relevant and responsible for its times.
presuppositions underlie the questions that are deemed to be waiting for answers. After elaborating in the first section such strategic conceptions of the untimeliness of critical theorizing, in the second section I will turn to a different
sense of the untimely by drawing upon Wendy Brown’s discussion of the relation between critique, crisis, and political time through her reading of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”292 In contrast to a notion of
untimeliness that demands strategic thinking and punctuality, Brown’s exegesis provides a conception of historical materialism where
critique is figured as a force of disruption, a
form of intervention that reconfigures the meaning of the times and “contest[s] the very senses of time invoked to
declare critique ‘untimely’.”293 Her exposition overturns the view of critique as a self-indulgent practice as it highlights the immediately
political nature of critique and reconfigures the meaning of what it means for critical thought to be relevant.294 It is in this sense of the untimely, I will suggest, that
dismantling security as a critique hopes to recover. I should point out that in this discussion my intention is neither to construct a theory of critique nor to provide an exhaustive review and evaluation of the forms of critical theorizing
in International Relations. Rather, my aim is to contribute to the existing efforts that engage with the question of what it means to be critical apart from drawing the epistemological and methodological boundaries so as to think about
how one is critical.295 While I do not deny the importance of epistemological questions, I contend that taking time to think about the meaning of critique beyond these issues presents itself as an important task. This task takes on
additional importance within the context of security studies where any realm of investigation quickly begets its critical counterpart. The rapid emergence and institutionalization of critical terrorism studies when studies on terrorism
were proliferating under the auspices of the so-called Global War on Terror provides a striking example to this trend. 296 Such instances are important reminders that, to the extent that epistemology and methodology are reified as the
sole concerns in defining and assessing critical thinking297 or “wrong headed refusals”298 to get on with positive projects and empirical research gets branded as debilitating for critical projects, what is erased from sight is the
political nature of the questions asked and what is lost is the chance to reflect upon what it means for critical thinking to respond to its times. In his meditation on the meaning of responding and the sense of responsibility entailed by
writing, Jean-Luc Nancy suggests that “all writing is ‘committed.’” 299 This notion of commitment diverges from the programmatic sense of committed writing. What underlies this conception is an understanding of writing as
there is always an
ethical commitment prior to any particular political commitment , such a notion of writing contests the notion of creative autonomy premised on the idea of a free, selfresponding: writing is a response to the voice of an other.In Nancy’s words, “[w]hoever writes responds” 300 and “makes himself responsible to in the absolute sense.”301 Suggesting that
legislating subject who responds. In other words, it discredits the idea of an original voice by suggesting that there is no voice that is not a response to a prior response. Hence, to respond is configured as responding to an expectation
rather than as an answer to a question and responsibility is cast as an “anticipated response to questions, to demands, to still-unformulated, not exactly predictable expectations.”302 Echoing Nancy, David Campbell makes an
The question, then, is not
whether as scholars we are engaged or not, but what the nature of this engagement is. Such a re-framing of the question is intended to highlight the political nature
important reminder as he suggests that as international relations scholars “we are always already engaged,” although the sites, mechanisms and quality of engagements might vary.303
of all interpretation and the importance of developing an “ethos of political criticism that is concerned with assumptions, limits, their historical production, social and political effects, and the possibility of going beyond them in
It is
this ethos of critique that dismantling security hopes to recover for a discipline where security operates as the
foundational principle and where critical thinking keeps on contributing to security’s impressing itself as a self-evident condition.
thought and action.”304 Taking as its object assumptions and limits, their historical production and social and political effects places the relevancy of critical thought and responsibility of critical scholarship on new ground.
Critical Theory and Punctuality Within the context of International Relations, critical thought’s orientation toward its time comes out strongly in Kimberley Hutchings’s formulation.305 According to Hutchings, no matter what form it
what distinguishes critical international relations theory from other forms of theorizing is “its orientation towards
change and the possibility of futures that do not reproduce the hegemonic power of the present .”306 What this implies about the nature
takes,
of critical thought is that it needs to be not only diagnostic, but also self-reflexive. In the words of Hutchings, “all critical theories lay claim to some kind of account not only of the present of international politics and its relation to
possible futures, but also of the role of critical theory in the present and future in international politics.” 307 Not only analyzing the present, but also introducing the question of the future into analysis places political time at the center
of critical enterprise and makes the problem of change a core concern. It is this question of change that situates different forms of critical thinking on a shared ground since they all attempt to expose the way in which what is presented
their efforts to go against the dominant currents and challenge the hegemony of
by showing how contemporary practices and discourses contribute to the perpetuation of structures of
power and domination, critical theorists in general and critical security studies specialists in particular take on an untimely endeavor. It is this understanding
of the untimely aspect of critical thinking that is emphasized by Mark Neufeld, who regards the development of critical approaches to security as “one of the more
hopeful intellectual developments in recent years.”308 Despite nurturing from different theoretical traditions and therefore harboring “fundamental differences between modernist and postmodernist
as given and natural is historically produced and hence open to change. With their orientation to change,
existing power relations
commitments,” writes Neufeld, scholars who are involved in the critical project nevertheless “share a common concern with calling into question ‘prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are
The desire for change—through being untimely and making the way to alternative futures that would no longer resemble the present—have led some scholars to
emphasize the utopian element that must accompany all critical thinking. Quoting Oscar Wilde’s aphorism—a map of the world that
does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, Ken Booth argues for the need to restore the role and reputation of utopianism in the theory and practice of international
organized.’” 309
politics. 310 According to Booth, what goes under the banner of realism—“ethnocentric self-interest writ large”311 — falls far beyond the realities of a drastically changed world political landscape at the end of the Cold War. He
describes the new reality as “an egg-box containing the shells of sovereignty; but alongside it a global community omelette [sic] is cooking.”312 Rather than insisting on the inescapability of war in the international system as political
realists argue, Booth argues for the need and possibility to work toward the utopia of overcoming the condition of war by banking on the opportunities provided by a globalizing world. The point that critical thought needs to be
critical theory purport[s] to ‘think against’ the
prevailing current” and that “[c]ritical security studies is no exception” to this enterprise.313 According to the authors, the function of critical
approaches to security is to problematize what is taken for granted in the disciplinary production of knowledge about
security by “resist[ing], transcend[ing] and defeat[ing]…theories of security, which take for granted who is to be
secured (the state), how security is to be achieved (by defending core ‘national’ values, forcibly if necessary) and from
whom security is needed (the enemy).”314 While critical theory in this way is figured as untimely, I want to suggest that this notion of untimeliness gets construed paradoxically in a quite timely
untimely by going against its time is also emphasized by Dunne and Wheeler, who assert that, regardless of the form it takes, “
fashion. With a perceived disjuncture between writing the world from within a discipline and acting in it placed at the center of the debates, the performance of critical thought gets evaluated to the extent that it is punctual and in
synch with the times. Does critical thought provide concrete guidance and prescribe what is to be done? Can it move beyond mere talk and make timely political interventions by providing solutions? Does it have answers to the
strategic questions of progressive movements? Demanding that critical theorizing come clean in the court of these questions, such conceptions of the untimely demand that critique respond to its times in a responsible way, where
being responsible is understood in stark contrast to a notion of responding and responsibility that I briefly discussed in the introductory pages of this chapter (through the works of Jean-Luc Nancy and David Campbell). Let me visit
two recent conversations ensuing from the declarations of the contemporary crisis of critical theorizing in order to clarify what I mean by a timely understanding of untimely critique. The first conversation was published as a special
issue in the Review of International Studies (RIS), one of the major journals of the field. Prominent figures took the 25th anniversary of the journal’s publication of two key texts—regarded as canonical for the launching and
development of critical theorizing in International Relations—as an opportunity to reflect upon and assess the impact of critical theory in the discipline and interrogate what its future might be. 315 The texts in question, which are
depicted as having shaken the premises of the static world of the discipline, are Robert Cox’s 1981 essay entitled on “Social Forces, States, and World Orders”316 and Richard Ashley’s article, “Political Realism and Human
Interests.”317 In their introductory essay to the issue, Rengger and Thirkell-White suggest that the essays by Cox and Ashley—followed by Andrew Linklater’s Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations318 —
represent “the breach in the dyke” of the three dominant discourses in International Relations (i.e., positivists, English School, and Marxism), unleashing “a torrent [that would] soon become a flood” as variety of theoretical
approaches in contemporary social theory (i.e., feminism, Neo-Gramscianism, poststructuralism, and post-colonialism) would get introduced through the works of critical scholars.319 After elaborating the various responses given to
and resistance raised against the critical project in the discipline, the authors provide an overview and an assessment of the current state of critical theorizing in International Relations. They argue that the central question for much of
the ongoing debate within the critical camp in its present state—a question that it cannot help but come to terms with and provide a response to—concerns the relation between critical thought and political practice. As they state, the
“fundamental philosophical question [that] can no longer be sidestepped” by critical International Relations theory is the question of the relation between “knowledge of the world and action in it.”320 One of the points alluded to in
the essay is that forms of critical theorizing, which leave the future “to contingency, uncertainty and the multiplicity of political projects” and therefore provide “less guidance for concrete political action”321 or, again, those that
problematize underlying assumptions of thought and “say little about the potential political agency that might be involved in any subsequent struggles”322 may render the critical enterprise impotent and perhaps even suspect. This
point comes out clearly in Craig Murphy’s contribution to the collection of essays in the RIS’s special issue. 323 Echoing William Wallace’s argument that critical theorists tend to be “monks,”324 who have little to offer for political
actors engaged in real world politics, Murphy argues that the promise of critical theory is “partially kept” because of the limited influence it has had outside the academy towards changing the world.Building a different world, he
suggests, requires more than isolated academic talk; that it demands not merely “words,” but “deeds.”325 This, according to Murphy, requires providing “knowledge that contributes to change.”326 Such knowledge would emanate
from connections with the marginalized and would incorporate observations of actors in their everyday practices. More importantly, it would create an inspiring vision for social movements, such as the one provided by the concept of
human development, which, according to Murphy, was especially powerful “because it embodied a value-oriented way of seeing, a vision, rather than only isolated observations.”327 In sum, if critical theory is to retain its critical
edge, Murphy’s discussion suggests, it has to be in synch with political time and respond to its immediate demands. The second debate that is revelatory of this conception of the timing of critical theory—i.e., that critical thinking be
strategic and efficient in relation to political time—takes place in relation to the contemporary in/security environment shaped by the so-called Global War on Terror. The theme that bears its mark on these debates is the extent to
which critical inquiries about the contemporary security landscape become complicit in the workings of power and what critique can offer to render the world more legible for progressive struggles.328 For instance, warning critical
theorists against being co-opted by or aligned with belligerence and war-mongering, Richard Devetak asserts that critical international theory has an urgent “need to distinguish its position all the more clearly from liberal
imperialism.”329 While scholars such as Devetak, Booth,330 and Fierke331 take the critical task to be an attempt to rescue liberal internationalism from turning into liberal imperialism, others announce the “crisis of critical
theorizing” and suggest that critical writings on the nature of the contemporary security order lack the resources to grasp their actual limitations, where the latter is said to reside not in the realm of academic debate, but in the realm of
political practice.332 It is amidst these debates on critique, crisis, and political time that Richard Beardsworth raises the question of the future of critical philosophy in the face of the challenges posed by contemporary world
politics.333 Recounting these challenges, he provides the matrix for a proper form of critical inquiry that could come to terms with “[o]ur historical actuality.”334 He describes this actuality as the “thick context” of modernity (“an
epoch, delimited by the capitalization of social relations,” which imposes its own philosophical problematic—“that is, the attempt, following the social consequences of capitalism, to articulate the relation between individuality and
collective spirit”335 ), American unilateralism in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the growing political disempowerment of people worldwide. Arguing that “contemporary return of religion and new forms of
irrationalism emerge, in large part, out of the failure of the second response of modernity to provide a secular solution to the inequalities of the nation-state and colonization,”336 he formulates the awaiting political task for critical
endeavors as constructing a world polity to resist the disintegration of the world under the force of capital.It is with this goal in mind that he suggests that “responsible scholarship needs to rescue reason in the face irrational war”337
and that intellectuals need to provide “the framework for a world ethical community of law, endowed with political mechanisms of implementation in the context of a regulated planetary economy.”338 He suggests that an aporetic
form of thinking such as Jacques Derrida’s—a thinking that “ignores the affirmative relation between the determining powers of reason and history”339 —would be an unhelpful resource because such thinking “does not open up to
where work needs to be done for these new forms of polity to emerge.”340 In other words, critical thinking, according to Beardsworth, needs to articulate and point out possible political avenues and to orient thought and action in
concrete ways so as to contribute to progressive political change rather than dwelling on the encounter of the incalculable and calculation and im-possibility of world democracy in a Derridean fashion. In similar ways to the first
debate on critique that I discussed, critical thinking is once again called upon to respond to political time in a strategic and efficient manner. As critical inquiry gets summoned up to the court of reason in Beardsworth’s account, its
realm of engagement is limited to that which the light of reason can be shed upon, and its politics is confined to mapping out the achievable and the doable in a given historical context without questioning or disrupting the limits of
what is presented as “realistic” choices. Hence, if untimely critical thought is to be meaningful it has to be on time by responding to political exigency in a practical, efficient, and strategic manner. In contrast to this prevalent form of
understanding the untimeliness of critical theory, I will now turn to a different account of the untimely provided by Wendy Brown whose work informs the project of dismantling security as untimely critique. Drawing from her
untimely critique of security entails, simultaneously, an attunement to the times
and an aggressive violation of their self-conception . It is in this different sense of the untimely that the suggestion of dismantling security needs to be situated. Critique and
Political Time As I suggested in the Prelude to this chapter, elevating security itself to the position of major protagonist and extending a call to “dismantle security” was itself
declared to be an untimely pursuit in a time depicted as the time of crisis in security . Such a declaration stood as an exemplary moment (not in the
sense of illustration or allegory, but as a moment of crystallization) for disciplinary prohibitions to think and act otherwise—perhaps the moment when a doxa exhibits its most powerful hold. Hence, what is first
needed is to overturn the taken-for-granted relations between crisis, timeliness, and critique. The roots krisis and kritik can be traced back to
discussion of the relationship between critique, crisis, and political time, I will suggest that
the Greek word krinõ, which meant “to separate”, to “choose,” to “judge,” to “decide.”341 While creating a broad spectrum of meanings, it was intimately related to politics as it connoted a “divorce” or “quarrel,” but also a moment
of decision and a turning point. It was also used as a jurisprudential term in the sense of making a decision, reaching a verdict or judgment (kritik) on an alleged disorder so as to provide a way to restore order. Rather than being
separated into two domains of meaning—that of “subjective critique” and “objective crisis”—krisis and kritik were conceived as interlinked moments. Koselleck explains this conceptual fusion: [I]t wasin the sense of “judgment,”
“trial,” “legal decision,” and ultimately “court” that crisis achieved a high constitutionalstatus, through which the individual citizen and the community were bound together. The “for and against” wastherefore present in the original
meaning of the word and thisin a manner that already conceptually anticipated the appropriate judgment. 342 Recognition of an objective crisis and subjective judgments to be passed on it so as to come up with a formula for restoring
the health of the polity by setting the times right were thereby infused and implicated in each other.343 Consequently, as Brown notes, there could be no such thing as “mere critique” or “untimely critique” because critique always
entailed a concern with political time: “[C]ritique as political krisis promise[d] to restore continuity by repairing or renewing the justice that gives an order the prospect of continuity, that indeed ma[de] it continuous.”344 The breaking
of this intimate link between krisis and kritik, the consequent depoliticization of critique and its sundering from crisis coincides with the rise of modern political order and redistribution of the public space into the binary structure of
sovereign and subject, public and private.345 Failing to note the link between the critique it practiced and the looming political crisis, emerging philosophies of history, according Koselleck, had the effect of obfuscating this crisis. As
he explains, “[n]ever politically grasped, [this political crisis] remained concealed in historico-philosophical images of the future which cause the day’s events to pale.”346 It is this intimate, but severed, link between crisis and critique
in historical narratives that Wendy Brown’s discussion brings to the fore and re-problematizes. She turns to Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and challenges conventional understandings of historical
practice of critical theory appeals to a concern with time to the
that “[t]he crisis that incites critique and that critique engages itself signals a rupture of temporal continuity , which is at the same time a rupture in
political imaginary .”348 Cast in these terms, it is a particular experience with time, with the present, that Brown suggests Benjamin’s theses aim to capture. Rather than an unmoving or an automatically overcome
present (a present that is out of time), the present is interpreted as an opening that calls for a response to it. This call for a response highlights the idea that, far from being
a luxury, critique is non-optional in its nature. Such an understanding of critical thought is premised on a historical consciousness that grasps the present historically so as to break with the selfconception of the age. Untimely
critique transforms into a technique to blow up the present through fracturing its apparent seamlessness by
insisting on alternatives to its closed political and epistemological universe .349 Such a conception resonates with the distinction that Žižek
makes between a political subjectivity that is confined to choosing between the existing alternatives —one that takes the limits of what is given as
the limits to what is possible—and a form of subjectivity that creates the very set of alternatives by “transcend[ing] the coordinates
of a given situation [and] ‘posit[ing] the presuppositions’ of one's activity” by redefining the very situation within
which one is active.”350 With its attempt to grasp the times in its singularity, critique is cast neither as a breaking free from the weight of time (which would amount to ahistoricity) nor being weighed down
by the times (as in the case of teleology).351 It conceives the present as “historically contoured but not itself experienced as history because not necessarily
continuous with what has been.”352 It is an attitude that renders the present as the site of “non-utopian possibility” since it is
historically situated and constrained yet also a possibility since it is not historically foreordained or determined.353 It entails contesting the delimitations of choice and
challenging the confinement of politics to existing possibilities . Rather than positing history as existing objectively outside of narration, what Brown’s discussion
materialism, which conceives of the present in terms of unfolding laws of history.347 According to Brown, the
extent
highlights is the intimate relation between the constitution of political subjectivity vis-à-vis the meaning of history for the present. It alludes to “the power of historical discourse,” which Mowitt explains as a power “to estrange us
what we believe to have happened to us bears concretely on what we are
prepared to do with ourselves both now and in the future.”354 Mark Neocleous concretizes the political stakes entailed in such
encounters with history—with the dead—from the perspective of three political traditions: a conservative one, which aims to reconcile the dead
with the living, a fascist one, which aims to resurrect the dead to legitimate its fascist program, and a historical
materialist one, which seeks redemption with the dead as the source of hope and inspiration for the future .355 Brown’s
from that which is most familiar, namely, the fixity of the present” because “
discussion of critique and political time is significant for highlighting the immediately political nature of critique in contrast to contemporary invocations that cast it as a self-indulgent practice, an untimely luxury, a disinterested,
attempt to trace critique vis-à-vis its relation to political time provides a counter-narrative to the
conservative and moralizing assertions that shun untimely critique of security as a luxurious interest that is committed to
abstract ideals rather than to the “reality” of politics—i.e., running after utopia rather than modeling “real world” solutions. Dismantling security as untimely
critique entails a similar claim to unsettle the accounts of “what the times are” with a “bid to reset time.” 356 It aspires to be
untimely in the face of the demands on critical thought to be on time; aims to challenge the moralizing move , the call to conscience
that arrives in the form of assertions that saying “no!” to security, that refusing to write it, would be untimely .
Rather than succumbing to the injunction that thought of political possibility is to be confined within the framework of security, dismantling security aims to open up space for
alternative forms, for a different language of politics so as to “stop digging” the hole politics of security have dug us
and start building a counter-discourse. Conclusion As an attempt to push a debate that is fixated on security to the limit and explore what it means to dismantle security, my
engagement with various aspects of this move is not intended as an analysis raised at the level of causal interpretations or as an attempt to find better solutions to a problem that already has a name. Rather, it tries to
recast what is taken-for-granted by attending to the conceptual assumptions, the historical and systemic conditions
within which the politics of security plays itself out. As I tried to show in this chapter, it also entails a simultaneous move of refusing to
be a disciple of the discipline of security . This implies overturning not only the silent disciplinary protocols about
which questions are legitimate to ask, but also the very framework that informs those questions. It is from this perspective that I devoted two
distanced, academic endeavor. Her
chapters to examining and clarifying the proposal to dismantle security as a claim on time. After explicating, in Chapter 4, the temporal structure that is enacted by politics of security and elaborating on how security structures the
relation between the present and the future, in this chapter, I approached the question of temporality from a different perspective, by situating it in relation to disciplinary times in order to clarify what an untimely critique of security
such a notion of
the untimely paradoxically calls on critical thought to be on time in the sense of being punctual and strategic . Turning to
Wendy Brown’s discussion of the relation between critique and political time, I elaborated on the sense of untimely critique that dismantling security strives for—a critique that goes
against the times that are saturated by the infinite passion to secure and works toward taking apart the
architecture of security.
means. I tried to elaborate this notion of the untimely by exploring the understanding of untimeliness that informs certain conceptions of critical theorizing in International Relations. I suggested that
3
GOP will retake the Senate – strong candidates, low Obama popularity, congressional ballot lead, weak Dem
incumbents
Kristol 9/18/14 (William, Founder and Editor @ Weekly Standard + Political/Foreign Policy Commentator, "All
Together Now," http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/all-together-now_805307.html)
November 4 is likely to lead to a GOP takeover of the Senate after eight long years of Democratic control, and to perhaps the
largest GOP majority in the House in modern times. It’s an election that could—that should—set the stage for victory in 2016, as the Democrats’
triumph in 2006 set the stage for victory in 2008. So even though it’s contrary to interest for an opinion magazine to suggest a time out from
groaning and sniping and grumbling—and even though we reserve the right to groan and snipe and grumble at our discretion—maybe it’s a good
moment for everyone out there who thinks the country is endangered by Barack Obama, that it is being damaged by Harry Reid, and that it would
be ruined by another Democratic presidential victory in 2016 to take a deep breath, let bygones be bygones, leave future concerns to the future,
and work to win in November. Fear of the Democrats should be a sufficient motive. But is there anything else to be said to inspire voters to vote,
donors to donate, and activists to activate? Yes. The Republican class of 2014 candidates are very impressive. A glance at their
biographies would show an unusual number of high-quality men and women, many of whom have real achievements outside politics, few of
whom are career politicians or children of politicians. From Tom Cotton in Arkansas to Joni Ernst in Iowa; from Ben Sasse in
Nebraska to Dan Sullivan in Alaska; from Elise Stefanik in upstate New York to Lee Zeldin on Long Island; from Marilinda Garcia in
western New Hampshire to Martha McSally in southeastern Arizona—a new generation of Republicans has stepped forward
worthy of support. And a glance at their birth dates would show that the Grand Old Party is this year the party of youth. For example: There
are seven marquee Senate races in which the Republican candidate has a good chance to take a Democratic seat (on
top of virtually certain pickups in West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota). It is on these races that control of the Senate
will hinge. In all of these contests—Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire—the
Republican challenger is younger than his or her Democratic opponent. Looking at the GOP field in 2014, it’s perhaps an exaggeration to
invoke John F. Kennedy’s words: “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans . . . tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and
bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has
always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” But looking at these candidates, Republicans
would be justified in thinking—as Democrats thought in 1958, two years before Kennedy’s inauguration—that theirs is the party of youth and
energy, of new ideas and bold imagination. In the 1958 off-year elections, Democrats increased their majority in the House by 48
and won 13 Republican Senate seats, defeating 10 Republican incumbents. The GOP won’t achieve a victory of that magnitude in
But they can aspire to big gains , especially when polls show disapproval of Obama high, Republicans leading
in the generic congressional ballot, and a slew of Democratic incumbents below 50 percent .
2014.
Obama gets the blame - midterms are a referendum on his performance
Podhoretz 3/18/14 (John, editor of Commentary magazine, columnist for the New York Post, the author of several
books on politics, and a former presidential speechwriter, NY Post, "Obama’s failed foreign policy just another drag
on Democrats," http://nypost.com/2014/03/18/obamas-failed-foreign-policy-just-another-drag-on-democrats/)
He is the president. It’s his watch . Americans may be war-weary, but they still look to the man in the White House
to provide an overall sense of stability and safety.¶ Democrats need Americans to feel positively about the president
going into the 2014 elections. All election experts say the party’s showing nationally in November will correlate strongly
with how the country feels about the job the president is doing.
Legalization means Dems keep the Senate – boosts turnout and ensures support for
endangered candidates
Hudak 8/21/14 (John, Political Analyst + Fellow in Governance Studies @ Brookings Institution, "Here's Why
Marijuana Legalization Just Might Keep the Senate Blue," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/marijuanalegalization-senate_n_5697958.html)
Marijuana legalization might ensure Harry Reid remains the Senate Majority Leader in 2014. In a year in which the battle
for majority control of the Senate is the biggest story of the midterms, every race counts. One of the more competitive battles for
the Senate is taking place in Alaska, where incumbent Sen. Mark Begich is fighting for another six-year term. However, the Senate race
is not the only choice Alaskans will face this November. They will decide whether their state will legalize recreational
marijuana, following their counterparts to the south: Washington and Colorado. There are many reasons why the Alaska Senate race is
competitive. Begich eked out a win in 2008 over the late Senator Ted Stevens. Alaska is a conservative, Republican-voting state. Mitt Romney
carried the state by 14 points in 2012. In fact, Alaska has only given its electoral votes to a Democratic candidate once since statehood, during
LBJ’s 1964 landslide victory. Finally, this year’s Senate race falls during a midterm, when electorates tend to favor Republican
candidates, particularly with an unpopular Democrat in the White House. Marijuana legalization could change that by
dramatically changing the character and nature of the midterm electorate in Alaska , and helping Sen. Begich win
reelection . People turn out for elections when they feel passion about a candidate or a race, but ballot initiatives can also
generate interest, passion and turnout. Research by Smith, DeSantis & Kassel illustrate that ballot initiatives in 2004 centering on outlawing same
sex marriage generated additional turnout (even in a presidential year) among conservatives in key states.
Passion about marijuana
legalization can do the same, and we have evidence of this effect . In 2012, Colorado and Washington had statewide
referenda on the question of marijuana legalization. With those initiatives on the ballot, the composition of each state’s electorate changed in
significant ways. Using exit poll data to compare changes in the characteristics of the electorate in each state between 2008 and 2012, we can
make inferences about the effects of legalization initiatives. brookings Marijuana legalization supporters, particularly passionate ones, tend to be
younger and either more liberal or more libertarian in nature—though recent polls suggest broader support in the electorate. In Washington in
2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 10% of the electorate. In 2012, with legalization on the ballot, that number increased to 21% of the
electorate—a more than 100% increase. The effect was even more pronounced for the 18-24 demographic, where electoral composition increased
from 5% to 13%. In addition, in 2008, 27% of the electorate called themselves “liberal.” In 2012, that number increased to 31%. brookings
Similar trends existed in Colorado. In 2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 14% of the electorate. In 2012, that group composed 20% of
voters. In fact, in Colorado the 18-24 demographic increased from 5% to 12% of the electorate from 2008 to 2012. The ideological composition
of turnout changed as well. In 2008, 17% of the electorate called itself liberal. In 2012, that figure skyrocketed to 28%. In Washington and
Colorado, the composition of those who turned out to vote changed dramatically between 2008 and 2012—each a presidential year. Nationally,
there was little change in the composition of the electorate in terms of youth and liberalism. But in the states with marijuana legalization
initiatives it did, dramatically. brookings There is also evidence those electoral shifts helped Democrats. In Colorado, those who voted in favor of
Amendment 64 (marijuana legalization) voted for President Obama at a rate of 68%—far above his support among all Colorado voters (51%).
Similarly, in Washington, among those who voted in favor of Initiative 502 (marijuana legalization), 72% also voted for President Obama. The
president won about 56% statewide. Roll Call’s Henry Decker and FireDogLake’s Jon Walker have also offered great insight into how electoral
changes coincide with marijuana legalization initiatives. However, there is more to this story than simply turnout. In many ways,
Democrats have missed a real opportunity to make electoral gains—or limit losses—by pushing legalization
initiatives. Some credit President Bush’s reelection in 2004 to the push for same sex marriage initiatives on statewide ballots by spurring social
conservative turnout. Democrats could have received a similar boost by pushing legalization initiatives that would
alter the electorate in a year when Democrats need it for structural and political reasons .
Democratic control of the Senate dooms TPA – GOP control key to passage
Hatch 14 (Orrin, Ranking Member of US Senate Finance Committee, "HATCH PUSHES FOR SENATE ACTION
ON BILL TO HELP BOOST JOB-CREATING TRADE PACTS," 2/4, States News Serivce, lexis)
Put simply, if Congress does not renew TPA, the TPP negotiations and those with the European Union will almost certainly
fail . That is why it is so disconcerting to me to see how some of my colleagues across the aisle have responded to President Obamas call for
TPA renewal.¶ TPA is one of the few issues where both parties can and should be able work together to achieve a common goal. I know that I,
along with my Republican colleagues, stand ready and willing to work with the administration to approve TPA as soon
as possible.¶ I believe the bipartisan bill Chairman Baucus and I recently introduced to renew TPA would receive strong bipartisan
support in the Senate if it were allowed to come up for a vote .¶ Indeed, I am confident that the vast majority of my
colleagues would join me in supporting the bill.¶ The problem is, Republicans are not in the majority in the
Senate. It is the Democrats that control the agenda . And, unfortunately, the Presidents call to renew TPA does not
appear to be a priority for them.¶ The question is: Will Senate Democrats work with the President on this issue?¶ I dont know the answer
to that question. But, I have to say that things dont look good.¶ Instead of robust support for the President and his trade agenda, the response weve
seen from Democrats has ranged from awkward silence on TPA to outright hostility.¶ Needless to say, Im extremely disappointed by this.¶ Mr.
President, the issue here is fairly simple.¶ If we want to grow our economy through trade, the Congress must approve TPA and do so soon. ¶ The
President can play a key role here. By forcefully advocating for TPA renewal, he can help turn some of the skeptics in his party around. ¶
Recently, the Financial Times published a powerful editorial which outlined the need for TPA and the role the President must play for TPA to
succeed. According to the editorial:¶ Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton pulled out all the stops to push through approval of the
controversial North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. He was able to squeak through a narrow victory by deft lobbying
of lawmakers and a willingness to make a strong case for globalization to the American public. Mr. Obama is lagging behind his predecessor on
both counts. The case for TTIP and TPP are both strong. The time for Mr. Obama to make those arguments has arrived. He has every incentive to
succeed. Failure to secure [TPA] would be a grievous blow to his presidency¶ Now, I understand that there are some powerful political forces that
lead some of my friends on the other side of the aisle to oppose international trade. However, lets be clear, if we fail to approve TPA, we
will be doing our nation and our economy a great disservice .¶ International trade is a good thing for our country. It is
one of the few tools Congress has to grow our economy that does not add to the federal deficit.¶ Mr. President, as I mentioned,
Senator Baucus and I, along with Chairman Camp, have negotiated and introduced a bipartisan, bicameral TPA bill. It is, in my opinion, the only
TPA bill that stands a chance of getting passed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.¶ My colleagues on the other side of
the aisle have a choice. They can either work with Republicans to pass our bill and empower our country to complete
these important trade agreements, or they can throw up more roadblocks and cast more uncertainty on the Presidents
trade agenda.¶ As I stated, Republicans stand ready to work with President Obama on these issues and to help these trade
negotiations succeed. For the sake of our country and our economy, I sincerely hope my Democratic colleagues here in the Senate are
willing to do the same.
TPA passage vital for the economy and global trade
Kennedy and McLarty 2/12/14 (Mark and Mack, director of George Washington University's Graduate School of
Political Management + White House chief of staff and Special Envoy for the Americas under President Bill
Clinton, "Expand trade, improve economy: Column," http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/12/tradepromotion-authority-obama-economic-growth-column/5340989/)
After struggling with anemic growth for the last six years, the nation now finds itself with an opportunity to renew its vitality
through the most powerful economic elixir: expanded trade.¶ This benefit cannot be achieved without giving our
partners the confidence that the United States is negotiating in good faith, free from last minute changes and additions. This requires giving
President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (commonly known as TPA or "fast track") to present trade agreements for an up or down vote in
Congress.¶ Passing TPA is distasteful to both Republicans who do not the trust the president and Democrats who believe the benefits of free trade
are overstated. Yet before they added cherry flavors, many medicines with powerful cures had a bitter flavor. For the sake of America's
economic health , Congress must come together in a bipartisan fashion to give President Obama fast track authority, a power
granted to every chief executive since 1974.¶ The Obama Administration, led ably by United States Trade Representative (USTR) Michael
Froman, has engaged the European Union and nations in the Pacific in serious negotiations for high standard trade agreements. These two
accords would increase ties with historic allies, make us more competitive, increase job opportunities, enhance incomes and allow American
businesses to effectively sell to the fast growing Asian region. ¶ Critics would have you believe that somehow these agreements would weaken
environmental and labor standards, but most partner countries in question are already high-income nations that embrace strong worker and
environmental protections.¶ Ambassador Froman attempted to assuage those fears saying, "We have made clear that we're committed to
negotiating a high-standard, ambitious comprehensive deal." The TPA bill introduced by Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah,
already incorporates new protections to ensure that all partner countries meet rigorous guidelines. ¶ As President Clinton's chief of staff when the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed and one of the deciding votes the last time Congress granted Fast Track authority,
we know how hard it is to move a significant trade accord. We also know how the dire predictions of skeptics are often shown to be illusory.¶ The
only sucking sound induced by NAFTA was the gasps of trade skeptics whose economic chimeras failed to materialize. NAFTA has instead
exceeded expectations.¶ It launched Mexico on a path to strengthen its democratic institutions and progressively open its economy. A more
democratic and competitive Mexico, along with a more tightly integrated supply chain between the three North American economies, makes each
member of the NAFTA trio more competitive in world markets. Similar benefits await if we proceed with the proposed Asian and European
accords.¶ Passing TPA will require significant attention and effort from President Obama and Congress. Over 500
advocacy groups have written to lawmakers urging a vote against it. To date, 49 more House Democrats are on record opposing fast track than
supported NAFTA in 1994.¶ Advocating for free trade will require the president to stand up to members of his own party
to further his economic agenda.¶ It will take courage to forcefully advocate for an issue that splits one's party , but the benefits
to the nation will far outweigh any intra-party strife. That is what presidential leadership is all about.¶ There has never been an
economic golden age without trade. It has been the driving force behind new innovation. Its expansion has allowed countless
people the chance to achieve financial prosperity and advance civilization.¶ Trade has a wonderful history, but we believe its
best days are still ahead. Every trade liberalization advance has enhanced the well being of mankind. The United States has
arrived at a monumental opportunity to craft landmark trade agreements with the world. Let us not fail to build accords that will
spark economic growth , create a better future for our children and launch a new golden era of trade .
That prevents multiple scenarios for global WMD conflict
Panzner 8 (Michael, faculty at the New York Institute of Finance, 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and
currency markets who has worked in New York and London for HSBC, Soros Funds, ABN Amro, Dresdner Bank,
and JPMorgan Chase “Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse,” pg. 136-138)
Continuing calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United States and other nations to spew
forth protectionist legislation like the notorious Smoot-Hawley bill. Introduced at the start of the Great Depression, it triggered a series
of tit-for-tat economic responses, which many commentators believe helped turn a serious economic downturn into a prolonged and
devastating global disaster. But if history is any guide, those lessons will have been long forgotten during the next collapse. Eventually, fed by a
mood of desperation and growing public anger, restrictions on trade, finance, investment, and immigration will almost certainly intensify.
Authorities and ordinary citizens will likely scrutinize the cross-border movement of Americans and outsiders alike, and lawmakers may even
call for a general crackdown on nonessential travel. Meanwhile, many nations will make transporting or sending funds to other countries
exceedingly difficult. As desperate officials try to limit the fallout from decades of ill-conceived, corrupt, and reckless policies, they will
introduce controls on foreign exchange. Foreign individuals and companies seeking to acquire certain American
infrastructure assets, or trying to buy property and other assets on the cheap thanks to a rapidly depreciating dollar,
will be stymied by limits on investment by noncitizens. Those efforts will cause spasms to ripple across economies
and markets, disrupting global payment, settlement, and clearing mechanisms. All of this will, of course, continue to
undermine business confidence and consumer spending. In a world of lockouts and lockdowns, any link that
transmits systemic financial pressures across markets through arbitrage or portfolio-based risk management, or that
allows diseases to be easily spread from one country to the next by tourists and wildlife , or that otherwise facilitates
unwelcome exchanges of any kind will be viewed with suspicion and dealt with accordingly. The rise in isolationism and protectionism will
bring about ever more heated arguments and dangerous confrontations over shared sources of oil, gas, and other key
commodities as well as factors of production that must, out of necessity, be acquired from less-than-friendly nations. Whether involving raw
materials used in strategic industries or basic necessities such as food, water, and energy, efforts to secure adequate supplies will take increasing
precedence in a world where demand seems constantly out of kilter with supply. Disputes over the misuse, overuse, and pollution of the
environment and natural resources will become more commonplace. Around the world, such tensions will give rise to full-scale
military encounters, often with minimal provocation. In some instances, economic conditions will serve as a convenient pretext
for conflicts that stem from cultural and religious differences. Alternatively, nations may look to divert attention
away from domestic problems by channeling frustration and populist sentiment toward other countries and cultures.
Enabled by cheap technology and the waning threat of American retribution, terrorist groups will likely boost the
frequency and scale of their horrifying attacks, bringing the threat of random violence to a whole new level.
Turbulent conditions will encourage aggressive saber rattling and interdictions by rogue nations running amok. Ageold clashes will also take on a new, more heated sense of urgency. China will likely assume an increasingly belligerent posture
toward Taiwan, while Iran may embark on overt colonization of its neighbors in the Mideast. Israel, for its part,
may look to draw a dwindling list of allies from around the world into a growing number of conflicts . Some observers,
like John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have even speculated that an “intense confrontation” between the United
States and China is “inevitable” at some point. More than a few disputes will turn out to be almost wholly ideological. Growing cultural and
religious differences will be transformed from wars of words to battles soaked in blood. Long-simmering
resentments could also degenerate quickly, spurring the basest of human instincts and triggering genocidal acts.
Terrorists employing biological or nuclear weapons will vie with conventional forces using jets, cruise missiles,
and bunker-busting bombs to cause widespread destruction. Many will interpret stepped-up conflicts between Muslims and
Western societies as the beginnings of a new world war .
4
Text: The United States should decriminalize the private possession and use of marihuana in the US. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation in accordance with this policy should no longer drug test their employees.
Decriminalization solves and avoids election
Blumenson and Nielson 9 (Eric – Professor of Law, Suffolk University; J.D. Harvard Law School, and Eva –
Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University; J.D., University of Virginia, “NO RATIONAL BASIS:
THE PRAGMATIC CASE FOR MARIJUANA LAW REFORM”, 2009, 17 Va. J. Soc. Pol'y & L. 43, lexis)
What is needed most, of course, is a sea change in marijuana law, not least in order to end the destructiveness of present policy.
There should be major government-funded efforts to devise the most promising alternative legal regime. Our aim in this article is to underscore
the need for policy reform, not to argue for a particular policy. But we do want to offer a few provisional thoughts on three
possibilities, any one of which would constitute a vast improvement on present policy. The first is the one that currently
exists in parts of the United States: decriminalization of use and possession. Decriminalization does not end the ban on use
or sale of marijuana, but does remove criminal penalties for individuals found possessing a small amount.
Decriminalization was a successful reform strategy in the 1970s but its momentum ran out soon after. Several states
decriminalized possession of small quantities of marijuana in the 1970s, after President Nixon's commission on marijuana recommended it
as national policy. n118 These laws, for the most part, remain in effect and take several forms. n119 [*74] Other states have
stopped short of decriminalization, but offered ways to avoid a criminal record, for example by deferring a first offender's prosecution for
a period of time and then dismissing the charge if there has been no arrest in the interim. Decriminalization has four important factors
in its favor: (1) it puts an end to the worst excesses of current marijuana policy (including arrest, imprisonment, and the
deleterious effect on law enforcement practices we have discussed); (2) studies show that decriminalization does not
increase the number of marijuana users; n120 (3) it is arguably more consistent with international drug treaty
obligations than legalization, n121 and (4) it may again have a possibility of success, at least [*75] more so than any alternatives. As
noted, Rep. Barney Frank last year filed a decriminalization bill for the first time in Congress, saying that after decades of belief in its merits, he
now thinks public opinion supports it as well. n122 Recent polls show more popular support for marijuana
decriminalization than any time in the last three decades. n123 Decriminalization retains many of the drawbacks of present
policy, however, while jettisoning the worst. It still leaves marijuana production and sale to a black market populated by criminals, and eliminates
any [*76] government control over the drug or its market. And although removing criminal penalties would liberate marijuana users from the
virtually total loss of liberty that may be imposed under current law, preventing use of the substance raises separate liberty concerns we address
elsewhere. n124 Legalization eliminates the drawbacks just noted but may have many of its own , depending on its form.
Unlike decriminalization, it fully respects individual liberty, and it can help the government control the market in harm reducing ways.
Legalization should dry up the black market just as ending prohibition did, leaving in its place licensed sellers who would have every business
incentive to insure government imposed age limits, purity standards, and labels. It draws a sharp distinction between "soft drugs" and "hard
drugs," and removes the necessity for users to buy from people who sell both; and according to MacCoun and Reuter, to the degree that
marijuana became more available and less expensive, it might draw people away from more dangerous drugs they use now. n125
Legalizing marijuana violates international law – only the CP complies
Duke 13 (Steven B. – Professor of Law, Yale Law School, “The Future of Marijuana in the United States”, 2013,
91 Or. L. Rev. 1301, lexis)
B. Legalizing Marijuana Is Prohibited by International Treaties " Decriminalization " is the mechanism of choice
for the countries and most states that have sought to de-escalate drug prohibition. Decriminalization entails sharply
reducing to the equivalent of a traffic offense or completely eliminating criminal penalties for the possession and use
of small amounts of the drug. No government, however, has ever legalized the drug's distribution, even if that distribution is
small-scale and not for profit. Although decriminalization reduces some of the dreadful costs of full-scale prohibition, it retains and could even
encourage black-market distribution. n77 Reducing or eliminating penalties for consumers while failing to legalize and regulate distribution could
even exacerbate the violence and corruption that are inherent in illegal distribution networks. Alcohol Prohibition criminalized only the
manufacture and distribution of alcohol, not its possession or use. n78 It was, therefore, a model of decriminalization. Though a good start toward
legalization, decriminalization cannot be the ultimate solution. There is a common belief that the drug control treaties, chiefly the 1961
U nited N ations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, n79 prohibit any signatory state from legalizing the drugs covered
by the treaty, one of which is cannabis. That is why it is often said that the Netherlands does not legalize the distribution of
marijuana but merely [*1317] declines to prosecute the "coffee houses" that openly serve the drug to consumers. n80 Whether the
Convention prohibits all efforts to legalize marijuana is debatable. The provision that is often read as prohibitory is Article 4(c), which states that
the parties shall take such measures as may be necessary, "subject to the provisions of this Convention, to limit exclusively to medical and
scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs." n81 That clearly allows
"medical" liberalization. Article 33 provides that the parties "shall not permit the possession of drugs except under legal authority." n82 This is
either meaningless or contemplates the granting of "authority." Article 36 says that the parties shall make intentional possession, use, et cetera, of
drugs "contrary to the provisions of this Convention" punishable and that "serious offenses" should be "liable to adequate punishment particularly
by imprisonment or other penalties of deprivation of liberty." n83 This obligation, however, is subject to the parties' "constitutional limitations."
n84 Article 28 permits the cultivation of cannabis, provided it is controlled and the parties seek to "prevent the misuse of, and illicit traffic in, the
leaves of the cannabis plant." n85 Article 30 requires that the trade in drugs exist "under license" except when carried out by a state enterprise.
n86 These provisions appear to have been written by someone devoted to ambiguity. Some provisions seem to invite legalization rather than
precluding it. Nonetheless, the prevailing view is that legalization of marijuana , other than for medical or scientific uses,
is contrary to the l961 Convention and later treaties as well. n87 Some countries, most recently Portugal, Mexico, and
Argentina, have decriminalized or legalized the small-scale possession and consumption of marijuana and other drugs. If the UN
Convention [*1318] requires these states to make marijuana possession criminally punishable, then these reforms, desirable as they are, violate
the Convention. Surprisingly, however, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime praises the Portugal experiment and opines that
it does not violate the Convention. Decriminalizing drug use "falls within the Convention parameters" because
"drug possession is still prohibited , but the sanctions fall under the administrative law, not the criminal law." n88
Apparently, therefore, an unenforced ten dollar civil fine would satisfy the Convention . Perhaps full legalization with
regulation would also suffice, leaving only laissez-faire prohibited.
Violating these drug treaties spills over and collapses the treaty system
Bewley-Taylor 3 (David R. – Senior Lecturer, Department of American Studies, University of Wales Swansea,
“Challenging the UN drug control conventions: problems and possibilities”, International Journal of Drug Policy,
http://www.unawestminster.org.uk/pdf/drugs/UNdrugsBewley_Taylor_IJDP14.pdf)
Disregarding the treaties
Another strategy would
be for Parties to simply ignore the treaties or certain parts of them . In this way they could
institute any policies deemed to be necessary at the national level, including for example the legalisation of
cannabis and the introduction of a licensing system for domestic producers. This option has been gaining support amongst many
opponents of the prohibition based international system for some time. Disregarding all or selected components of the treaties ,
however, raises serious issues beyond the realm of drug control . The possibility of nations unilaterally ignoring drug
control treaty commitments could threaten the stability of the entire treaty system. As a consequence states may be wary
of opting out. Some international lawyers argue that all treaties can naturally cease to be binding when a fundamental
change of circumstances has occurred since the time of signing ( Starke, 1989 , pp. 473 / 474). Bearing in mind the dramatic changes in
the nature and extent of the drug problem since the 1960s, this doctrine of rebus sic stantibus could probably be applied to the drug treaties. Yet
the selective application of such a principle would call into question the validity of many and varied conventions.
Effective treaty compliance is critical to preventing great power war
Muller 00 (Dr. Harold Muller is the Director of the Peace Research Institute-Frankfurt and Professor of
International Relations at Goethe University Compliance Politics: A Critical Analysis of Multilateral Arms Control
Treaty Enforcement http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/72muell.pdf)
In this author's view,3 at least four distinct missions continue to make arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation agreements useful, even indispensable parts of a stable and reliable world security structure:
• As long as the risk of great power rivalry and competition exists—and it exists today—constructing barriers
against a degeneration of this competition into major violence remains a pivotal task of global security policy.
Things may be more complicated than during the bipolar age since asymmetries loom larger and more than one pair of
competing major powers may exist. With overlapping rivalries among these powers, arms races are likely to be interconnected, and the
stability of any one pair of rivals might be affected negatively by developments in other dyads. Because of this greater risk of instability, the
increased political complexity of the post-bipolar world calls for more rather than less arms control. For these competitive relationships,
stability or stabilization remains a key goal, and effectively verified agreements can contribute much to establish such stability. • Arms
control also has a role to play in securing regional stability. At the regional level, arms control agreements can create balances of forces that
reassure regional powers that their basic security is certain, and help build confidence in the basically non-aggressive policies of neighbors.
Over time, a web of interlocking agreements may even create enough of a sense of security and confidence to
overcome past confrontations and enable transitions towards more cooperative relationships. At the global level,
arms limitation or prohibition agreements, notably in the field of weapons of mass destruction, are needed to ban existential
dangers for global stability, ecological safety, and maybe the very survival of human life on earth . In an age of
increasing interdependence and ensuing complex networks that support the satisfaction of basic needs, international cooperation is needed to
secure the smooth working of these networks. Arms control can create underlying conditions of security and stability that reduce distrust and
enable countries to commit them-selves to far-reaching cooperation in other sectors without perceiving undesirable risks to their national
security. Global agreements also affect regional balances and help, if successful, to reduce the chances that regional
conflicts will escalate. Under opportune circumstances, the normative frameworks that they enshrine may engender a
feeling of community and shared security interests that help reduce the general level of conflict and assist in
ushering in new relations of global cooperation. • Finally, one aspect that is rarely discussed in the arms control context is arms
control among friends and partners. It takes the innocent form of military cooperation; joint staffs, commands, and units; common
procurement planning; and broad and far-reaching transparency. While these relations serve at the surface to enhance a country's military
capability by linking it with others, they are conducive as well to creating a sense of irreversibility in current friendly relations, by making
unthinkable a return to previous, possibly more conflictual times. European defense cooperation is a case in point.1 Whatever the particular
mission of a specific agreement, it will serve these worthwhile purposes only if it is implemented appropriately and, if not,
means are available to ensure compliance . In other words, the enduring value of arms control rests very much on the ability to
assure compliance.5 Despite the reasons given above for the continuing utility of arms control, the skeptics may still have the last word if
agreements are made empty shells by repeated breaches and a lack of effective enforcement.
Cartels
Cartels are diverse – Doing one thing doesn’t spill over
French 5 [Taylor W. French, JD candidate, Vanderbilt; “NOTE: Free Trade and Illegal Drugs: Will NAFTA
Transform the United States Into the Netherlands?”; Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law¶ March, 2005 38
Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 501; Lexis]
In the post-NAFTA era, it has become harder for authorities to detect and destroy drug cartels, as narcotics traffickers have set
up intricate networks and complex business practices. n274 Modern drug traffickers typically create "legitimate businesses" that
they use as fronts for their illegal activities. n275 Such companies often revolve around trucking, shipping, railway, and storage, all of
which play integral roles in the drug trade. n276 Moreover, the Mexican cartels have adopted distinctive non-cartel like qualities
that reduce the likelihood of their exposure to law enforcement. n277 Unlike their predecessors, Mexican drug rings are normally
structured in small cells, each capable of independent operation. n278 Hence, if officials are able to destroy one group, the
larger organization remains [*530] unaffected. n279 In addition, " Mexican traffickers have evolved into "poly-drug'
traffickers ." n280 By transporting many types of drugs, the new cartels are much less dependent upon one substance as a
"cash crop." n281 The result is that approximately thirty percent of the heroin imported into the United States comes
from Mexico, and sixty percent of the cocaine imported into the United States comes from Mexico, buttressing the cannabis market
that "Mexico continues to dominate." n282 Thus, Mexican drug cartels have emerged as sophisticated and diversified operations
that operate in the shadows of legal businesses to supply the United States with illicit substances of all kinds. n283
Cartel-led violence is decreasing now - Mexican security efforts are increasingly successful
Higa 14 (Daniel, "Mexico: Homicides decrease, but kidnapping, extortion rising,"
http://infosurhoy.com/en_GB/articles/saii/features/main/2014/06/02/feature-01)
MEXICO CITY – Thanks to the intervention of federal forces, the arrest of major drug lords and the weakening of
criminal groups, the homicide rate in Mexico is decreasing , according to the Ministry of the Interior. Between January and
March 2014, there were 4,497 homicides, compared to 18,447 during all of 2013. In 2012, authorities registered 21,732 killings after recording
22,853 the previous year, according to the National Public Security System. “We can confirm the homicide rate is on the decrease
and one of the reasons is that the federal forces’ presence in certain regions has led to the control of violence,” Leonel
Fernández Novelo, a researcher for the NGO México Evalúa, said . Authorities have struck hard against violent
criminal structures, such as Los Zetas and the Knights Templar, resulting in a decrease in these groups’ use of violence ,
according to Jorge Kawas, an expert in security and intelligence and an associate at the Center for Interdisciplinary MexicanBritish Research in Mexico City. “The government has focused its efforts on the most bloodthirsty criminal organizations
and has attacked their operational leadership, which has hurt their ability to reorganize themselves quickly, and
they have fragmented ,” he said. From December 2012 to May 2014, the Mexican government has apprehended or killed 80 high- ranking
criminals, the most prominent being Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the head of the Sinaloa cartel; Los Zetas’ leaders Miguel Ángel Treviño, alias
“Z-40”; Galdino Mellado Cruz (“Z-9”) and Fernando Martínez Magaña (“Z-16”); in addition to Knights Templar leaders Nazario Moreno – the
founder of the criminal organization – and Enrique Plancarte – the cartel’s No. 2 leader – both being killed in military operations. At the same
time, organized crime groups can no longer sustain the costs of extreme violence, according to Athanasios Hristoulas, a
researcher of the Autonomous Institute of Technology of Mexico. “The violence reached a tipping point ,” he said.
“ The most powerful criminal groups have been weakened in certain aspects , so it’s likely they have been forced to reach
agreements and form alliances to safeguard their territories and their markets.” For President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, this is the
direct result of his official strategy to fight organized crime. “The security and law enforcement policy has managed to reduce
violence, lower the crime rate, break up various criminal organizations and reduce their operational capacity in
several regions of the country,” Minister of the Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said. “We have applied focused strategies that have
succeeded, and in only a year and a half, there is a noticeable difference in states such as Michoacán, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Nayarit and
Guerrero.”
Marijuana doesn’t stop cartels – they’ll shift
Bender 13 [Steven Bender, Professor, Seattle University School of Law; “Overdose: The Failure of the U.S. Drug
War and Attempts at Legalization: ARTICLE: JOINT REFORM?: THE INTERPLAY OF STATE, FEDERAL,
AND HEMISPHERIC REGULATION OF RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA AND THE FAILED WAR ON
DRUGS”; 2013¶ Albany Government Law Review¶ 6 Alb. Gov't L. Rev. 359; Lexis]
Gauging the effect of U.S. legalization requires some sense of the economic importance of marijuana to the Mexican drug cartels. Unfortunately,
the nature of the beast of an illegal enterprise with diffuse money laundering throughout the hemisphere is that estimates of revenues vary widely,
both as to the dollar amount of overall revenues and the percentage role that marijuana plays in cartel proceeds from a variety
of drugs.
No doubt by any measure those revenues are enormous, with the swing in estimated annual revenue to Mexican cartels ranging from one estimate
of $ 80 billion to a U.S. government estimate of $ 13.8 billion - with $ 8.5 billion of that revenue coming from marijuana and the vast amount
coming from U.S. sales. n174 According to this government estimate, marijuana comprises more than 60% of cartel revenue, with the remainder
coming from cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking, as well as other illicit drugs and activities. n175 As I speculated in Run for the Border, if
this estimate is accurate, legalization of marijuana should have a "cataclysmic effect" on the Mexican cartels, n176 allowing cross-border
enforcement to better focus on remaining (and more dangerous) illicit drugs for which U.S. demand is less pervasive. Presumably, the south-ofthe-border violence might ultimately ease as the cartels succumb to this economic squeeze. Yet there are many reasons to be less
optimistic about the impact [*388] of state legalization on Mexican trafficking, even if that reform takes hold nationally.
First, some commentators discount the estimate that marijuana plays such a key role in cartel revenues , with one
commentator suggesting a more accurate figure falls in the range of 15-to-26%. n177 Having become the gateway for illicit
Mexican cartels might also send their product elsewhere, such
as Canada or within Mexico, n178 redouble their efforts to export drugs that remain illicit in the United States, such
as cocaine and methamphetamine, or concentrate on expanding demand for these illicit drugs as cartels did within
Mexico when enhanced U.S.-border enforcement prompted them at times to liquidate their inventory to Mexican users. n179
Presumably, legalization within the United States that leaves minors unable to purchase marijuana lawfully might reserve
some of that illicit market to cartels, yet the likelihood is that, as with alcohol, this demand would be supplied through fake identification
drugs from South and Central America into the United States,
or by friends and relatives purchasing lawful marijuana for minors. Some commentators have looked to the tobacco market and speculated that
should government tax legal marijuana too steeply, an illicit market might emerge, n180 perhaps to be supplied by the cartels [*389] rather than
by licensed domestic producers operating outside the law. Still, given the history of spraying of illicit marijuana crops with toxic
chemicals, the lesser environmental policing in Mexico, and the reality that some marijuana has been smuggled, while soaked in
gasoline or perfume, in such unsanitary conveyances as the inside of a full septic tank truck, n181 presumably most U.S. users would be
willing to pay extra for the assurance of some quality and safety control over the production of legalized marijuana.
Surely, too, the cost of bribes that divert a fair share of cartel revenue is an expense that lawfully produced marijuana need not duplicate. Most
alarmingly, however, Mexican drug cartels of late have augmented their drug profits with other enterprises for
which their infrastructure of vast capital, weaponry, manpower, and graft is well suited. These sidelines include
kidnapping the family members of the wealthy for ransom, n182 trafficking undocumented immigrants and sex
workers into and within the United States, n183 and robbing undocumented immigrants, whether from Mexico or Central America, who
aim to reach U.S. employers. n184 The most ominous scenario ahead is one in which the drug cartels expand these other
ventures to replace marijuana revenues . Immigration is driven and limited by job opportunities available within the United States
and thus depends on labor demand. Therefore, cartels searching for replacement revenue presumably would be drawn to
expand their kidnappings or their role in illicit sex markets, such as those for underage prostitutes. n185 Overall, then, the impact
of legalization on cartel revenues, and the surging violence within Mexico, is hard to predict.
It turns the Aff
Felbab-Brown 10 (Vanda, Foreign Policy Fellow, Brookings Institution, ""5 Expert Takes on How U.S. Marijuana
Legalization Would Affect Mexico," 11/1, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/5-expert-takes-onhow-us-marijuana-legalization-would-affect-mexico/65498/)
What will be the effects on the Mexican drug trade if California legalizes marijuana? Andreas: Marijuana's potential tax
revenue has been overstated. Bonner: I hope it doesn't pass: it would be a real slap in the face for Mexico. Almost 30,000 people have died in
drug-related homicides [since 2006]. Some of those have been police and military who have been fighting the drug traffickers there. Selee: The
biggest effect of passing prop 19 would be to generate a serious debate over drug policy for the first time in many years in this country. I can't see
prop 19 creating the conditions for a... market in which marijuana is not controlled by organized crime. Felbab-Brown: In one outcome, cartels'
market [for marijuana] would be threatened and so they would try to move into other illegal markets as they are
doing already. The fight over the heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine markets would intensify and lead to
even greater escalations of violence .
No resource wars – prefer statistical evidence
Pinker 11 (Steven, Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology –
Harvard University, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” Google Books)
Once again it seems to me that the appropriate response is "maybe, but maybe not." Though climate change can cause plenty of misery and deserves to be mitigated for that
reason alone, it will not necessarily lead to armed conflict. The political scientists who track war and peace , such as Halvard
Buhaug, Idean Salehyan, Ole Theisen, and Nils Gleditsch, are skeptical of the popular idea that people fight wars over scarce resources .
Hunger and resource shortages are tragically common in sub-Saharn countries such as Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, but wars involving
them are not. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and tsunamis (such as the disastrous one in the Indian Ocean in 2004) do not generally lead
to armed conflict. The American dust bowl in the 1930s, to take another example, caused plenty of deprivation but no civil war.
And while temperatures have been rising steadily in Africa during the past fifteen years, civil wars and war deaths have been
falling. Pressures on access to land and water can certainly cause local skirmishes, but a genuine war requires that
hostile forces be organized and armed, and that depends more on the influence of bad governments, closed
economies, and militant ideologies than on the sheer availability of land and water. Certainly any connection to terrorism is in the
imagination of the terror warriors: terrorists tend to be underemployed lower-middle-class men, not subsistence farmers. As for genocide, the Sudanese government finds it convenient to
blame violence in Darfur on desertification, distracting the world from its own role in tolerating or encouraging the ethnic cleansing.
In a regression analysis on
armed conflicts from 1980 to 1992, Theisen found that conflict was more likely if a country was poor, populous, politically
unstable, and abundant in oil, but not if it had suffered from droughts, water shortages, or mild land degradation.
(Severe land degradation did have a small effect.) Reviewing analyses that examined a large number (N) of countries rather than
cherry-picking one or two , he concluded, "those who foresee doom, because of the relationship between
resource scarcity and violent internal conflict, have very little support in the large-N literature ." Salehyan
adds that relatively inexpensive advances in water use and agriculture practices in the developing world can
yield massive increases in productivity with a constant or even shrinking amount of land, and that better
governance can mitigate the human costs of environmental damage, as it does in developed democracies. Since
the state of the environment is at most one ingredient in a mixture that depends far more on political and
social organization, resource wars are far from inevitable, even in a climate-changed world.
FBI
Analytics – this is stupid – we aren’t missin out on the best FBI employees just because they really like to get
high
New developments sure up grid stability
Kemp 12 -- Reuters market analyst (John, 4/5/12, "COLUMN-Phasors and blackouts on the U.S. power grid: John
Kemp," http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/05/column-smart-grid-idUSL6E8F59W120120405)
The hoped-for solution to grid instability is something called the North American SynchroPhasor Initiative (NASPI), which sounds like
something out of Star Trek but is in fact a collaboration between the federal government and industry to improve grid
monitoring and control by using modern communications technology. More than 500 phasor monitoring units
have so far been installed across the transmission network to take precise measurements of frequency, voltage and
other aspects of power quality on the grid up to 30 times per second (compared with once every four seconds using
conventional technology). Units are synchronised using GPS to enable users to build up a comprehensive real-time
picture of how power is flowing across the grid (www.naspi.org/Home.aspx and). It is a scaled-up version of the monitoring system
developed by the University of Tennessee's Power Information Technology Laboratory using inexpensive frequency monitors that plug into
ordinary wall sockets. Tennessee's FNET project provides highly aggregated data to the public via its website. The systems being
developed under NASPI provide a much finer level of detail that will reveal congestion and disturbances on
individual transmission lines and particular zones so that grid managers can act quickly to restore balance or
isolate failures ().
No risk of cyberattack and no impact if it does happen
Birch, 10/1/12 – former foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and the Baltimore Sun who has written
extensively on technology and public policy (Douglas, “Forget Revolution.” Foreign Policy.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/01/forget_revolution?page=full)
"That's a good example of what some kind of attacks would be like," he said. "You don't want to overestimate the risks. You don't want
somebody to be able to do this whenever they felt like it, which is the situation now. But this is not the end of the world." The question of how
seriously to take the threat of a cyber attack on critical infrastructure surfaced recently, after Congress rejected a White House measure to require
businesses to adopt stringent- new regulations to protect their computer networks from intrusions. The bill would have required industries to
report cyber security breaches, toughen criminal penalties against hacking and granted legal immunity to companies cooperating with government
investigations. Critics worried about regulatory overreach. But the potential cost to industry also seems to be a major factor in the bill's rejection.
A January study by Bloomberg reported that banks, utilities, and phone carriers would have to increase their spending on cyber security by a
factor of nine, to $45.3 billion a year, in order to protect themselves against 95 percent of cyber intrusions. Likewise, some of the bill's advocates
suspect that in the aftermath of a truly successful cyber attack, the government would have to bail the utilities out anyway. Joe Weiss, a cyber
security professional and an authority on industrial control systems like those used in the electric grid, argued that a well-prepared, sophisticated
cyber attack could have far more serious consequences than this summer's blackouts. "The reason we are so concerned is that cyber could take
out the grid for nine to 18 months," he said. "This isn't a one to five day outage. We're prepared for that. We can handle that." But pulling off a
cyber assault on that scale is no easy feat. Weiss agreed that hackers intent on inflicting this kind of long-term
interruption of power would need to use a tool capable of inflicting physical damage. And so far, the world has seen
only one such weapon: Stuxnet, which is believed to have been a joint military project of Israel and the United States. Ralph
Langner, a German expert on industrial-control system security, was among the first to discover that Stuxnet was specifically designed to attack
the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system (SCADA) at a single site: Iran's Natanz uranium-enrichment plant. The computer worm's
sophisticated programs, which infected the plant in 2009, caused about 1,000 of Natanz's 5,000 uranium-enrichment centrifuges to self-destruct
by accelerating their precision rotors beyond the speeds at which they were designed to operate. Professionals like Weiss and others warned
that Stuxnet was opening a Pandora's Box: Once it was unleashed on the world, they feared, it would become available to
hostile states, criminals, and terrorists who could adapt the code for their own nefarious purposes. But two years
after the discovery of Stuxnet, there are no reports of similar attacks against the United States. What has prevented the
emergence of such copycat viruses? A 2009 paper published by the University of California, Berkeley, may offer the answer. The report,
which was released a year before Stuxnet surfaced, found that in order to create a cyber weapon capable of crippling a specific
control system ---- like the ones operating the U.S. electric grid -- six coders might have to work for up to six
months to reverse engineer the targeted center's SCADA system. Even then, the report says, hackers likely would need
the help of someone with inside knowledge of how the network's machines were wired together to plan an effective
attack. "Every SCADA control center is configured differently, with different devices, running different
software/protocols," wrote Rose Tsang, the report's author. Professional hackers are in it for the money -- and it's a lot more
cost-efficient to search out vulnerabilities in widely-used computer programs like the Windows operating system, used by
banks and other affluent targets, than in one-of-a-kind SCADA systems linked to generators and switches. According to Pollard, only the
world's industrial nations have the means to use the Internet to attack utilities and major industries. But given the
integrated global economy, there is little incentive, short of armed conflict, for them to do so. "If you're a state that
has a number of U.S. T-bills in your treasury, you have an economic interest in the United States ," he said. "You're not
going to have an interest in mucking about with our infrastructure. " There is also the threat of retaliation. Last year, the
U.S. government reportedly issued a classified report on cyber strategy that said it could respond to a devastating
digital assault with traditional military force. The idea was that if a cyber attack caused death and destruction on the scale of a military
assault, the United States would reserve the right to respond with what the Pentagon likes to call "kinetic" weapons: missiles,
bombs, and bullets. An unnamed Pentagon official, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, summed up the policy in less diplomatic terms: "If you
shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks ." Deterrence is sometimes dismissed
as a toothless strategy against cyber attacks because hackers have such an easy time hiding in the anonymity of the Web. But investigators
typically come up with key suspects, if not smoking guns, following cyber intrusions and assaults -- the way suspicions
quickly focused on the United States and Israel after Stuxnet was discovered. And with the U.S. military's global reach, even terror
groups have to factor in potential retaliation when planning their operations.
there is literally zero risk of miscalculation or accidents
Quinlan 9 (Sir Michael Quinlan, Former Permanent Under-Secretary of State UK Ministry of Defense, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons:
Principles, Problems, Prospects, p. 63-69, The book reflects the author's experience across more than forty years in assessing and forming policy
about nuclear weapons, mostly at senior levels close to the centre both of British governmental decision-making and of NATO's development of
plans and deployments, with much interaction also with comparable levels of United States activity in the Pentagon and the State department)
There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many known accidents involving nuclear weapons, from
transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or accidentally dropping the weapons they carried
(in past days when such carriage was a frequent feature of readiness arrangements it no longer is). A few of these
accidents may have released into the nearby environment highly toxic material. None however has entailed a nuclear
detonation. Some commentators suggest that this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and
deployment over so many years. A more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience would however be
that the probability of any accident triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low . It might be further nested that the
mechanisms needed to set of such an explosion are technically demanding, and that in a large number of ways the past sixty years have seen
extensive improvements in safety arrangements for both the design and the handling of weapons. It is undoubtedly possible to see respects in
which, after the cold war, some of the factors bearing upon risk may be new or more adverse; but some are now plainly less so. The years
which the world has come through entirely without accidental or unauthorized detonation have included early
decades in which knowledge was sketchier, precautions were less developed, and weapon designs were less ultrasafe than they later became, as well as substantial periods in which weapon numbers were larger, deployments
immure widespread arid diverse, movements more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness
arrangements more tense. Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics
again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial steps in alert sequences for US
nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by indicators mistaken or misconstrued. In none of these
instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all near to nuclear launch—extraordinary good fortune again, critics have
suggested. But the rival and more logical inference from hundreds of events stretching over sixty years of
experience presents itself once more: that the probability of initial misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken
launch is remote. Precisely because any nuclear weapon processor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release
sequences have many steps, and human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To
convey that because a first step was prompted the world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild
hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game, that he was nearly
beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely offers any ready example of major war started by accident even
before the nuclear revolution imposed an order-of-magnitude increase of caution. In was occasion conjectured that nuclear
war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a
potential adversary. No such launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years. The probability of it is therefore very low. But even if it did
happen, the further hypothesis of it initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decision-makers, as
pages 63-4 have brought out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way belongs to
science fiction.
Lots of factors prevent great power conflict without hegemony
Fettweis 10 (Christopher J. Professor of Political Science at Tulane, Dangerous Times-The International Politics of
Great Power Peace, pg. 175-6)
If the only thing standing between the world and chaos is the US military presence, then an adjustment in grand strategy would be
exceptionally counter-productive. But it is worth recalling that none
of the other explanations for the decline of war
– nuclear weapons, complex economic interdependence, international and domestic political
institutions, evolution in ideas and norms – necessitate an activist America to maintain their
validity. Were American to become more restrained, nuclear weapons would still affect the
calculations of the would be aggressor; the process of globalization would continue, deepening the
complexity of economic interdependence; the United Nations could still deploy peacekeepers where necessary; and
democracy would not shrivel where it currently exists. More importantly, the idea that war is a
worthwhile way to resolve conflict would have no reason to return. As was argued in chapter 2, normative
evolution is typically unidirectional. Strategic restraint in such a world be virtually risk free.
-- Heg is resilient
Wohlforth 7 (William, Professor of Government – Dartmouth College, “Unipolar Stability”, Harvard International
Review, Spring, http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/1611/3/)
US military forces are stretched thin, its budget and trade deficits are high, and the country continues to finance its profligate ways by borrowing
from abroad—notably from the Chinese government. These developments have prompted many analysts to warn that the United
States suffers from “imperial overstretch.” And if US power is overstretched now, the argument goes, unipolarity can hardly be
sustainable for long. The problem with this argument is that it fails to distinguish between actual and latent power. One must be careful to take
into account both the level of resources that can be mobilized and the degree to which a government actually tries to mobilize them. And how
much a government asks of its public is partly a function of the severity of the challenges that it faces. Indeed, one can never know for sure what
a state is capable of until it has been seriously challenged. Yale historian Paul Kennedy coined the term “imperial overstretch” to describe the
situation in which a state’s actual and latent capabilities cannot possibly match its foreign policy commitments. This situation should be
contrasted with what might be termed “self-inflicted overstretch”—a situation in which a state lacks the sufficient resources to meet its current
foreign policy commitments in the short term, but has untapped latent power and readily available policy choices that it can use to draw on this
power. This is arguably the situation that the United States is in today. But the US government has not attempted to extract more
resources from its population to meet its foreign policy commitments. Instead, it has moved strongly in the opposite direction by
slashing personal and corporate tax rates. Although it is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and claims to be fighting a global “war”
on terrorism, the United States is not acting like a country under intense international pressure. Aside from the volunteer
servicemen and women and their families, US citizens have not been asked to make sacrifices for the sake of national prosperity and
security. The country could clearly devote a greater proportion of its economy to military spending: today it spends
only about 4 percent of its GDP on the military, as compared to 7 to 14 percent during the peak years of the Cold War. It could
also spend its military budget more efficiently, shifting resources from expensive weapons systems to boots on the
ground. Even more radically, it could reinstitute military conscription, shifting resources from pay and benefits to training and
equipping more soldiers. On the economic front, it could raise taxes in a number of ways, notably on fossil fuels, to put its
fiscal house back in order. No one knows for sure what would happen if a US president undertook such drastic measures, but there
is nothing in economics, political science, or history to suggest that such policies would be any less likely to succeed
than China is to continue to grow rapidly for decades. Most of those who study US politics would argue that the likelihood and
potential success of such power-generating policies depends on public support, which is a function of the public’s perception
of a threat. And as unnerving as terrorism is, there is nothing like the threat of another hostile power rising up in opposition to
the United States for mobilizing public support. With latent power in the picture, it becomes clear that unipolarity
might have more built-in self-reinforcing mechanisms than many analysts realize. It is often noted that the rise of a peer
competitor to the United States might be thwarted by the counterbalancing actions of neighboring powers. For example, China’s rise might push
India and Japan closer to the United States—indeed, this has already happened to some extent. There is also the strong possibility that a peer
rival that comes to be seen as a threat would create strong incentives for the United States to end its self-inflicted
overstretch and tap potentially large wellsprings of latent power.
2NC – CP, Case
cp
Solvency – George Mason
CP solves the whole case -FBI – this is obvious -- advantage is all about drug-testing -- that's CX -- the FBI could expand its applicant pool by
just not testing -- CP does that -- that's the first two cards of their adv.
Cartels -- counter-intuitive, but we do -- state legalization that your Ferner card references will cut off a lot of their
revenue -- decrim allows for a domestic market to develop
Decriminalization is sufficient to solve the black market and eliminate illegal profit
Duke 9 (Stephen – Professor of Law, Yale Law School, “Drugs: To Legalize or Not”, 4/25,
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124061360462654683)
Marijuana presents the strongest case for this approach. According to some estimates, marijuana comprises about 70% of
the illegal product distributed by the Mexican cartels. Marijuana will grow anywhere. If the threat of criminal prosecution
and forfeitures did not deter American marijuana farmers, America's entire supply of that drug would be homegrown. If we taxed the marijuana agribusiness at rates similar to that for tobacco and alcohol, we would raise about $10 billion in taxes per
year and would save another $10 billion we now spend on law enforcement and imprisoning marijuana users and distributors. Even with
popular support, legalizing and regulating the distribution of marijuana in the U.S. would be neither easy nor quick.
While imposing its prohibitionist will on the rest of the world for nearly a century, the U.S. has created a network of
treaties and international agreements requiring drug prohibition. Those agreements would have to be revised. A
sensible intermediate step would be to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana and to exercise
benign neglect of American marijuana growers. Doing both would puncture the market for imports from Mexico
and elsewhere and would eliminate much of the profit that fuels the internecine warfare in Mexico.
Also accesses their law enforcement i/l -- Hesson card says DEA is spending too much time prosecuting small
crimes -- decriminalizing possession allows them to shift their focus to production and districbution and address
cartels.
Diminishes drug cartel strength
Vogt-Erickson 14 (Jennifer, “Decriminalizing marijuana good for society”, 1/14,
http://www.albertleatribune.com/2014/01/decriminalizing-marijuana-good-for-society/)
It’s also unhealthy for government when generally law-abiding people openly break laws; this disrespect was one of the reasons for ending
prohibition of alcohol. Laws haven’t been enforced equally either — white people are a lot less likely to be arrested or go
to jail for pot than black or Hispanic people are, even though rates of use are similar. Since the curtain has been pulled back, the
government should move forward with decriminalization. It’s the most enforceable course of action and the just thing to do. It’s humane not
only for people in the U.S. who are tangled in the criminal justice system due to pot, but also for people in Mexico ,
where an estimated 80,000-100,000 people have been killed or disappeared in connection to the drug war the country
has been fighting since 2006. It’s a staggering number, and in the vast majority of those deaths, no one has been prosecuted or even
charged. Parts
of the country are essentially lawless or run de facto by drug cartels. These drug cartels draw most of
their money from the drug trade in the U.S., and the largest part of that business is smuggling marijuana .
Decriminalizing marijuana will likely diminish the power of the cartels.
Politics – Marihuana – 1NC
Decriminalization avoids intense political backlash
Lindeen 10 (Lance – Executive Articles Editor, Indiana Law Journal, “Keep Off the Grass!: An Alternative
Approach to the Gun Control Debate”, 2010, 85 Ind. L.J. 1659, lexis)
As to specific drugs and policies, this recommendation offers a first step: select marijuana as the sole drug for decriminalization ,
at least in the short term. In the long term, other narcotics such as cocaine, ecstasy, and heroin may be considered. However, the
decriminalization of marijuana would serve as the benchmark for success or failure of administering decriminalization and
legalization of other narcotics. As a policy experiment, the decriminalization of marijuana will probably not lead to a complete cessation of drugrelated gun violence; only a broad legalization program including such drugs as heroin, cocaine, and ecstasy will offer the possibility of achieving
that objective. As a realistic political goal , however, decriminalization of marijuana would provide guidance and a
gradual approach-legally, economically, and socially-to consider more comprehensive legalization efforts. n200 As an eventual next step, this
recommendation proposes that individual states legalize, cultivate, and distribute marijuana through existing outlets used to retail liquor. By
offering the sale of marijuana through these outlets, the legal sales of the drug would overlap with the tax structure and regulations in place for
the sale of liquor. Obviously, there would be some difficulty in reducing the demand for marijuana during hours or days when these outlets were
closed. However, any person or entity that sold illegal marijuana during these "off hours" would also be forced to compete with the state supply
of marijuana during liquor store operating hours. Only those individuals with premium quality illegal drugs or particularly low costs could
compete against the state around the clock if the state supply is sold at a market rate. This Comment does not argue for immediate
legalization of marijuana (or any current controlled substance) based on the current social n201 and political n202 climate . A
[*1690] broad call for drug legalization would likely engender intense, varied opposition n203 and imperil the
effort to recalibrate the approach to gun violence by decriminalizing a single, widely available drug. Instead, this Comment argues that
decriminalization of marijuana possession and use will free scarce state resources n204 and set a precedent for
relaxing drug prohibition in an increasingly receptive environment n205 without incurring a counterproductive
social and political backlash, particularly to the negative externalities of drug use.
Decriminalization solves and avoids political opposition
Graham 1 (Dana – J.D. Candidate, Loyola Law School, “Decriminalization of Marijuana: An Analysis of the Laws
in the United States and the Netherlands and Suggestions for Reform”, 2001, 23 Loy. L.A. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev.
297, lexis)
A. Decriminalization Due to the variety of issues and opinions arising out of marijuana cases, the idea of reforming
marijuana laws remains present. Advocates of decriminalization frequently suggest alternative laws, arguing that current
laws impose harsh penalties even for simple possession of the drug. n210 Some suggestions focus on rehabilitative efforts, similar to the systems
in the Netherlands [*321] and other European countries, n211 while others urge the government to regulate marijuana like alcohol and tobacco.
n212 The primary goal of all of the alternatives is to either remove or decrease the penalties for marijuana possession and use. n213 Proponents
of alternative laws argue that because marijuana is not as dangerous as drugs like cocaine or heroin, those who simply use marijuana for personal
pleasure should not be punished. n214 One such vocal proponent for reform is NORML, a non-profit public interest group representing the
interests of Americans who oppose marijuana prohibition. n215 The organization supports both legalization and decriminalization of marijuana.
n216 Legalization of marijuana involves "the development of a legally controlled market ... where consumers could
buy marijuana for personal use from a safe, legal source ." n217 Due to political opposition to marijuana use and the
widespread belief that marijuana is extremely harmful, legalization will probably never occur. n218
Decriminalization, however, may be a viable alternative . n219 The decriminalization model focuses on "the
removal of all penalties for the private possession and responsible use of marijuana by adults, cultivation for
personal use, and the casual nonprofit transfers of small amounts." n220 Proponents of decriminalization insist that it will
greatly reduce the harm caused by marijuana prohibition by protecting millions of consumers from the threat of arrest
and jail; casual users would no longer be arrested, although commercial sellers would be. n221 Decriminalization proponents point to
the Netherlands' drug policies when arguing that decriminalization is effective and does [*322] not increase drug use. n222
"In the Netherlands, marijuana is legal and minimal experimentation by teenagers illustrates that legalization does not necessarily cause increased
use." n223 When the Dutch government legalized marijuana for personal consumption while maintaining laws
against possession and sale of large quantities, the level of marijuana use actually declined. n224
Impact – 2NC
Prolif causes nuclear wars around the world --- it intensifies regional instability and causes tension ripe to escalate -- arms races will cause miscalculation and war --- faith in international agreements is critical to prevent this – that’s
Muller
Irrationality and ongoing wars ensure conflict --- goes global and nuclear
Taylor 1 (Theodore, Chair – NOVA, Former Nuclear Weapons Designer and Former Deputy Director – Defense
Nuclear Agency, “Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons”, Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking, http://www-ee.stanf
ord.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/chapters/taylor.html)
Nuclear proliferation - be it among nations or terrorists - greatly increases the chance of nuclear violence on a scale
that would be intolerable. Proliferation increases the chance that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of
irrational people, either suicidal or with no concern for the fate of the world. Irrational or outright psychotic leaders
of military factions or terrorist groups might decide to use a few nuclear weapons under their control to stimulate a
global nuclear war, as an act of vengeance against humanity as a whole. Countless scenarios of this type can be
constructed. Limited nuclear wars between countries with small numbers of nuclear weapons could escalate into
major nuclear wars between superpowers. For example, a nation in an advanced stage of "latent proliferation,"
finding itself losing a nonnuclear war, might complete the transition to deliverable nuclear weapons and, in
desperation, use them. If that should happen in a region, such as the Middle East, where major superpower interests
are at stake, the small nuclear war could easily escalate into a global nuclear war.
U – Treaty Compliance High – 2NC
Treaty compliance is high – state and international actions currently don’t violate it
Jelsma 14 (Martin – coordinates the Drugs & Democracy programme at the Transnational Institute , “Reforming the
global drug-control system: The stakes for Washington”, 7/11, http://www.tni.org/article/reforming-global-drugcontrol-system-stakes-washington)
For Washington as well as the UN drug control bureaucracy, this is a nightmare scenario. Over the past century, the U nited S tates has
invested more effort than any other nation to influence the design of the global control regime and enforce its
almost universal adherence . Opening the debate now risks undermining the legal instrument the U nited S tates has
used so often to coerce other countries to operate in accordance with its own principles. The State Department has
initiated an international campaign, similar to its previous effort to marshal a "group of friends of the conventions" to object
to Bolivia’s efforts on coca leaf. The new narrative underscores the importance of "defending the integrity of the three
conventions", while allowing more flexible interpretations and permitting "some degree of national differentiation". 1 Washington
proposes to allow more flexibility with regard to constitutional discretion on how to allocate scarce resources for
treaty implementation. This interpretation, until now rejected by the INCB, forms the basis for the U.S. argument that its
federal decision not to intervene in states’ regulation of cannabis is in compliance with the UN conventions. In
exchange for international acceptance of this narrative, Washington appears willing to let Uruguay and others regulate cannabis unhindered as
well. This nascent U.S. leniency, however, does not extend to areas such as Bolivia’s coca policy or harm reduction
measures such as drug consumption rooms.
No thumpers – all international actions have been soft challenges like decriminalization
NYCB 12 (New York City Bar, “The International Drug Control Treaties: How Important Are They to US Drug
Reform?”, 2012, http://www2.nycbar.org/pdf/report/uploads/3_20072283-InternationalDrugControlTreaties.pdf)
Instead of withdrawing from or disregarding their obligations under the treaties, many countries have reacted over
the years by pushing the outer limits of what is technically allowable, or by broadly interpreting the language of the treaties. The
treaties themselves allow a certain amount of flexibility in their interpretation. For example, while the 1988 Convention requires
that countries make possession for personal consumption a criminal violation, it does not specify what the punishment must be. Portugal’s
― decriminalization‖ laws take advantage of this grey area and dictate that offenders are diverted to education classes, treatment
sessions, or are given a fine. Holland continues to maintain laws on its books criminalizing possession of marijuana, but exercises a policy of non
- enforcement when it comes to marijuana sold in its famous ―coffee houses.‖ In the U.S., m any argue that ―medical use‖ is not defined in the
treaties and therefore, medical marijuana is technically allowed (the INCB and the DEA do not share this view). These measures — non -
enforcement, de criminalization/depenalization, and medicalization — known as ―soft ‖ challenges to the treaties ,
skirt the problem by simply limiting compliance to ―technical compliance‖ in law, while allowing for de facto policies more in keeping
with the desired policy change within each country . Until recently, the only challenges to the treaties have been ―soft‖
challenges. It would seem that nations have gone to great pains to stay within technical compliance as much as
possible while still enjoying more liberal drug control environment within their own borders
Link – 2NC – Legalization Violates
Legalization is impermissible under international law
Bewley-Taylor and Jelsma 12 (David and Martin, “The UN drug control conventions: The Limits of Latitude “,
2012, March, Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies N r . 1 8,
http://www.grea.ch/sites/default/files/dlr18_0.pdf)
IMPERMISSIBLE POLICY OPTIONS WITHIN THE CURRENT TREATY FRAMEWORK Regulated
markets for non - medical purposes As discussed above, there remains a certain amount of debate and legal uncertainty
re - garding the flexibility of some aspects of the conventions. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement on the
rigidity of some of its other provisions. For example, it is diffi - cult to find a flexible interpretation of the obligation laid out in the
Single Convention that ‘Coca leaf chewing must be abolished’ within 25 years (article 49, the deadline exp ired in December 1989). It was due to
this inflexibility on the issue of coca chew - ing that the Plurinational State of Bolivia sought to amend the treaty. After this at - tempt failed,
Bolivia felt obliged – on June 29 th , 2011 – to denounce the Convention; a procedure that came to effect on the 1 st of January 2012. A few days
before that, Bo - livia presented the reservation it requires to reconcile its various national and interna - tional legal obligations before becoming a
full treaty member again. B olivia res erves the right to allow traditional coca leaf chew ing in its territory and the consump - tion and use of the
coca leaf in its natural state in general, as well as the cultivation, trade and possession of the coca leaf to the extent necessary for these lici t
purposes. The reservation will be accepted unless one - third or more of the parties object to it within a one year period. The Bolivian decision has
been strongly con demned by the INCB and has generated concern about setting a precedent that other count ries might follow for resolving their
own legal tensions with the drug con - trol Conven tions, for example on cannabis policy. 8 4 The INCB called on t he interna - tional commu
nity to ‘not accept any ap - proach whereby Governments use the mechanism of de nuncia tion and re - acces - sion with reservation, in order to
free them selves from the obligation to im ple - ment certain treaty provisions. Such ap - proach would undermine the integrity of the global drug
control system’, warning Bolivia ‘to consider very seriousl y all the implications of its actions in this regard’. 8 5 There is also very limited room
to relax what are deemed to be trafficking and commercial supply related offences. Only ‘in appropriate cases of a minor nature the Parties may
provide, as alternative s to con - viction or punishment, measures such as education, rehabilitation or social reinte - gration, as well as, when the
offender is a drug abuser, treatment and aftercare’ (1988 Convention, article 3, §4, c). The earlier treaties had allowed such alterna tives for ‘drug
abusers’, but the 1988 Convention did significantly ‘widen the scope of appli - cation to drug offenders in general, whether drug abusers or not.’
8 6 The fact that the definition of what constitutes a ‘minor nature’ is left to the discretion of national authorities, leaves considerable room for
manoeuvre to apply principles of proportionality in national sentencing guidelines. Yet, while punishment may be moderated or even avoided for
minor of - fences, there is no doubt that production and supply for non - medical and non - scientific purposes have to
be criminalized and that such offences, by default, are to be regarded as grave and therefore be met with sanctions of imprisonment and
confisca - tion. Regardless of the inherent ambiguity within and s ubjective interpretation of the con - ventions, all
Parties are required to remain true to the UN drug treaties in line with the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties. As alluded to above, among other things this obliges Parties to interpret trea - tie s in good faith and respect the ‘object and purpose’
of the conventions. 8 7 These find their most explicit expression within article 4 (c) of the Single Convention, which determines its overarching
philoso - phy and normative character and thus, as its bedroc k instrument, of the entire treaty system itself. It should be recalled that as a
Legislative Reform of Drug Policies | 17 ‘General Obligation,’ the article obliges sig - natory nations, ‘to limit exclusively to medical and
scientific purposes the pro - duction, manufacture, export, import, distribut ion of, trade in, use and possession of drugs.’ According to both
the spirit and the letter of the conventions, while permitted to ‘soften’ the criminal sanction requirements in
various ways , governing authorities can - not create a legally regulated market , in - cluding the supply, production,
manufac - ture or sale of presently controlled drugs, for non - medical and non - scientific, or put another way
recreational, purposes. Pro - scriptions laid out in the conventions clearly prevent authorities from creating a
legal market for cannabis or any other cur - rently scheduled drug along the lines of models developed for alcohol and to - bacco. 8
Further restrictions on movement towards the creation of a regulated market for can - nabis stem from its status
within the Singl e Convention. Like coca leaf and opium poppy, as well as being listed within the Convention’s
schedules, cannabis is men - tioned specifically in several articles. While rescheduling a substance would generate more policy
space on the consumption side, it wo uld not immediately alleviate restrictions in relation to cultivation. Also amendments of certain articles
would be required to generate more latitude to ex - periment with models of legal regulation.
Implicates US diplomacy and forces reevaluation of the entire international drug system
Murray et al. 11 (Chad – Elliott School of International Affairs, “Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and
Marijuana: The Potential Effects of U.S. Legalization”, 2011,
https://elliott.gwu.edu/sites/elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/acad/lahs/mexico-marijuana-071111.pdf)
The 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances presents a further
stumblin g block to any potential efforts to federally legalize marijuana . This i s because it specifically targets, in its Article
3, consumers of marijuana and other “Psychotropic Substances” and mandates all parties of the treaty to adopt domestic legis lation that, “
establishes as criminal offenses ... [ the] production, manufacture...dist ribution sale” and “possession or purchase of any narcotic drug or
Psychotropic Substance.” 8 Thus , marijuana legalization on the national level would force the U nited S tates to reevaluate and
renegotiate its entire international drug policy framework, and would have far reaching imp lications on U.S.
diplomacy beyond the realm of drug policy . This potential fallout is among the more prominent reasons why the White House and
Congress have largely been so unwilling to even consider federal legalization of mari juana.
Link – US is Key – 2NC
US backing is key to effective UN drug enforcement – the plan represents a massive reversal of prohibition
Bewley-Taylor 4 (David R. – Senior Lecturer, Department of American Studies, University of Wales Swansea,
“Harm reduction and the global drug control regime: contemporary problems and future prospects”, Drug and
Alcohol Review, Vol 23, Galileo)
Deviation from the spirit of the regime becomes more problematic, however, when we consider our second factor, the
role of the U nited S tates. As is well known, the U nited S tates has been an important player in transnational drug control since
it initiated the first international meeting on drugs in Shanghia in 1909. By applying an archaeological approach to regime theory it is
possible to see how contemporary international regimes largely reflect the views of dominant states at the time of founding [13]. To be sure, the
prominence of the zero-tolerance philosophy within the current drug control regime owes much to prolonged and
energetic US endeavour , particularly after the acquisi- tion of superpower status in 1945. Accordingly, Washington has played a
key role in the creation of the UN drug control apparatus and the formulation of the Single Convention and its sister treaties [14].
Although sometimes subordinating international drug control to broader foreign policy concerns during the Cold War, and indeed since 11
September 2001 to the War on Terrorism, the United States has consistently sought to defend the regime it worked so hard to create. The
practice of linking or ‘nesting’ drug control with US co-operation in other, usually economic, issue areas can be a serious
consideration for many states. By exploiting its strength on the international stage, the U nited S tates can be seen in
many ways then to act as a global enforcer for prohibition orientated sectors within the United Nations, especially the INCB;
thus arguably providing the United Nations with the enforcement powers that it does not itself possess.
case
More Cartels
Drugs aren’t the root cause of Mexican instability – lack of strong political institutions outweighs
Hope 14 (Alejandro, security policy analyst at IMCO, a Mexico City research organization and former intelligence
officer, “Legal U.S. Pot Won’t Bring Peace to Mexico,” Bloomberg, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/201401-21/legal-u-s-pot-won-t-bring-peace-to-mexico)
Since Jan. 1, Colorado has had a legal marijuana market. The same will soon be true in Washington State, once retail licenses are issued. Other
states, such as California and Oregon, will likely follow suit over the next three years. So does this creeping legalization of marijuana
in the U.S. spell doom for the Mexican drug cartels? Not quite . The illegal marijuana trade provides Mexican organized crime
with about $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year. That’s not chump change, but according to a number of estimates, it represents no more
than a third of gross drug export revenue. Cocaine is still the cartels’ biggest money-maker and the revenue accruing
from heroin and methamphetamine aren’t trivial. Moreover, Mexican gangs also obtain income from extortion,
kidnapping, theft and various other types of illegal trafficking. Losing the marijuana trade would be a blow to their
finances, but it certainly wouldn’t put them out of business. But surely Mexico would experience less violence if marijuana was
legal? Yes, to some extent, but the decline wouldn’t be sufficient to radically alter the country’s security outlook. In all
likelihood, marijuana production and marijuana-related violence are highly correlated geographically. Marijuana
output is concentrated in five states (Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa, Michoacan and Guerrero) that accounted for approximately a third of
all homicides committed in Mexico in 2012. Assuming improbably that half of all murders in those areas were marijuana-related, we can estimate
that the full elimination of the illegal marijuana trade would reduce Mexico’s homicide rate to 18 per 100,000
inhabitants from 22 -- still about four times the U.S. rate. Well, but couldn’t the Mexican government gain a peace dividend by
redirecting some resources from marijuana prohibition to other law enforcement objectives? Yes, but the effect would probably be modest. Only
4 percent of all Mexican prison inmates are serving time exclusively for marijuana-related crimes. In 2012, drug offenses represented less than 2
percent of all crime reports in the country. When it comes to only federal crimes (7 percent of the total), the share of drug offenses rises to 20
percent, but that percentage has been declining since 2007. So the legalization of marijuana won’t free up a huge trove of
resources to be redeployed against predatory crime. Whatever the legal status of marijuana, Mexico needs to
tackle its many institutional malfunctions. Its police forces are underpaid, undertrained, under motivated and
deeply vulnerable to corruption and intimidation. Its criminal justice system is painfully slow, notoriously inefficient
and deeply unfair. Even with almost universal impunity, prisons are overflowing and mostly ruled by the inmates
themselves. Changing that reality will take many years. Some reforms are under way, some are barely off the
ground. As a result of a 2008 constitutional reform, criminal courts are being transformed, but progress across states has been uneven. With a
couple of local exceptions, police reform has yet to find political traction. The federal Attorney General’s Office is set to become an independent
body, but not before 2018. The reformist zeal that President Enrique Pena Nieto has shown in other policy areas (education, energy,
telecommunications) is absent in security and justice. Security policy remains reactive, driven more by political considerations than by strategic
design. And results have been mixed at best: Homicides declined moderately in 2013, but both kidnapping and extortion reached record levels.
Marijuana legalization won’t alter that dynamic. In the final analysis, Mexico doesn’t have a drug problem, much less a marijuana
problem: It has a state capacity problem. That is, its institutions are too weak to protect the life, liberty and
property of its citizens. Even if drug trafficking might very well decline in the future, in the absence of stronger
institutions, something equally nefarious will replace it.
Instability is inevitable
Blanco, 09 (Long Live Democracy: The Determinants of Political Instability in Latin America,
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.ou.edu/cas/econ/wppdf/instabilityinla%2520rg.pdf&embedded=true
&chrome=true)
Ranked as the third most unstable region in the world in the post-war era, political instability has been a
pervasive problem in Latin America. 1 In our sample of 18 Latin American countries from 1971-2000, there were 20
coups d’etat, 451 political assassinations, 217 riots, and 113 crises that threatened to bring down the sitting
government. 2 Only three Latin American countries were consistently democratic over the thirty year period:
Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela. 3 All of the rest of the countries switched from a democracy to an
autocracy (or vice versa) at least once. In sum, political instability is a persistent and pernicious problem in the
region. 4 Given the many studies that document the negative relationship between instability and capital
accumulation (Alesina & Perotti (1996); Alesina et.al. (1996)), it is likely that this instability has hampered
economic development in the region. In this paper, we seek to uncover the factors behind this instability. In a
In this paper we analyze the determinants of political instability in a panel of 18 Latin American countries
from 1971 to 2000. Not only is Latin America an interesting region to study because of it’s unusually
persistent problems with instability, but focusing on a small sample helps us to avoid potential problems with
pooling data from a large set of very different countries. 5 We find three main interesting results: First, regime
type is a significant determinant of instability in the area. Countries with higher democracy scores also have lower
average political instability, which indicates that recent moves to increased democracy in the region may bring
about less instability in the future. This result is tempered though by our finding that long lived democracies
have a greater chance of experiencing instability than equally long lived autocracies. Second, we find that
income inequality and ethnic fractionalization are both important factors behind instability. Countries with low (or
high) levels of inequality have less average instability than countries with average levels of inequality, and ethnic
fractionalization has a non linear effect on political instability. Increases in ethnic fractionalization lower instability
until a certain level of diversity, at which point any increases in diversity are associated with higher political
instability. Third, we find that many of the macroeconomic variables included in our estimation (including the
level and standard deviation of inflation and government budget deficit) are only weakly significant at best.
Only lagged values of trade openness and investment are helpful in explaining current political instability.
Their impact is irresponsible fearmongering – there is NO capacity for terrorists to acquire and execute a nuclear
attack
Mueller and Stewart 12 [John Mueller is Senior Research Scientist at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and Adjunct
Professor in the Department of Political Science, both at Ohio State University, and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Mark
G. Stewart is Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow and Professor and Director at the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and
Reliability at the University of Newcastle in Australia, “The Terrorism Delusion”, International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Summer 2012), pp. 81–
110, Chetan]
It seems increasingly likely that the official and popular reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been
substantially deluded —massively disproportionate to the threat that al-Qaida has ever actually presented either as an
international menace or as an inspiration or model to homegrown amateurs. Applying the extensive datasets on terrorism that have been
generated over the last decades, we conclude that the chances of an American perishing at the hands of a terrorist at present rates is one in 3.5
million per year—well within the range of what risk analysts hold to be “acceptable risk.”40 Yet, despite the importance of responsibly
communicating risk and despite the costs of irresponsible fearmongering, just about the only official who has ever openly put the threat
presented by terrorism in some sort of context is New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who in 2007 pointed out that people should “get a
life” and that they have a greater chance of being hit by lightning than of being a victim of terrorism—an observation that
may be a bit off the mark but is roughly accurate.41 (It might be noted that, despite this unorthodox outburst, Bloomberg still managed to be reelected two years later.) Indeed, much of the reaction to the September 11 attacks calls to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of delusion, “The
Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which con artists convince the emperor’s court that they can weave stuffs of the most beautiful colors and elaborate
patterns from the delicate silk and purest gold thread they are given. These stuffs, they further convincingly explain, have the property of
remaining invisible to anyone who is unusually stupid or unfit for office. The emperor finds this quite appealing because not only will he have
splendid new clothes, but he will be able to discover which of his officials are unfit for their posts—or in today’s terms, have lost their
effectiveness. His courtiers, then, have great professional incentive to proclaim the stuffs on the loom to be absolutely magnificent even while
mentally justifying this conclusion with the equivalent of “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Unlike the emperor’s new clothes,
terrorism does of course exist. Much of the reaction to the threat, however, has a distinctly delusionary quality. In
Carle’s view, for example, the CIA has been “spinning in self-referential circles” in which “our premises were flawed, our facts used to fit
our premises, our premises determined, and our fears justified our operational actions, in a self-contained process that arrived at
a conclusion dramatically at odds with the facts.” The process “projected evil actions where there was, more often, muddled indirect
and unavoidable complicity, or not much at all.” These “delusional ratiocinations,” he further observes, “were all sincerely, ardently held to have
constituted a rigorous, rational process to identify terrorist threats” in which “the avalanche of reporting confirms its validity by its quantity,” in
which there is a tendency to “reject incongruous or contradictory facts as erroneous, because they do not conform to accepted reality,” and in
which potential dissenters are not-so-subtly reminded of career dangers: “Say what you want at meetings. It’s your decision. But you are doing
yourself no favors.”42 Consider in this context the alarming and profoundly imaginary estimates of U.S. intelligence agencies in the year after the
September 11 attacks that the number of trained al-Qaida operatives in the United States was between 2,000 and 5,000.43 Terrorist cells, they
told reporters, were “embedded in most U.S. cities with sizable Islamic communities,” usually in the “run-down sections,” and were “up and
active” because electronic intercepts had found some of them to be “talking to each other.”44 Another account relayed the view of “experts” that
Osama bin Laden was ready to unleash an “11,000 strong terrorist army” operating in more than sixty countries “controlled by a Mr. Big who is
based in Europe,” but that intelligence had “no idea where thousands of these men are.”45 Similarly, FBI Director Robert Mueller assured
the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 11, 2003, that, although his agency had yet to identify even one al-Qaida
cell in the United States, “I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing, ” a sentence rendered in bold lettering in his
prepared text. Moreover, he claimed that such unidentified entities presented “the greatest threat,” had “developed a support
infrastructure” in the country, and had achieved both the “ability” and the “intent” to inflict “signi ficant casualties in the US with little
warning.”46 Over the course of time, such essentially delusionary thinking has been internalized and institutionalized in
a great many ways. For example, an extrapolation of delusionary proportions is evident in the common observation
that, because terrorists were able, mostly by thuggish means, to crash airplanes into buildings, they might therefore
be able to construct a nuclear bomb. Brian Jenkins has run an internet search to discover how often variants of the term “al-Qaida”
appeared within ten words of “nuclear.” There were only seven hits in 1999 and eleven in 2000, but the number soared to 1,742 in 2001 and to
2,931 in 2002.47 By 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was assuring a congressional committee that what keeps every senior government
leader awake at night is “the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear.”48 Few of the sleepless, it
seems, found much solace in the fact that an al-Qaida computer seized in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated that the group’s budget for research on
weapons of mass destruction (almost all of it focused on primitive chemical weapons work) was $2,000 to $4,000.49 In the wake of the
killing of Osama bin Laden, officials now have many more al-Qaida computers, and nothing in their content appears
to suggest that the group had the time or inclination, let alone the money, to set up and staff a uranium-seizing
operation, as well as a fancy, super-high-technology facility to fabricate a bomb. This is a process that requires
trusting corrupted foreign collaborators and other criminals, obtaining and transporting highly guarded material,
setting up a machine shop staffed with top scientists and technicians, and rolling the heavy, cumbersome, and
untested finished product into position to be detonated by a skilled crew—all while attracting no attention from
outsiders.50 If the miscreants in the American cases have been unable to create and set off even the simplest conventional bombs, it stands to
reason that none of them were very close to creating, or having anything to do with, nuclear weapons—or for that
matter biological, radiological, or chemical ones. In fact, with perhaps one exception, none seems to have even dreamed
of the prospect; and the exception is José Padilla (case 2), who apparently mused at one point about creating a dirty bomb—a device that
would disperse radiation—or even possibly an atomic one. His idea about isotope separation was to put uranium into a pail and then to make
himself into a human centrifuge by swinging the pail around in great arcs.51 Even if a weapon were made abroad and then brought
into the United States, its detonation would require individuals in-country with the capacity to receive and handle
the complicated weapons and then to set them off. Thus far, the talent pool appears, to put mildly, very thin.
New tech and adaption solve food shortages
Michaels 11 Patrick Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the CATO Institute. " Global Warming
and Global Food Security," June 30, CATO, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/global-warming-globalfood-security
While doing my dissertation I learned a few things about world crops. Serial adoption of new technologies produces a nearly constant
increase in yields. Greater fertilizer application, improved response to fertilizer, better tractor technology, better
tillage practices, old-fashioned genetic selection, and new-fashioned genetic engineering all conspire to raise
yields, year after year.¶ Weather and climate have something to do with yields, too. Seasonal rainfall can vary a
lot from year-to-year. That's "weather." If dry years become dry decades (that's "climate") farmers will switch
from corn to grain sorghum, or, where possible, wheat. Breeders and scientists will continue to develop more
water-efficient plants and agricultural technologies, such as no-till production.¶ Adaptation even applies to the
home garden. The tomato variety "heat wave" sets fruit at higher temperatures than traditional cultivars.¶ However, Gillis claims that "[t]he rapid growth in farm output that
defined the late 20th century has slowed" because of global warming.¶ His own figures show this is wrong. The increasing trend in world crop yields from
1960 to 1980 is exactly the same as from 1980 to 2010. And per capita grain production is rising, not falling.
2NC Cartels Solvency
We have the best stats
Kilmer 13 (Beau, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, "Marijuana Legalization Wouldn’t End
Drug Crime in Mexico," http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/05/22/how-can-marijuana-be-soldsafely/why-marijuana-legalization-wouldnt-end-drug-crime)
We don’t expect the passage of legalization in a few states to significantly affect demand for Mexican marijuana.
But what would happen to Mexican drug trafficking organizations if many states legalized marijuana or if there were
national legalization? These drug trafficking organizations do more than export drugs to the United States. Indeed,
they sell drugs within Mexico and generate revenue from extortion, kidnapping and theft. We estimated that
exporting drugs to the U.S. earned these organizations $6 billion to $8 billion in 2008, of which 15 to 26 percent
came from marijuana (the rest was from cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine). While marijuana’s share of drug
export revenue has most likely grown in the past five years, it is still nowhere near the mythical 60 percent figure
sometimes cited. Smuggling marijuana into the U.S. is not the main revenue source for most of these
organizations.
More FBI
there is literally zero risk of miscalculation or accidents
Quinlan 9 (Sir Michael Quinlan, Former Permanent Under-Secretary of State UK Ministry of Defense, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons:
Principles, Problems, Prospects, p. 63-69, The book reflects the author's experience across more than forty years in assessing and forming policy
about nuclear weapons, mostly at senior levels close to the centre both of British governmental decision-making and of NATO's development of
plans and deployments, with much interaction also with comparable levels of United States activity in the Pentagon and the State department)
There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many known accidents involving nuclear weapons, from
transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or accidentally dropping the weapons they carried
(in past days when such carriage was a frequent feature of readiness arrangements it no longer is). A few of these
accidents may have released into the nearby environment highly toxic material. None however has entailed a nuclear
detonation. Some commentators suggest that this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and
deployment over so many years. A more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience would however be
that the probability of any accident triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low . It might be further nested that the
mechanisms needed to set of such an explosion are technically demanding, and that in a large number of ways the past sixty years have seen
extensive improvements in safety arrangements for both the design and the handling of weapons. It is undoubtedly possible to see respects in
which, after the cold war, some of the factors bearing upon risk may be new or more adverse; but some are now plainly less so. The years
which the world has come through entirely without accidental or unauthorized detonation have included early
decades in which knowledge was sketchier, precautions were less developed, and weapon designs were less ultrasafe than they later became, as well as substantial periods in which weapon numbers were larger, deployments
immure widespread arid diverse, movements more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness
arrangements more tense. Similar considerations apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics
again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when initial steps in alert sequences for US
nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by indicators mistaken or misconstrued. In none of these
instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all near to nuclear launch—extraordinary good fortune again, critics have
suggested. But the rival and more logical inference from hundreds of events stretching over sixty years of
experience presents itself once more: that the probability of initial misinterpretation leading far towards mistaken
launch is remote. Precisely because any nuclear weapon processor recognizes the vast gravity of any launch, release
sequences have many steps, and human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as capping the sequences. To
convey that because a first step was prompted the world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild
hyperbole, rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game, that he was nearly
beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely offers any ready example of major war started by accident even
before the nuclear revolution imposed an order-of-magnitude increase of caution. In was occasion conjectured that nuclear
war might be triggered by the real but accidental or unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a
potential adversary. No such launch is known to have occurred in over sixty years. The probability of it is therefore very low. But even if it did
happen, the further hypothesis of it initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decision-makers, as
pages 63-4 have brought out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way belongs to
science fiction.
Lots of factors prevent great power conflict without hegemony
Fettweis 10 (Christopher J. Professor of Political Science at Tulane, Dangerous Times-The International Politics of
Great Power Peace, pg. 175-6)
If the only thing standing between the world and chaos is the US military presence, then an adjustment in grand strategy would be
exceptionally counter-productive. But it is worth recalling that none
of the other explanations for the decline of war
– nuclear weapons, complex economic interdependence, international and domestic political
institutions, evolution in ideas and norms – necessitate an activist America to maintain their
validity. Were American to become more restrained, nuclear weapons would still affect the
calculations of the would be aggressor; the process of globalization would continue, deepening the
complexity of economic interdependence; the United Nations could still deploy peacekeepers where necessary; and
democracy would not shrivel where it currently exists. More importantly, the idea that war is a
worthwhile way to resolve conflict would have no reason to return. As was argued in chapter 2, normative
evolution is typically unidirectional. Strategic restraint in such a world be virtually risk free.
1NR – DA
1NR – Overview
DA outweighs and turns the case – collapse of global trade initiates global conflict because there’s no economic
check on conflict – panzer evidence indicates that shutting down global trade causes protectionist backlash which
spurs international nucear and biological terrorism – turns the cartels advantage and turns hegemony
Trade reduces the likelihood of all conflicts – best statistical studies
Hillebrand 10 (Evan E. Hillebrand – Professor of Diplomacy @ University of Kentucky and a Senior Economist
for the Central Intelligence Agency, “Deglobalization Scenarios: Who Wins? Who Loses?,” Global Economy
Journal, Volume 10, Issue 2 2010)
A long line of writers from Cruce (1623) to Kant (1797) to Angell (1907) to Gartzke (2003) have theorized that economic
interdependence can lower the likelihood of war . Cruce thought that free trade enriched a society in general and so made people more
peaceable; Kant though t that trade shifted political power away from the more warlike aristocracy, and Angell thought that economic
interdependence shifted cost/benefit calculations in a peace-promoting direction. Gartzke contends that trade relations enhance transparency among
nations and thus help avoid bargaining miscalculations. There has also been a tremendous amount of empirical
research that mostly supports the idea of an inverse relationship between trade and war . Jack Levy said that, “While there are
extensive debates over the proper research designs for investigating this question, and while some empirical studies find that trade is associated with international
conflict, most studies conclude that trade is associated with peace, both at the dyadic and systemic levels” (Levy, 2003, p.
127). There is another important line of theoretical and empirical work called Power Transition Theory that focuses on the relative power of states and warns that
when rising powers approach the power level of their regional or global leader the chances of war increase (Tammen, Lemke, et al, 2000). Jacek Kugler (2006) warns
that the rising power of Chin a relative to the United States greatly increases the chances of great power war some time in the next few decades. The IFs model
combines the theoretical and empirical work of the peace- through-trade tradition with the work of the power transition scholars in an attempt to forecast the
probability of interstate war. Hughes (2004) explains how he, after consulting with scholars in bot h camps, particularly Edward Mansfield and Douglas Lemke,
estimated the starting probabilities for each dyad based on the historical record, and then forecast future probabilities for dyadic militarized interstate disputes (MIDs)
and wars based on the calibrated relationships he derived from the empirical literature. The probability of a MID, much less a war, between any random dyad in any
given year is very low, if not zero. Paraguay and Tanzania, for example, have never fought and are very unlikely to do s o. But there have been thousands of MIDs in
the past and hundreds of wars and many of the 16,653 dyads have non- zero probabilities. In 2005 the mean probability of a country being involved in at least one war
was estimated to be 0.8%, with 104 countries having a probability of at least 1 war approaching zero. A dozen countries 12 , however, have initial probabilities over
3%. The globalization scenario projects that the probability for war will gradually decrease through 2035 for ever y country—but not every dyad--that had a
decline in prospects for war stems from the scenario’s projections
of rising levels of democracy, rising incomes, and rising trade interdependence —all of these factors figure in the algorithm that calculates the
significant (greater than 0.5% chance of war) in 2005 (Table 6). The
probabilities. Not all dyadic war probabilities decrease, however, because of the power transition mechanism that is also included in the IFs model. The probability for
war between China and the US, for example rises as China’s power 13 rises gradually toward the US level but in these calculations the probability of a China/US war
never gets very high. 14 Deglobalization raises the risks of war substantially. In
a world with much lower average incomes, less democracy, and less trade
interdependence, the average probability of a country having at least one war in 2035 rises from 0.6% in the globalization scenario
to 3.7% in the deglobalization scenario. Among the top-20 war-prone countries, the average probability rises from 3.9% in the globalization scenario to 7.1% in the
deglobalization scenario. The model estimates that in the deglobalization scenario there will be about 10 wars in 2035, vs. only 2 in the gl obalization scenario 15 .
Over the whole period, 2005-2035, the model predicts four great power wars in the deglobalization scenario vs. 2 in the globalization scenario.IV. Winners and Losers
Deglobalization in the form of reduced trade interdependence, reduced capital flows, and reduced migration has few positive effects, based on this analysis with the
International Futures Model. Economic growth is cut in all but a handful of countries, and is cut more in the non- OECD countries than in the OECD countries.
Deglobalization has a mixed impact on equality. In many non-OECD countries, the cut in imports from the rest of the world increases the share of manufacturing and
in 61 count ries raises the share of income going to the poor. But since average productivity goes down in almost all countri es, this gain in equality comes at the
expense of reduced incomes and increased poverty in almost all countries. The only wi nners are a small number of countries that were small and poor and not well
Politically , deglobalization makes
for less stable domestic politics and a greater likelihood of war . The likelihood of state failure th rough internal
war, projected to diminish through 2035 with increasing globalization, rises in the deglobalization scenario particularly among the non-OECD democracies.
Similarly, deglobalization makes for more fractious relations among states and the probability for interstate war
rises.
integrated in th e global economy to begin with—and the gains from deglobalization even for them are very small.
TPA passage – facilitates completion of the US-EU trade deal which deters Russian aggression
Thune 14 (John, US Senator - SD/member of the Senate Finance Committee, "Senate Democrats must give Obama
the same powers President Bush had to advance trade.," http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/18/russiaban-imports-senate-isolate-russia-europe-sanctions-column/14082529/)
In response to new U.S. and EU sanctions, Russia
has announced a ban on a variety of U.S. and EU agricultural imports. This is just
the latest move from a nation growing increasingly antagonistic toward the West . The United States needs to further
isolate Russia from the global community and make it clear that the annexation of territory and incursions into sovereign
nations will not be tolerated. One of the best ways to isolate Russia and help our European friends withstand
Russian aggression is to strengthen our economic ties with the E uropean U nion. There are two important measures we can
take to do that: We can expedite the export of liquefied natural gas to Europe and we can pass trade promotion authority to expedite the U.S.-EU
free trade agreement – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Unfortunately, the Democrat-led Senate has failed to act
on either.. Many European countries are dependent on Russia's natural gas. Russia has used this as leverage against them. While it will take time
to get U.S. export facilities going, speeding up the approval process for exports of liquefied natural gas would send a signal to Russia that its days
of energy hegemony are numbered. Unfortunately, under our current system, increasing American exports of liquefied natural gas is extremely
difficult. Applications to export liquefied natural gas undergo a lengthy review process. The seven applications approved by the Obama
administration have taken an average almost 700 days to process. Twenty-seven applications are still in limbo. One has been waiting for over
1,000 days. I have co-sponsored a bipartisan bill in the Senate that would require the secretary of energy to automatically approve exports of
natural gas to our NATO allies and to any country where exports of natural gas would advance the national security interests of the United States.
Similar legislation has passed the House of Representatives and is waiting for Senate action. Along with increasing our liquefied natural gas
exports, the most important thing we can do to help our allies withstand Russian retaliatory trade measures is to pass the U.S.-EU free trade
agreement. And the best way Congress can help is to give the president trade promotion authority. Passing the free trade agreement would
strengthen our economic ties with the European Union, making EU countries less economically dependent on Russia. At the same time, it would
provide a huge economic benefit to American farmers, workers and businesses. Economists estimate that each additional $1 billion in exports
supports more than 5,000 good-paying U.S. jobs. With nearly 10 million Americans out of work and an unemployment rate over 6%, any
agreement that would create thousands of U.S. jobs should be a priority. The Obama administration began negotiations on the U.S.-EU
free trade agreement in 2013, but a substantial amount of work still needs to be done before this agreement can be finalized.
Giving the president trade promotion authority, which has been available to every other president over the past four decades, would
substantially speed up the process . With trade promotion authority, Congress sets the goals of a trade agreement and the rules that will
govern negotiations. In return, it gives the administration the ability to negotiate a final agreement within those rules and the promise of an up-ordown vote in Congress when the agreement is concluded. Trade promotion authority encourages other nations to bring their best offers to the
table when negotiating with the administration, because they don't need to worry that the agreement will be renegotiated in Congress.
Bipartisan trade promotion authority legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress, and President Obama
has called for this authority as recently as his State of the Union address when he told Congress, "We need to work together on tools like
bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers, protect our environment, and open new markets to new goods stamped 'Made in the
USA.'" Unfortunately, the next day Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threw cold water on the idea . Democratic leaders in the
Senate have refused to consider trade promotion legislation because they are afraid it will cost them the support in November. And
since the State of the Union, President Obama has made scant effort to encourage members of his party to bring up this legislation. With the
U.S.-EU free trade agreement that is important for economic and national security reasons we need to reauthorize
trade promotion authority so we can get this agreement in place . Republicans are ready to work with the
president on this. We just need a willing and engaged partner.
Continued Russian aggression triggers global nuclear war – deterrence is key
Fisher 9/3/14 (Max, Political Analyst @ Vox, "Obama's Russia paradox: Why he just threatened WWIII in order to
prevent it," http://www.vox.com/2014/9/3/6101507/obama-just-committed-the-us-to-war-against-russia-if-itinvades)
President Obama gave a speech on Wednesday, in a city most Americans have never heard of, committing the United States to possible war
against Russia. He said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a Western military alliance better known as NATO, would fight to
defend eastern European members like Estonia against any foreign aggression. In other words, if Russian President
Vladimir Putin invades Estonia or Latvia as he invaded Ukraine, then Putin would trigger war with the US and most
of Europe. Obama's speech from the Estonian capital of Tallinn, though just a speech, may well be America's most important and aggressive
step yet against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. While the speech will do nothing for Ukraine, it is meant to stop Russia from invading, or
perhaps from sponsoring rebellions in, other European countries — so long as those European countries are part of NATO, as most are. "We'll be
here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania," President Obama said from the capital of Estonia, one of the three
Baltic states that were once part of the Soviet Union but now are members of NATO. "You lost your independence once before. With NATO, you
will never lose it again." Obama was making a promise, and a very public one meant to reverberate not just in European capitals but in Moscow
as well: If Russia invades any member of NATO, even these small Baltic states on the alliance's far periphery, then it will be
at war with all of them — including the United States. "The defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the
defense of Berlin and Paris and London," Obama said. To be really clear: that defense means war with Russia, which has the world's
second-largest military and second-largest nuclear arsenal, a prospect so dangerous that even during the angriest moments of the
Cold War, the world managed to avoid it. The idea, though, is not that Obama wants to go to war with Russia, it's that he
wants to avoid war with Russia — this is also why the US and Europe are not intervening militarily in Ukraine to push back the Russian
tanks — but that
avoiding war with Russia means deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading these
Baltic states in the first place by scaring him off. The risk of such an invasion, by the way, is real: these countries are about one-
quarter ethnic Russian, and Ukraine's own Russian minority which was Putin's excuse for invading Crimea in March. Putin also clearly sees
former Soviet states as fair game; he has invaded Ukraine and Georgia, both marked in red on the above map. So the Baltic states are rightly
terrified that they are next. Here is Obama's dilemma, and Europe's: They want to prove to Putin that they will definitely defend Estonia and
Latvia and other eastern European NATO members as if they were American or British or German soil, so that Putin will not invade those
countries as he did in Ukraine. But the entire world, including Putin, is suspicious as to whether or not this threat is a bluff. And the worst
possible thing that could happen, the thing that could legitimately lead to World War
Putin to call Obama's bluff, invade Estonia, and have Obama's bluff turn out to not be a bluff.
Three and global nuclear war , is for
U
Statistical models are flawed - ignore subjective factors
Killian 9/16/14 (Linda, Columnist @ Daily Beast, "Meet the One Numbers-Cruncher Who Foresees Democrats
Holding the Senate," http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/16/meet-the-one-numbers-cruncher-whoforesees-democrats-holding-the-senate.html)
“I think no statistical model is perfect,” says Jennifer Duffy who follows Senate and governor’s races for the Cook
Political Report. “There are subjective factors that can’t be factored in.”
GOP will retake the Senate – new polls in CO, IA, LA, and AK have swung the political tide in their favor
Enten and Hickey 9/17/14 (Harry and Walt, Political Writers + Statisticians @ FiveThirtyEight, "Senate Update:
More Races Become More Competitive," http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-update-more-races-becomemore-competitive/)
After a streak of strong polling days for Democrats, Wednesday marked a turnaround of sorts for Republicans. Their
chance of taking back the Senate increased slightly, to about 54 percent. But here’s the bigger story: The picture
has been muddied. The latest data makes more states more competitive. The two best polls for Republicans released
Wednesday came in two purple states that had been trending Democratic: Colorado and Iowa. In Colorado,
Republican Cory Garnder led Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in a Suffolk University survey 43 percent to 42 percent.
It was Gardner’s first lead in a poll since July. In response, the left-leaning Project New America published a survey
conducted by Myers Research giving Udall a 48 to 46 percent edge. FiveThirtyEight has Udall as a 64 percent
favorite. In Iowa, Quinnipiac University put Republican Joni Ernst ahead of Democrat Bruce Braley 48 percent to
42 percent. That’s her biggest edge in a poll this cycle. Of the past six polls released in Iowa, Braley was ahead in
three, behind in two and tied in one. The race is tight: The FiveThirtyEight model gives Ernst a 53 percent chance of
winning. The good news for Democrats on Wednesday came in red states: Alaska and Louisiana. Alaska is a
notoriously difficult state to poll. Groups friendly to Democrats have recently released a number of polls showing
Democratic Sen. Mark Begich leading. On Wednesday, Hays Research released a survey sponsored by the AFLCIO that put Begich ahead of Republican Dan Sullivan 41 percent to 36 percent. Still, Alaska is conservative, and
our latest forecast has Sullivan with a 56 percent chance to win. In Louisiana, nonpartisan polls have been scarce.
But a Gravis Marketing survey published Wednesday showed Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu tied with Republican
Bill Cassidy at 45 percent. Given past polling data and the Republican lean of the state, we put Cassidy at a 63
percent chance of winning. All four of these states — Colorado, Iowa, Alaska and Louisiana — have moved closer
to being tossups in the past several days. In all four, each side’s candidate has at least a 35 percent chance of
winning. All of this portends an exciting final month and a half of campaign season.
Prefer FiveThirtyEight – their polling aggregation is historically the most accurate
Terdiman 12 (Daniel, Columnist @ CNET, "Among the top election quants, Nate Silver reigns supreme,"
http://www.cnet.com/news/among-the-top-election-quants-nate-silver-reigns-supreme/)
While there's already been whole swimming pools of ink devoted to the Election Day prediction performance of polling aggregators like
FiveThirtyEight blogger Nate Silver, CNET is ready to hand out one more round of kudos to the king of the quants . By
now, anyone following the presidential election knows that Silver successfully predicted the winner in the race between President
Barack Obama
and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in all 50 states. That performance was one for the ages ,
earning him worldwide admiration and validating a polling aggregation model that had drawn mockery and ire from many
pundits. This CNET chart shows that, among polling aggregators, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver was more accurate than anyone on
Election Day. But Silver wasn't the only one to do exceptionally well in the prediction department. In fact, each of the five aggregators that
CNET surveyed yesterday -- FiveThirtyEight, TPM PollTracker, HuffPost Pollster, the RealClearPolitics Average, and the Princeton Election
Consortium -- successfully called the election for Obama, and save for TPM PollTracker and RealClearPolitics handing Florida to Romney, the
aggregators were spot on across the board when it came to picking swing state victors. Still, even within the club of those who used
computational analysis of thousands of national and statewide polls to peg the outcome of the election, someone had
to be the most accurate. And a CNET examination of each aggregator's performance reveals a single winner -unsurprisingly, Silver. In addition to picking the winner in all 50 states -- besting his 49 out of 50 slate in 2008 -- Silver was also the closest
among the aggregators to picking the two candidates' popular vote percentages. All told, he missed Obama's total of 50.8 percent by just fourtenths of a percentage point (50.4) and Romney's 48 percent by just three-tenths of a point (48.3) for an average miss of just 0.35 percentage
points. HuffPo Pollster and RealClearPolitics tied for second with an average miss of 0.85 points. In preparing to make these comparisons, CNET
surveyed 11 swing states. In the end, Silver was closest to the final margins among the candidates in seven of them and also had the best overall
record, missing by an average of just 1.46 points in the 11 states. TPM PollTracker was second with the closest predicted margins in three states,
and the second-best average margin, 1.80 points.
GOP will retake Senate - Wash Post says so
Washington Post 9/18/14 ("Election Lab," http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dre/politics/election-lab-2014)
2014 MIDTERM ELECTIONS FORECAST Election Lab The Monkey Cage's political scientists forecast the
House and Senate races. Republicans are favored to control the Senate. 62% chance as of today. Republicans are
favored to control the House. Greater than 99% chance as of today. SENATE HOUSE MAJORITY + 6 seats
Wash Post projections are super-qualified
Sides 14 (John, Assoc Prof of Poli Sci @ George Washington specializing in public opinion, voting, and elections,
"How Election Lab works," http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2014/05/05/how-election-lab-works/)
Who are we? John Sides is associate professor of political science at George Washington University and one of the
co-founders of The Monkey Cage. Ben Highton is professor of political science at the University of California,
Davis. Eric McGhee is a political scientist who studies elections, election reform, and representation. GWU Ph.D.
student Will Cubbison and GWU undergraduates Philip Stein and Lily Fitzgerald assisted with data collection.
Top
Trade will top the agenda of the post-midterms congress
Legal Monitor Worldwide 2/10/14 ("Congress Unlikely To Get Anything Done On Immigration, Trade In 2014,"
lexis)
If immigration legislation is moribund in the House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has made it clear
he doesn't intend to seek passage of a second Obama priority, this one a bill to facilitate passage of trade deals with
Europe and Asia. ¶ "I'm against fast track," said the man who sets the Senate's agenda, referring to the measure
Obama wants. "I think everyone would be well advised just to not push this right now." ¶ The legislation is opposed
by large segments of organized labor, the very unions that Democrats will be counting on to pour money and
manpower into their bid to hold control of the Senate in the November election. ¶ Republicans need to gain six seats
to win a majority. They say they increasingly are bullish about their prospects, what with the country generally
pessimistic about the future, Obama's favorability ratings well below the levels of his re-election campaign and
controversies afflicting the president's health law. ¶ While Reid hasn't said so, other lawmakers and aides speculate
that trade could top the agenda of any postelection session of Congress.
IL
Obama gets the blame - midterms are a referendum on his performance
Podhoretz 3/18/14 (John, editor of Commentary magazine, columnist for the New York Post, the author of several
books on politics, and a former presidential speechwriter, NY Post, "Obama’s failed foreign policy just another drag
on Democrats," http://nypost.com/2014/03/18/obamas-failed-foreign-policy-just-another-drag-on-democrats/)
He is the president. It’s his watch . Americans may be war-weary, but they still look to the man in the White House
to provide an overall sense of stability and safety.¶ Democrats need Americans to feel positively about the president
going into the 2014 elections. All election experts say the party’s showing nationally in November will correlate strongly
with how the country feels about the job the president is doing.
Midterms are a referendum on Obama
Steinhauser 3/4/14 (Paul, CNN Political Editor, "Eight things to watch in the eight months till Election Day,"
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/politics/eight-months-till-election/)
7. The President -- poll numbers and fundraising: There's no denying that 2013 was a tough year for Obama. And with an approval rating
hovering in the low 40s in most national opinion polls, the question is: How will he impact Democrats in November?¶
Midterm elections are often a referendum on a sitting president , so expect to see Obama's approval ratings in
the spotlight right until the Election Day¶ While some Democrats facing tough re-elections in red or purple states are not inviting the
President to join them out on the campaign trail, they do need his help raising money. When it comes to fundraising, Obama remains the
Democratic party's top rainmaker, and he's picking up the pace this year in helping his party bring in the bucks, especially when
compared with his efforts in the 2010 midterms.
Link
Legalization key to election success – winning strategy for being on the side of
shifting public opinion
Kleiman 14 (Mark, Prof of Public Policy @ UCLA + US Drug Policy Expert, "Cannabis legalization and the
empirical-minded median voter," http://www.samefacts.com/2014/01/drug-policy/cannabis-legalization-and-theempirical-minded-median-voter/)
No big surprises from the cannabis questions in the latest CNN-ORC poll. It looks as if the Gallup numbers from earlier in the year (58 for
legalization, 39 against) were a bit of an outlier; the gap seems to be nearer 10 points than 20, which makes a difference. But the CNN-ORC
findings, along with those from the Pew survey, confirm the decisive shift in public opinion . Support for
legalization now has a clear majority . Most interesting finding, to my eyes: the new poll asked the question two ways: “Do you think
the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” “Do you think the sale of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” The answers were
virtually identical: 55/44 for legal use, 54/45 for legal sale . So for those of us who have wondering whether the “use” question was
inappropriately lumping supporters of decriminalization with supporters of full commercial availability, the answer is “No.”
A majority
really favors full legalization . On the other hand, when the question gets specific, the majority disappears: “As you may know,
Colorado now allows anyone over the age of 21 to purchase small quantities of marijuana for their own use from businesses that have been
licensed by the state government to sell marijuana. Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea, or do you want to see what happens in Colorado
and other states that legalize marijuana before you decide how you feel about this matter?” “Good idea” leads “bad idea” by a small plurality,
33/27, but the largest group (37%) wants to wait and see. Yes, of course phrasing the question that way encouraged the wait-and-see answer, but
it’s encouraging that so many voters are empirically-minded on this issue rather than fixed in one of two fact-proof
ideological camps. Even among those who oppose legal pot, most prefer to have users pay fines rather than going to jail. And support for
medical marijuana is overwhelming: 88/10. All of this suggests that those who oppose legalization have chosen a grossly
inappropriate strategy, if their objective is winning as opposed to mere fundraising and personal advancement. Moral
denunciation, opposition to medical research (with actual cannabis, not hypothetical individual molecules), and support for user
penalties are all losing moves . Instead of simply posing their own prejudices and certainties against those of the legalizers, they ought to
offer cautious experimentalism. The median voter might buy “Wait and see,” if it appeared sincere. But she’s way past “No, nay, never!”
Clear majority of Americans support legalization AND it’s a high profile national
issue – Gallup poll proves
Swift 13 (Art, Polling Analyst @ Gallup, "For First Time, Americans Favor Legalizing Marijuana,"
http://www.gallup.com/poll/165539/first-time-americans-favor-legalizing-marijuana.aspx)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For marijuana advocates, the last 12 months have been a period of unprecedented success as Washington and Colorado
became the first states to legalize recreational use of marijuana. And now for the first time, a
clear majority of Americans (58%) say
the drug should be legalized. This is in sharp contrast to the time Gallup first asked the question in 1969 , when only
12% favored legalization. Americans' Views on Legalizing Marijuana Public support for legalization more than doubled in the 1970s, growing to
28%. It then plateaued during the 1980s and 1990s before inching steadily higher since 2000, reaching 50% in 2011. A sizable percentage of
Americans (38%) this year admitted to having tried the drug, which may be a contributing factor to greater acceptance. Success at the ballot box
in the past year in Colorado and Washington may have increased Americans' tolerance for marijuana legalization.
Support for
legalization has jumped 10 percentage points since last November and the legal momentum shows no sign of
abating . Last week, California's second-highest elected official, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, said that pot should be legal in the Golden State,
and advocates of legalization are poised to introduce a statewide referendum in 2014 to legalize the drug. The Obama administration has also
been flexible on the matter. Despite maintaining the government's firm opposition to legalizing marijuana under federal law, in late August
Deputy Attorney General James Cole announced the Justice Department would not challenge the legality of Colorado's and Washington's
successful referendums, provided that those states maintain strict rules regarding the drug's sale and distribution. The movement to legalize
marijuana mirrors the relatively recent success of the movement to legalize gay marriage, which voters have also approved now in 14 states.
Public support for gay marriage, which Americans also overwhelmingly opposed in the past, has increased dramatically, reaching majority
support in the last two years. Independents Fueling Growth in Acceptance of Legalizing Marijuana Independents' growing support for
legalization has mostly driven the jump in Americans' overall support. Sixty-two percent of independents now favor
legalization, up 12 points from November 2012. Support for legalization among Democrats and Republicans saw little change. Yet there is a
marked divide between Republicans, who still oppose legalizing marijuana, and Democrats and independents. Trend:
Percentage of Americans Who Support Legalizing Marijuana, by Party Identification Young Adults More Likely to Support Legalization
Americans 65 and older are the only age group that still opposes legalizing marijuana. Still, support among this group has jumped 14 percentage
points since 2011. In contrast, 67% of Americans aged 18 to 29 back legalization. Clear majorities of Americans aged 30 to 64 also favor
legalization. Americans’ Views on Legalizing Marijuana, by Age Bottom Line It has been a long path toward majority acceptance of marijuana
over the past 44 years, but Americans' support for legalization accelerated as the new millennium began . This acceptance of a
substance that most people might have considered forbidden in the late 1960s and 1970s may be attributed to changing social mores and growing
social acceptance. The increasing prevalence of medical marijuana as a socially acceptable way to alleviate symptoms of diseases such as
arthritis, and as a way to mitigate side effects of chemotherapy, may have also contributed to Americans' growing support. Whatever the reasons
for Americans' greater acceptance of marijuana, it is likely that this momentum will spur further legalization efforts across the United States.
Advocates of legalizing marijuana say taxing and regulating the drug could be financially beneficial to states and municipalities nationwide. But
detractors such as law enforcement and substance abuse professionals have cited health risks including an increased heart rate, and respiratory
and memory problems. With Americans' support for legalization quadrupling since 1969, and localities on the East Coast such as
Portland, Maine, considering a symbolic referendum to legalize marijuana,
it is clear that interest in this drug and these issues
will remain elevated in the foreseeable future .
Prefer Gallup - authority on public opinion
Associated Press 14 ("HEALTH LAW CITED AS US UNINSURED RATE DROPS," 3/10,
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/survey-uninsured-rate-drops-health-law-cited)
The Gallup poll is considered authoritative because it combines the scope and depth found in government
surveys with the timeliness of media sampling . Pollsters interview 500 people a day, 350 days a year. The latest
health care results were based on more than 28,000 interviews, or about 28 times as many as in a standard national
poll.
Yes it does – Colorado and Washington prove young people turnout more
TRNS 14 (TRNS=Talk Radio News Service, “Brookings: Harry Reid Should Support Pot Legalization to Keep
Leadership Post,” 8/25, http://www.talkradionews.com/congress/2014/08/25/brookings-harry-reid-support-potlegalization-keep-leadership-post.html#.U_zy1vldXeZ)
Engaging young voters with promises of legalizing marijuana may be the ticket to keep Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid in his post through this election cycle, according to a new Brookings Institution study. “In Colorado, those
who voted in favor of Amendment 64 (marijuana legalization) voted for President Obama at a rate of 68%—far above his
support among all Colorado voters (51%),” reads the study, entitled ‘Harry Reid Should Love Marijuana: How
Legalization Could Keep The Senate Blue’. “Similarly, in Washington, among those who voted in favor of Initiative
502 (marijuana legalization), 72% also voted for President Obama. The president won about 56% statewide.” Reid is
a supporter of medicinal marijuana. The study cited the competitive Alaska Senate race, where incumbent Sen. Mark
Begich (D) is fighting for a second term against Republican former state attorney general Dan Sullivan . And while
midterm elections generally favor Republican candidates, Alaska’s electoral ballot will also include an initiative to
legalize marijuana. Alaska, if approved, would join Washington State and Colorado as U.S. states that have legalized marijuana.
“Marijuana legalization could change that by dramatically changing the character and nature of the midterm
electorate in Alaska, and helping Sen. Begich win reelection,” the study said. Oregon will also vote for pot
legalization this November. “(R )egardless of the outcomes, the presence of those initiatives will likely drive
younger and more liberal voters to the polls ,” the study reads, “However, legalization supporters would be wise to wait until 2016
and capitalize on a dual effect. A presidential election year will bring out voters more sympathetic to legalization, and legalization will bring out
even more young, liberal voters than normal.”
Pot ballot initiatives cause youth turnout – which is key to Democratic victory
Dunkelberger 14 (Lloyd Dunkelberger, staffwriter for The Ledger Tallahassee Bureau, 1/28/14, “Florida's
Marijuana Vote Could Affect Other Races”
http://www.theledger.com/article/20140128/NEWS/140129089?p=1&tc=pg)
But the key variable is this: Voting in nonpresidential election years typically skews older, while polls show support
for the marijuana initiative is strongest among the youngest voters. So on the surface, a larger turnout among
younger voters — who don't typically show up in big numbers in nonpresidential years — could help Democrats, as
demonstrated by President Barack Obama in his last two successful elections in Florida. "Very few people are
single-issue voters. But that issue could be a mobilizing issue for younger voters," said Susan MacManus, a political
scientist at the University of South Florida.
Pot legalization boosts young voter turnout – helps the Dems in the midterms
Clyne 14 (Melissa, Newsmax, "Democrats Hope Marijuana Votes Will Boost Candidates,"
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/marijuana-democrat-election-candidates/2014/02/07/id/551476/)
Democrats favor pot legalization by a 34-point margin, while Republicans oppose it by 23 points, according to an
NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, which also notes that Americans aged 18 to 34 favor legal marijuana by a
whopping 49-point margin.¶ If the issue drives young voter turnout, as expected, it could alter the political
landscape , says Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida.¶ "Normally in a midterm
election or non-presidential year, young voter turnout really drops. So for Democrats to have more young voters
show up at the polls is a positive ," MacManus told a Florida ABC affiliate. ¶ The Huffington Post dedicated a
column to it this week, citing a recent Quinnipiac poll showing Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper’s
strong approval ratings and comfortable lead over Republican challengers. Colorado last month became the first
state to legalize recreational marijuana.¶ After the Denver Post published a story on the poll results, NBC News
political correspondent Chuck Todd weighed in.¶ Businessweek’s Joshua Green responded to Todd’s tweet, pointing
out that the theory has been bandied about for a while. Green referred a November story he wrote on the subject,
where Democratic political consultant Jim Merlino opined about how marijuana might help Democrats on the
ticket.¶ “Having marijuana on the ballot would activate a group of voters who don’t usually participate in elections—
mainly younger voters who, perhaps by dint of their fondness for pot, are not the most civically engaged,” Merlino
said. ¶ Young voters, he pointed out, overwhelmingly favor Democrats. Lured to the polls by the chance to vote for
weed, these youngsters would presumably pull the lever for the Democratic ticket while they were there.
Strong public support for weed legalization – esp. among young voters
Motel 14 (Seth, Research Analyst at the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press., "6 facts about
marijuana," 4/7, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/07/6-facts-about-marijuana/)
A new Pew Research Center survey found a broad shift in the public’s views on the nation’s drug policies, with
many in favor of shifting the focus of government efforts from prosecution to treatment for use of illicit drugs. The
survey also attracted much attention for its findings on attitudes about legalizing marijuana and views of its use.
Here are six key facts on public opinion about marijuana: Growing support for marijuana legalization1 Support
for marijuana legalization continues to grow . A 54% majority of Americans say the drug should be made legal,
compared with 42% who want it to be illegal. Opinions have changed drastically since 1969, when Gallup first
asked the question and just 12% favored legalization. Much of the change in opinion has occurred over the past few
years — support has risen 13 points since 2010. Separately, 76% in our new survey say people convicted of minor
possession should not serve time in jail. Growing support for legalization of marijuana2Not all groups support
legalization. Only about four-in-ten Republicans (39%) do. While most non-Hispanic whites and blacks say
marijuana should be made legal, only 43% of Hispanics share that view. Among generations, 69% of Millennials
say marijuana should be legal while only 30% of those 69 and older share that view. Baby Boomers, who were the
most supportive generation in the 1970s before becoming opponents during the “Just Say No” 1980s, are now more
likely to favor (52%) than oppose (45%) legalization.
Legalization emboldens Democratic turnout – it’s overwhelmingly popular
Linskey 14 (Annie, citing; George Washington U polling, Lake Research Partners polling firm and the Tarrance
Group, a public affairs firm, “Poll: Marijuana Legalization Measures Will Drive Voters,” Bloomberg, Mar 25,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-25/poll-marijuana-legalization-measures-will-drive-voters.html)
A majority of Americans favor legalizing marijuana and would be motivated to vote if a measure to do so is
on the ballot, according to a George Washington University Battleground poll released today. The survey of
1,000 likely voters found 73 percent support allowing marijuana for legal medical purposes, 53 percent favor
decriminalization and 68 percent are “more likely” to go to their polling place to weigh in on a ballot.
“Marijuana legalization and marijuana decriminalization is at a tipping point ” said Celinda Lake, president
of Lake Research Partners and one of the two pollsters who conducted the survey. Support crosses party lines,
though younger and single voters -- who tend to vote for Democrats -- are more motivated by those issues,
she said. Ballot measures on legalizing pot are set for Alaska’s August primary and probably this November in
Oregon, according to Allen St. Pierre, the executive director Norml, a Washington-based nonprofit pushing for more
access to the drug. Florida will see a decriminalization effort, he said. The marijuana question was part of a wideranging poll that tested President Barack Obama’s approval rating, potential 2016 presidential candidates and
American’s views on the billionaire Koch brothers. The survey, conducted March 16-20, was released today at a
breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage
points. Republican Edge While the poll showed Americans are evenly split between supporting Democrats and
Republicans on a generic ballot, Republicans hold an advantage because they are more motivated to vote : 64
percent said they are “extremely likely” to go to the polls compared with 57 percent of Democrats. The president’s
job-approval rating is 44 percent in the survey -- up 3 points from when the question was last asked in mid-January.
Obama’s disapproval is 53 percent, down a point from when the question was last asked. “This data gives an edge
to Republicans,” said Ed Goeas, chief executive officer of the Tarrance Group, a public affairs firm based in
Alexandria, Virginia, who also worked on the survey. “Obama’s name will not be on the ballot but Obama’s
polices will be,” he said. And “you don’t have the operation of the presidential race there turning out votes on that
side.”
The plan delivers a Democratic victory—mobilizes turnout by young, elderly voters—political experts agree
Abdullah 14 (Halimah, “Could pot push voters to the polls this fall?” CNN Politics, May 8,
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/08/politics/marijuana-midterms/)
Political operatives are pushing pot legalization in several states this year in the hopes of sparking high
turnout in this fall's midterm elections, and are looking ahead to 2016 as well. If voters approve a closelywatched ballot initiative in November, Florida could become the first Southern state to allow medical marijuana.
And voters in Alaska and Oregon — two states that already allow medical marijuana and have decriminalized
harsh sentencing for some recreational use — will likely vote on whether to join Colorado and Washington in
allowing, taxing and regulating pot for recreational use. A look at marijuana laws in the U.S. There's not much of
a smoke screen shrouding as to why some Democratic political strategists would want marijuana measures
on ballots this year given President Barack Obama's low approval numbers and the party's historic slump in
terms of turnout in midterm election years, marijuana policy analysts said. 'Young adults and legalization' "It's
nothing but politics," said Jon Gettman, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Shenandoah University. "If
anyone's electoral strategy is to bring out new voters , one area they would target is young adults and
marijuana legalization." That's because people under 30 are more likely to use and be arrested for pot,
Gettman said. And, he added, young voter attitudes about legalizing marijuana also tends to cut across political
ideologies and includes a cross section of liberals and libertarians. According to a Pew Research Center poll
conducted in February, 70% of respondents between 18 and 29 believe marijuana should be legalized.
Comparatively, 32% of people 65 and older support legalization. So, political operatives and their well-heeled
backers have sallied forth, in part, with the hopes of hooking those elusive young voters with the allure of legalizing
marijuana. For example, Oregon's petition drive, which the National Conference of State Legislatures said is gaining
steam, is funded by New Approach Oregon. The group last year received $50,000 from the Drug Policy Alliance, an
organization with ties to billionaire and pro-marijuana legalization advocate George Soros. Alaska's Begich in tight
race In Alaska, "the finances were right" to put money and effort into getting a ballot initiative, said Dan Riffle,
director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-pot legalization group. In that state, Democratic
Sen. Mark Begich is in a competitive race to keep his seat. Those who oppose marijuana legalization balk at the
influence of big cash and election year pushes. "It hasn't been a fair fight in terms of messaging. They've spent over
$100 million to advocate this," said Kevin Sabet, an assistant professor at the University of Florida's Drug
Policy Institute. "It speaks to the money in marijuana politics." Pot Politics "You have special interest groups
lobbying, pollsters, public relations and marijuana companies that are funding this. They stand to make a lot
of money if (marijuana legalizes nationally)," said Sabet who served as a drug policy adviser to both Republican
and Democratic administrations and is on the board of directors of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an anti-pot
legalization group. "This is about creating the next big tobacco and getting rich off of other people's addictions." In
the effort to get marijuana-related ballot initiatives, pro-pot legalization advocates have also netted the support of
older voters who perhaps may be more likely to suffer from ailments they hope marijuana can alleviate, and
those who were born during the 1960s and 70s and bore witness to looser cultural attitudes about drug use,
marijuana policy experts said. Drawing voters to polls Pot measures are more likely to draw voters to the polls,
said Chris Arterton, a political management professor at George Washington University who helped conduct a
national poll in late March examining the issue.
AT: Obstruction
McManus 9/16 (Doyle. 2014. Doyle McManus is Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has been a
foreign correspondent in the Middle East, a White House correspondent and a presidential campaign reporter, and
was the paper’s Washington bureau chief from 1996 to 2008. “What happens if Republicans win the Senate?”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mcmanus-column-senate-makeup-20140917-story.html) 9/18/14 RK
the most intriguing scenario for next year's Senate, paradoxically, is the least exotic one: What happens if Republicans
win a slim majority of 51 or 52 seats? The party would then be like the dog who caught the car and has to figure out what to do with it. When
But
f the GOP controls both
the Senate and the House, its members will be under pressure to
govern . At least in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to move major
legislation, they'll even have an incentive to compromise to rescue their wholly
owned legislative branch from the dank cellar of public esteem. " To elect a president in 2016,
we're going to have to show in 2015 and '16 that the American people
can trust Republicans with the government,"
the two houses of Congress have been held by different parties, gridlock has made governance almost impossible. But
i
GOP Senate key to TPA – key area of agreement with Obama
Nather 9/15/14 (David, Politico, "Would a GOP Senate be king of the world?,"
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=9EDBF588-F451-6D2E-D8742634033DAEB5)
There are other issues that could advance in a Republican Senate, and possibly even lead to deals with Obama. One
strong possibility is trade promotion authority , which would allow Obama to fast-track trade deals in Congress. Orrin Hatch of
Utah, the likely Finance Committee chairman in a Republican Senate, has introduced legislation to authorize the fast-track
authority. And other GOP senators say it’s one area where they could reach an agreement with Obama — though
they’re warning him not to wrap up a proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement before he gets it.
Heg
TPA key to global trade and US global leadership – failure becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
Sapiro 9/5/14 (Miriam, Visiting Fellow @ Brookings + former deputy US Trade Representative, "Why trade
matters," http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/216695-why-trade-matters)
Major trade agreements are always difficult to navigate, both domestically and internationally. But a large number of Democrats and
Republicans have historically supported efforts to forge agreements that hold great promise for increasing exports and jobs,
strengthening ties with allies, raising the standard of living in other countries, and displaying American leadership . There
remains a narrow window of opportunity to get the Obama administration and Congress, along with America’s trading
partners in Asia and Europe, on the same page. The challenge will only get harder next year, when the U.S. presidential election will be in
full swing. Earlier this week, chief negotiators from the United States and the 11 other countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
began meeting in Vietnam to resolve remaining issues while bilateral talks between the United States and Japan continue. With negotiations on a
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) resuming later this month, Obama can stress to European leaders he sees at the NATO
Summit this week how important it is to narrow differences and help the new European Commission strike a deal. Next week, Congress comes
back briefly before midterm elections and can make progress on a trade bill that gives the president trade promotion authority and enables any
deal to move through Congress on a fast-track, just as in the past. It will be tempting to some to defer the hard decisions and compromises that
will need to be made by all sides at a time of growing conflict and insecurity in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. But it would be a
mistake to ignore economic concerns, which are also multiplying. Increased exports and inbound investment have helped the U.S. economy
recover from the last financial crisis. Still, the process has been slow and has a long way to go to reach pre-crisis levels of growth. Europe’s
recovery has stalled, now even in Germany, exacerbated by internal divisions over austerity measures and diminishing trade with Russia because
of its aggression in Ukraine. Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, is still struggling with economic headwinds. These challenges make it
particularly timely for the United States and its partners to deepen their economic relationship . With 95 percent of the
world’s population living outside the U.S., trade has helped build the world’s largest and most dynamic economy and will continue to help it
recover. Increased exports sustain and create jobs in the U.S. and around the world, as well as foster greater
economic security and stability in key regions . Successfully concluding new trade deals with Asia and Europe would give the U.S.
free trade agreements with two-thirds of the global economy and enable it to lead the way in modernizing existing rules, such as establishing
stronger levels of labor and environmental protection. Supporting greater trade liberalization and common approaches to challenges also benefits
other countries. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, once concluded, is already open to other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) forum that can meet the same high standards. The Transatlantic Partnership should also be ready to welcome new participants on the
same terms. The prospect of membership can provide a strong incentive for interested countries, such as Turkey and possibly Ukraine and
Georgia, to reduce trade barriers, implement market reforms and embrace the rule of law. Countries not joining either group can still find it easier
to trade with members as contradictory rules and duplicative costs are reduced. Both new platforms should be flexible enough to evolve into
building blocks for further regional integration as well as enhanced cooperation with other regions. Strengthening U.S. economic
integration with Asia and Europe and opening up new avenues of opportunity take on added importance now that prospects
for resuscitating the Doha round of multilateral trade talks have dimmed. India’s refusal this summer to implement the
WTO agreement on trade facilitation reached only last December has called into question whether the 160 members can
reach agreement on anything. To move ahead, the U.S. and its partners cannot shy away from the task of explaining the benefits of trade
done right, with appropriate protections for labor and the environment, and mechanisms to promote human rights and capacity-building. First,
while the economic and strategic arguments are starting to be made, they need to be articulated more forcefully and more frequently to build
domestic support for the compromises that all sides will have to make to cross the finish line. Second, proponents need to be more active in
pushing back on a slew of misinformation about both negotiations, whether it is false claims about capricious investors, sinister regulators or
harmful “Frankenfoods.” Third, Congress must focus on developing a bipartisan trade bill that can win enough broadly
based support to pass after the November elections. With the Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee retiring and
Democrats fighting to retain control of the Senate, both Dave Camp and Ron Wyden have a shared interest in shaping legislation on their terms.
Otherwise, the view in European and Asian capitals will be that the U.S. is not serious about the end-game, which
can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and make it harder to get there . Getting the trade agenda right is important
not just for the economic growth it can create in the U.S. and overseas, but for the signal it sends to America’s partners . If the U.S.
fails to exert leadership and forgoes the chance to be in the driver’s seat of the world’s two most significant trade partnerships, others will step
forward to fill the void. The U.S. will have missed an opportunity to cement two powerful economic alliances that can advance its economic and
security interests around the world for years to come.
Rd 3 Neg vs MSU BP – Weed
1NC
1
‘Legalize’ means tax and regulate
Kreit 10 (Alex, Associate Professor and Director, Center for Law and Social Justice, Thomas Jefferson School of
Law, "Article: The Decriminalization Option: Should States Consider Moving from a Criminal to a Civil Drug
Court Model?," 2010 U Chi Legal F 299, lexis)
Despite all of the debate about drug decriminalization in policy and legal circles, the term remains surprisingly
nebulous, especially in relation to the distinct but associated concept of drug legalization. n101 That said,
decriminalizing a drug generally means removing criminal penalties for its use and possession. n102 Manufacture
and retail sale of the drug, however, remain prohibited in a decriminalization regime. Legalization, by contrast,
refers to a system in which a substance is taxed and regulated like alcohol or tobacco.
Voter for predictable limits – decrim is neg ground, regulation and taxation are the verbs of the res and is
how the neg generates their offense – disallowing the guarantee of a regulatory mechanism explodes the topic
and makes being neg impossible.
2
Securitizing illegal economies conflates terror with social protest – state devalues marginalized groups
Ferradas 13 -- Associate Prof @ Dept of Anthropology, Binghamton Univ (Carmen A., 10/28/2013, "The Nature of
Illegality Under Neoliberalism and Post-Neoliberalism," PoLAR 36(2), Galileo)
Outbursts of social upheaval such as food riots and massive social protests at the turn of the millennium had become conflated with
other forms of violence, such as international terrorism. Increasingly, most aspects of the informal economy have become either linked to the
illegal or, even worse, have been presented as illegal themselves, and a discourse of security has come to dominate
hegemonic representations of the individuals at the margins of society . Rather than not being fully modern because they had a different “culture” or failed
to integrate into a modern economy, the migrants and poor of today are increasingly portrayed as outlaws, criminals that need to be closely
“secured” through various forms of policing. These portrayals are not new; we have ample evidence from the past showing us how the poor were perceived as dangerous
classes. Fears and negative constructions of the weak intensify when social inequality and unemployment becomes rampant as is the case today. Security state apparatus and various
media venues often conflate terrorism, drug trafficking, and various economic activities of the informal economy. They
rarely question, however, the dubious operations of global corporations with the support of complicit state powers. The international legal system rarely criminalizes such activities even though
they often impinge on state sovereignty and citizen rights. In the San Juan de Dios market case, discussed by Aguiar (this issue), we see how the media and national and transnational actors increasingly depict those involved in piracy
as also engaged in drug trafficking. His analysis shows that this is not always the case. Although he does not deny this might indeed happen in some cases, his ethnographic work demonstrates that many of the individuals involved in
piracy in this market were former fayuqueros (individuals involved in the smuggling of goods, particularly electronics) who were compelled to adapt to the new market conditions. According to him, many of them operate individually
and are not part of organized networks. Once electronics were available on credit with the lifting of protective measures under neoliberalism, the profitable smuggling of electronics from the United States declined abruptly. The case
he describes is similar to what happened in Argentina and Brazil as soon as the two countries signed the Mercosur agreements and also embraced open market policies. For a brief period (late 1990s and early 2000s), the economy of
the Paraguayan border cities such as Ciudad del Este and Encarnación was negatively affected as Argentines and Brazilians could buy manufacturer-guaranteed imported goods on credit without risking being caught at the border
while smuggling goods. These conditions have recently changed as the two countries have entered a post-neoliberal phase characterized among other things by greater restrictions on imports (see Jusionyte, this issue). These recent
changes make it clear that we cannot examine the emergence of illegalities in a linear fashion. The nature of the illegal shifts to adapt to the changing circumstances of nation-states and international conditions. Jusionyte and to a
besides often reproducing the official
discourse that defines what is legal and illegal, they also “produce legitimacy when they avoid, or speak around, the issues deemed uncomfortable for the local
lesser extent Aguiar examine how the media are implicated in processes of the production of the illegal. In the case of Puerto Iguazú, Jusionyte argues that
community due to the lack of social consensus over their moral and legal quality.” She emphasizes how journalists are forced to juggle their multiple positions in the Iguazú community. Besides being producers of representations of
journalists
use the public sphere tactically. In their portrayal of the frontier, she says, they construct some illegalities and obstruct others . The media are not
alone in remaining silent on some aspects of illegality. Polson shows how social analysts neglect addressing the production process of the marijuana
economy. This silence obviously has some effects as it conceals the existence of the drug war rentier nexus. Most studies either focus on the consumer side or demonize the producers without examining how the latter are
the place, they are also participants in the petty border trade of the frontier economy. This pushes them to manipulate the boundaries of the legal both in their professional and personal lives. She believes that local
entangled in a system in which the risks and benefits are unequally distributed. His study pushes us to analyze more carefully how apparently licit and legal real estate interests might be highly dependent on the need to put illegally
obtained money into circulation. This link is obvious in Argentina's current economic situation. It is estimated that around 9 billions of dollars of the nearly 180 billions of dollars that are part of the capital drain are invested in
The role played by transnational forms of
power is too often overlooked in work on illegality. In the case of the Triple Frontier, the sources of negative constructions have often
stemmed from the security apparatus of the United States, particularly in everything that pertains to the demonization of the area as one of the axes of evil. The
linkage between terrorism and various forms of illegal trade is part of this narrative . Although this was not part of my research at that
property abroad. This money laundered outside Argentina exceeds the estimates for the national debt estimated in 140 billions of dollars.
time, shortly after the September 11 events in the United States, residents of Puerto Iguazú and Foz do Iguaçu, commented on how US envoys tried to shape local journalists’ reporting. Even though at some points representatives of
the Argentine and Brazilian states might have echoed these supranational constructions, for the most part, and particularly during the last decade, authorities from both nations generally challenged them. They have particularly
representatives of the US State Department
established between forms of social protest and terrorism.
objected to the linkages
often
An Agenda to Research Illegality This Symposium addresses the irony of an increase in regulation and control at a time when the dominant paradigm has emphasized freedom, circulation and flows. Individuals and things that until
quite recently were outside the radar of the law have become subject to tight forms of inspection and discipline. The resurgence of populism and the abandonment of the Washington Consensus in South America are often associated
with what some call the post-neoliberal. Various scholars have recently analyzed the revival of supposedly defunct state redistributive and protective measures (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2012; Leiva 2008; MacDonald and Ruckert 2009;
works focus mainly in exploring the transformations in forms of governance and the political economy. They seek to identify alternatives to market
liberalism (Rovira Kaltwasser 2007) and to understand the current expansion of the nation state. However, to my knowledge, we still have not
examined ethnographically how the changing role of the state might entail new forms of illegality and criminalization. The brief analysis in this
Merino 2011). Most of the
essay suggests that we should examine more closely how the new class and state alliances are producing new politics of blame not necessarily targeted to those traditionally excluded. We should be wary, however, to think of these
Comaroff (2012:6–7) have recently challenged us to narrate world historical processes
from its undersides because they believe “the present reveals itself more starkly from the antipodes.” By examining the South African
developments as representing a stage in the configuration of illegalities. Comaroff and
case in particular, they delve into the inequities of the Post-colony and show us that the promise of a better future with neoliberal capitalism did not materialize. The current processes examined in this Symposium suggest that there
Depending on what vantage point we choose, we might foresee a future
of individuals outlawed and reduced to bare life or we might imagine a more equitable world in which the rich, for a change, might also be subjected to forms of discipline and
might be more than one vantage point to examine the present and possible futures.
control.
Enframing of security makes macro-political violence inevitable
Burke 7 – Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales
(Anthony, Theory & Event, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason,”
Project MUSE)
threats, insecurities
and political manipulation, or the play of institutional, economic or political interests (the 'military-industrial complex'). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be discounted, but they flow
over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only come to form a powerful structure of common sense but
the apparently solid ground of the real itself. In this light, the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-making and
justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are more than merely arguments, rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly they mobilise forms of
knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media, citizens, bureaucracies and military forces
This essay develops a theory about the causes of war -- and thus aims to generate lines of action and critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based either on a given sequence of events,
with organising systems of belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than that. They are truthsystems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in modernity: ontologies, statements about truth
and being which claim a rarefied privilege to state what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I am
thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement about the nature and ideality of being (in this case political being, that of the
nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and
application of strategic knowledge for the use of armed force, and the creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security
and national survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or positivistic inquiry into the
fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of things inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential
attributes'.17 In contrast, drawing on Foucauldian theorising about truth and power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a claim to
the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity, existence and action; one that is not essential or
timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and conflictual
socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'18 in its most sweeping and powerful form. I see such a drive for ontological
certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it takes the form of the existential and rationalist ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and
exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that confines
it within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in
the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation with violence: the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual
structure that generates violence. Here we are witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an
ontology of violence (the national security state). When we consider their relation to war, the two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and
doubly in combination) tends both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in scale and duration, or in unintended
effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost
and with limited impact -- it permeates being. This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger), showing how they
crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz. This creates both a profound ethical and
pragmatic problem. The ethical problem arises because of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image
of technology and being in which humans are merely utilitarian instruments for use, control and destruction, and
force -- in the words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the linear system
of effects imagined in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon
itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction. In the era of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt
(that violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn against those that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are
made to coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21 What I am trying to
describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by security,
statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of
knowledge with particular systemic roles and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity.
Positivistic or scientific claims to epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and
political action, which in turn support larger ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a
common horizon of certainty that is one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more
totalising and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being) has analytical
The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy doctrine) claims
positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a
desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national existence, security, or order . However in practice, technique quickly passes
into ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence which
itself admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict, and the
resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy
claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for an ultimate purpose (securing being)
that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a technique not merely becomes an instrument of state power but
ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have
no essence or integrity outside their value as objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology
immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis
value, it tends to break down in action.
generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized manoeuvres in
the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the
"deterrent power" that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that
these dual ontologies of war link being, means, events and decisions into a single, unbroken chain whose very
process of construction cannot be examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S.
neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in his 2002 West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached from strong
ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war on terror'.24 Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that
obsessive ontological commitments have led to especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25 However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to disentangle strategic from existential
without interrogating more deeply how they form a conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's
thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will continue to
be made. The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the national security state and the
violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out
reason, and to open up choice in that way. However
every other possibility of revealing being', how can they be escaped? 26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is there any scope for
agency and resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the political -- needs to be respected and understood. However, we are far from
powerless in the face of them. The need is to critique dominant images of political being and dominant ways of
securing that being at the same time, and to act and choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global rule of the political. Friend and Enemy:
Violent Ontologies of the Nation-State In his Politics Among Nations Hans Morgenthau stated that 'the national interest of a peace-loving nation can only be defined in terms of national security, which is the irreducible minimum that
diplomacy must defend with adequate power and without compromise'. While Morgenthau defined security relatively narrowly -- as the 'integrity of the national territory and its institutions' -- in a context where security was in
practice defined expansively, as synonymous with a state's broadest geopolitical and economic 'interests', what was revealing about his formulation was not merely the ontological centrality it had, but the sense of urgency and priority
he accorded to it: it must be defended 'without compromise'.27 Morgenthau was a thoughtful and complex thinker, and understood well the complexities and dangers of using armed force. However his formulation reflected an
security was conceived in modern political thought as an
existential condition -- a sine qua non of life and sovereign political existence -- and then married to war and
instrumental action, it provides a basic underpinning for either the limitless resort to strategic violence without
effective constraint, or the perseverance of limited war (with its inherent tendencies to escalation) as a permanent feature of
politics. While he was no militarist, Morgenthau did say elsewhere (in, of all places, a far-reaching critique of nuclear strategy) that the 'quantitative and qualitative competition for conventional weapons is a rational instrument
influential view about the significance of the political good termed 'security'. When this is combined with the way in which
of international politics'.28 The conceptual template for such an image of national security state can be found in the work of Thomas Hobbes, with his influential conception of the political community as a tight unity of sovereign and
people in which their bodies meld with his own to form a 'Leviathan', and which must be defended from enemies within and without. His image of effective security and sovereignty was one that was intolerant of internal difference
and dissent, legitimating a strong state with coercive and exceptional powers to preserve order and sameness. This was a vision not merely of political order but of existential identity, set off against a range of existential others who
were sources of threat, backwardness, instability or incongruity.29 It also, in a way set out with frightening clarity by the theorist Carl Schmitt and the philosopher Georg Hegel, exchanged internal unity, identity and harmony for
permanent alienation from other such communities (states). Hegel presaged Schmitt's thought with his argument that individuality and the state are single moments of 'mind in its freedom' which 'has an infinitely negative relation to
itself, and hence its essential character from its own point of view is its singleness': Individuality is awareness of one's existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states,
each of which is autonomous vis-a-vis the others...this negative relation of the state to itself is embodied in the world as the relation of one state to another and as if the negative were something external.30 Schmitt is important both
for understanding the way in which such alienation is seen as a definitive way of imagining and limiting political communities, and for understanding how such a rigid delineation is linked to the inevitability and perpetuation of war.
Schmitt argued that the existence of a state 'presupposes the political', which must be understood through 'the specific political distinction...between friend and enemy'. The enemy is 'the other, the stranger; and it sufficient for his
nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in an extreme case conflicts with him are possible'.31 The figure of the enemy is constitutive of the state as 'the specific entity of a
people'.32 Without it society is not political and a people cannot be said to exist: Only the actual participants can correctly recognise, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict...to judge
whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence.33 Schmitt links this stark ontology to war when he states that the political is
only authentic 'when a fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to the whole nation,
becomes public by virtue of such a relationship...in its entirety the state as an organised political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction'.34 War, in short, is an existential condition: the entire life of a human being is a
struggle and every human being is symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is
the existential negation of the enemy.35 Schmitt claims that his theory is not biased towards war as a choice ('It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but devastating war and every political deed a military action...it
When such a theory takes the form of a social discourse
(which it does in a general form) such an ontology can only support , as a kind of originary ground, the basic Clausewitzian assumption that
war can be a rational way of resolving political conflicts -- because the import of Schmitt's argument is that such 'political' conflicts are ultimately expressed through the
neither favours war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism') but it is hard to accept his caveat at face value.36
possibility of war. As he says: 'to the enemy concept belongs the ever-present possibility of combat'.37 Where Schmitt meets Clausewitz, as I explain further below, the existential and rationalistic ontologies of war join into a closed
This closed circle of existential and strategic reason generates a number of dangers. Firstly, the
emergence of conflict can generate military action almost automatically simply because the world is conceived in
terms of the distinction between friend and enemy; because the very existence of the other constitutes an
unacceptable threat, rather than a chain of actions, judgements and decisions. (As the Israelis insisted of Hezbollah, they 'deny our right to exist'.) This effaces agency, causality
and responsibility from policy and political discourse: our actions can be conceived as independent of the
conflict or quarantined from critical enquiry, as necessities that achieve an instrumental purpose but do not
contribute to a new and unpredictable causal chain. Similarly the Clausewitzian idea of force -- which, by transporting a Newtonian category from the natural into the
social sciences, assumes the very effect it seeks -- further encourages the resort to military violence. We ignore the complex history of a
conflict, and thus the alternative paths to its resolution that such historical analysis might provide, by
portraying conflict as fundamental and existential in nature; as possibly containable or exploitable, but
always irresolvable. Dominant portrayals of the war on terror, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, are arguably examples of such ontologies in action. Secondly, the militaristic force of such an ontology is visible, in
circle of mutual support and justification.
Schmitt, in the absolute sense of vulnerability whereby a people can judge whether their 'adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life'.38 Evoking the kind of thinking that would become controversial in the Bush doctrine,
Hegel similarly argues that: ...a state may regard its infinity and honour as at stake in each of its concerns, however minute, and it is all the more inclined to susceptibility to injury the more its strong individuality is impelled as a result
of long domestic peace to seek and create a sphere of activity abroad. ....the state is in essence mind and therefore cannot be prepared to stop at just taking notice of an injury after it has actually occurred. On the contrary, there arises
Identity, even more than physical security or autonomy, is put at stake in such
thinking and can be defended and redeemed through warfare (or, when taken to a further extreme of an absolute demonisation and dehumanisation of the other, by mass
in addition as a cause of strife the idea of such an injury...39
killing, 'ethnic cleansing' or genocide). However anathema to a classical realist like Morgenthau, for whom prudence was a core political virtue, these have been influential ways of defining national security and defence during the
twentieth century and persists into the twenty-first. They infused Cold War strategy in the United States (with the key policy document NSC68 stating that 'the Soviet-led assault on free institutions is worldwide now, and ... a defeat of
free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere')40 and frames dominant Western responses to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and like groups (as Tony Blair admitted in 2006, 'We could have chosen security as the battleground. But
we didn't. We chose values.')41 It has also become influential, in a particularly tragic and destructive way, in Israel, where memories of the Holocaust and (all too common) statements by Muslim and Arab leaders rejecting Israel's
existence are mobilised by conservatives to justify military adventurism and a rejectionist policy towards the Palestinians. On the reverse side of such ontologies of national insecurity we find pride and hubris, the belief that martial
preparedness and action are vital or healthy for the existence of a people. Clausewitz's thought is thoroughly imbued with this conviction. For example, his definition of war as an act of policy does not refer merely to the policy of
cabinets, but expresses the objectives and will of peoples: When whole communities go to war -- whole peoples, and especially civilized peoples -- the reason always lies in some political situation and the occasion is always due to
some political object. War, therefore, is an act of policy.42 Such a perspective prefigures Schmitt's definition of the 'political' (an earlier translation reads 'war, therefore, is a political act'), and thus creates an inherent tension between
its tendency to fuel the escalation of conflict and Clausewitz's declared aim, in defining war as policy, to prevent war becoming 'a complete, untrammelled, absolute manifestation of violence'.43 Likewise his argument that war is a
'trinity' of people (the source of 'primordial violence, hatred and enmity'), the military (who manage the 'play of chance and probability') and government (which achieve war's 'subordination as an instrument of policy, which makes it
subject to reason alone') merges the existential and rationalistic conceptions of war into a theoretical unity.44 The idea that national identities could be built and redeemed through war derived from the 'romantic counter-revolution' in
philosophy which opposed the cosmopolitanism of Kant with an emphasis on the absolute state -- as expressed by Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Bismarkian Realpolitik and politicians like Wilhelm Von Humbolt. Humbolt, a Prussian
minister of Education, wrote that war 'is one of the most wholesome manifestations that plays a role in the education of the human race', and urged the formation of a national army 'to inspire the citizen with the spirit of true war'. He
stated that war 'alone gives the total structure the strength and the diversity without which facility would be weakness and unity would be void'.45 In the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel made similar arguments that to for individuals
to find their essence 'Government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by war'.46 The historian Azar Gat points to the similarity of Clausewitz's arguments that 'a people and a nation can hope for a strong position in
the world only if national character and familiarity with war fortify each other by continual interaction' to Hegel's vision of the ethical good of war in his Philosophy of Right.47 Likewise Michael Shapiro sees Clausewitz and Hegel as
alike in seeing war 'as an ontological investment in both individual and national completion...Clausewitz figures war as passionate ontological commitment rather than cool political reason...war is a major aspect of being.'48 Hegel's
text argues that war is 'a work of freedom' in which 'the individual's substantive duty' merges with the 'independence and sovereignty of the state'.49 Through war, he argues, the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their
indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so the corruption in nations would be the product of a prolonged,
let alone 'perpetual' peace.50 Hegel indeed argues that 'sacrifice on behalf of the individuality of the state is a substantial tie between the state and all its members and so is a universal duty...if the state as such, if its autonomy, is in
jeopardy, all its citizens are duty bound to answer the summons to its defence'.51 Furthermore, this is not simply a duty, but a form of self-realisation in which the individual dissolves into the higher unity of the state: The intrinsic
worth of courage as a disposition of mind is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualise this end, and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality. This
form of experience thus contains the harshness of extreme contradictions: a self-sacrifice which yet is the real existence of one's freedom; the maximum self-subsistence of individuality, yet only a cog playing its part in the mechanism
of an external organisation; absolute obedience, renunciation of personal opinions and reasonings, in fact complete absence of mind, coupled with the most intense and comprehensive presence of mind and decision in the moment of
acting; the most hostile and so most personal action against individuals, coupled with an attitude of complete indifference or even liking towards them as individuals.52 A more frank statement of the potentially lethal consequences of
patriotism -- and its simultaneously physical and conceptual annihilation of the individual human being -- is rarely to be found, one that is repeated today in countless national discourses and the strategic world-view in general. (In
contrast, one of Kant's fundamental objections to war was that it involved using men 'as mere machines or instruments'.53) Yet however bizarre and contradictory Hegel's argument, it constitutes a powerful social ontology: an
the
nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core element of politics. It does not explain why so many policymakers
think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married to a more rationalistic form of strategic thought that claims to link
violent means to political ends predictably and controllably, and which, by doing so, combines military action and national
purposes into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire to decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it is helpful to
apparently irrefutable discourse of being. It actualises the convergence of war and the social contract in the form of the national security state. Strategic Reason and Scientific Truth By itself, such an account of
focus on the modernity of this ontology -- one that is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological progress, and in its insistence on imposing images of scientific truth from the physical
one of the reasons Clausewitz
was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed to have chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological
outlook associated with the industrial revolution'.54 Set into this epistemological matrix, modern politics and
government engages in a sweeping project of mastery and control in which all of the world's resources -- mineral,
animal, physical, human -- are made part of a machinic process of which war and violence are viewed as
normal features. These are the deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of the most revealing contemporary examples comes from the writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a
sciences (such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For example, the military theorist and historian Martin van Creveld has argued that
Harvard professor and later U.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. He wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945 U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the
ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in emerging countries'. This 'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of power in foreign
Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the United States, but
in a particular epistemology (theory of knowledge) . Kissinger asserted that the West is 'deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge
policy'.55
consists of recording and classifying data -- the more accurately the better'. This, he claimed, has since the Renaissance set the West apart from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that have escaped the early impact of
Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost entirely internal to the observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for control was beset by a corrosive
anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons proliferation and constant military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and militancy of new post-colonial states, order and mastery were harder to define
and impose. He worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had 'encouraged political multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is difficult to
achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience' (emphasis added). He mourned that 'the greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order'.57 Here were
the driving obsessions of the modern rational statesman based around a hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For the two decades after 1945, our international activities were based on the assumption that
technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct "operational" concept of international order has proved too
simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. Our deepest challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though overwhelming military
Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for order and certainty continually
confront chaos, resistance and uncertainty: clay that won't be worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that refuse to
surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons of the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words. Yet as his sinister, Orwellian
exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world' demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This is a vicious, historic irony: a desire to control nature,
technology, society and human beings that is continually frustrated, but never abandoned or rethought . By 1968 U.S.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the rationalist policymaker par excellence, had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not
prevail in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's refusal to accept this conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to condemn
hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of Cambodia to two more decades of horror and misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another
strength will remain with the two superpowers.58
Republican Administration crowned more than decade of failed and destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In this struggle with the lessons of Vietnam,
we are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a craving for order,
control and certainty in the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that
Kissinger's thinking -- and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was embedded in instrumental images of
technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of power and an image of social and political order . In his essay 'The
Government of Subject Races' Cromer envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as best achieved by a
central authority working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine' .60 Kissinger analogously invoked the
revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical transformation,
virtues of 'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that technological progress no longer brought untroubled control: the Westernising 'spread of technology and its associated
rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of reality'.61 We sense the rational policymaker's frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a machine, ordered by a form of power and governmental reason which
deploys machines and whose desires and processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine. Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a seat of power in the
West and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it from the East -- human material, material wealth, knowledge,
This desire for order in the shadow of
chaos and uncertainty -- the constant war with an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern
thought, and was a major impetus to the development of technological reason and its supporting theories of
knowledge. As Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the 'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern strategy, foreign policy and
Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the apparently stable soil of natural science, in the hope of finding immovable
and unchallengeable roots there. While this process has origins in ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the Renaissance. The key
figures in this process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a hunger for political and ontological certainty, a
positivist epistemology and a naïve faith in the goodness of invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order,
and with it a new human power over the world, through a new empirical methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the
senses and the understanding. With this method, he argued, we can 'derive hope from a purer alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted'.63 In a similar move, Descartes sought
to conjure certainty from uncertainty through the application of a new method that moved progressively out from a
few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a divinely granted faculty of judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics
formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos.64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that
scientists should privilege 'objective', quantifiable qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones ; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative
what have you -- is processed by the machine, then converted into more power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance.62
analysis could science attain certain knowledge of the world'.65 Such doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth were to have powerful echoes in the 20th Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis, game theory, cybernetics and
computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of matter and energy and applied the most advanced applications of
mathematics and computing to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a terrible irony: as even Morgenthau understood, the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the
control of the weapons themselves, into political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method not merely as way of achieving a purer access to truth and epistemological certainty, but as liberating a new
power that would enable the creation of a new kind of Man. He opened the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and human power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a firmer foundation,
and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative comparison between 'men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the
new Indies' -- one that echoes in advance Kissinger's distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of empirical science: anyone making this comparison, he remarked,
'will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man'.68 We may be forgiven for blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man' was indeed in the process of stealing a new fire from the heavens and seizing God's power over the
world for itself. Not only would the new empirical science lead to 'an improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation of the Fall of Adam: For man, by the
fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not become entirely and
utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, 'in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford
mankind in some degree his bread...69 There is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement -- one that, in many ways, came to characterise western modernity itself, and which is easily recognisable in a generation of
modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam was the Judeo-Christian West's primal creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship and ambivalence. Bacon forecast
here a return to Eden, but one of man's own making. This truly was the death of God, of putting man into God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of faith could disguise the awesome epistemological violence
which now subordinated creation to man. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As such, there is nothing but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most
what would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over
creation'? If the new method and invention brought modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation, communications, education and comfort, it also enabled the Armenian
genocide, the Holocaust and two world wars; napalm, the B52, the hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and
military strategy. Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching inventions -- radar, television, rocketry, computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national
security and militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass -- brought in their wake upheaval
distinguished of human actions...inventions are a blessing and a benefit without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And
slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new
empirical science would be ambivalence as much as certainty; degradation as much as enlightenment; the
destruction of nature as much as its utilisation. Doubts and Fears: Technology as Ontology If Bacon could not reasonably be expected to foresee many of these developments, the idea that
and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery; navigation,
scientific and technological progress could be destructive did occur to him. However it was an anxiety he summarily dismissed: ...let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and sciences becoming depraved to malevolent or
luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good; talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches, light itself...Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that
after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion.71 By the mid-Twentieth Century,
, such fears could no longer
be so easily wished away, as the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer recognised. He said in a 1947 lecture: We felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting and
in the end in large measure achieving the realization of atomic weapons...In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no over-statement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they
empire over creation -- his discovery of the innermost secrets of
brought destruction and horror. Scientific powers
that had been consciously applied in the defence of life and in the hope of its betterment now threatened its total
and absolute destruction. This would not prevent a legion of scientists, soldiers and national security policymakers later attempting to apply Bacon's faith in invention and Descartes' faith in mathematics to
cannot lose.72 Adam had fallen once more, but into a world which refused to acknowledge its renewed intimacy with contingency and evil. Man's
matter and energy, of the fires that fuelled the stars -- had not 'enhanced human power and dignity' as Bacon claimed, but instead
make of the Bomb a rational weapon. Oppenheimer -- who resolutely opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb -- understood what the strategists could not: that the weapons resisted control, resisted utility, that 'with the release
of atomic energy quite revolutionary changes had occurred in the techniques of warfare'.73 Yet Bacon's legacy, one deeply imprinted on the strategists, was his view that truth and utility are 'perfectly identical'.74 In 1947
Oppenheimer had clung to the hope that 'knowledge is good...it seems hard to live any other way than thinking it was better to know something than not to know it; and the more you know, the better'; by 1960 he felt that 'terror
attaches to new knowledge. It has an unmooring quality; it finds men unprepared to deal with it.'75 Martin Heidegger questioned this mapping of natural science onto the social world in his essays on technology -- which, as 'machine',
has been so crucial to modern strategic and geopolitical thought as an image of perfect function and order and a powerful tool of intervention. He commented that, given that modern technology 'employs exact physical science...the
technology and its relation to science, society
and war cannot be reduced to a noiseless series of translations of science for politics, knowledge for force, or force
for good. Instead, Oppenheimer saw a process frustrated by roadblocks and ruptured by irony; in his view there was no smooth, unproblematic
translation of scientific truth into social truth, and technology was not its vehicle. Rather his comments raise profound and painful ethical questions that resonate with terror and uncertainty. Yet this has not
prevented technology becoming a potent object of desire, not merely as an instrument of power but as a promise and
conduit of certainty itself. In the minds of too many rational soldiers, strategists and policymakers, technology brings with it the truth of its
enabling science and spreads it over the world. It turns epistemological certainty into political certainty; it turns
control over 'facts' into control over the earth. Heidegger's insights into this phenomena I find especially telling and disturbing -- because they underline
the ontological force of the instrumental view of politics. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger's striking argument was that in the modernising
West technology is not merely a tool, a 'means to an end'. Rather technology has become a governing image of the
modern universe, one that has come to order, limit and define human existence as a 'calculable coherence of
forces' and a 'standing reserve' of energy . Heidegger wrote: 'the threat to man does not come in the first instance from the
potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence .'77
This process Heidegger calls 'Enframing' and through it the scientific mind demands that 'nature reports itself in
some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and remains orderable as a system of information'. Man is
not a being who makes and uses machines as means, choosing and limiting their impact on the world for his ends;
rather man has imagined the world as a machine and humanity everywhere becomes trapped within its logic. Man,
he writes, 'comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall...where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.
Meanwhile Man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.'78 Technological man not only becomes the name for a project of
lordship and mastery over the earth, but incorporates humanity within this project as a calculable resource. In
strategy, warfare and geopolitics human bodies, actions and aspirations are caught, transformed and
perverted by such calculating, enframing reason: human lives are reduced to tools, obstacles, useful or
obstinate matter. This tells us much about the enduring power of crude instrumental versions of strategic thought, which relate not merely to the actual use of force but to broader geopolitical strategies that see, as
limited war theorists like Robert Osgood did, force as an 'instrument of policy short of war'. It was from within this strategic ontology that figures like the Nobel prize-winning economist
Thomas Schelling theorised the strategic role of threats and coercive diplomacy, and spoke of strategy as 'the power to hurt'.79 In the 2006 Lebanon war we can
deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science'.76 Yet as the essays and speeches of Oppenheimer attest,
see such thinking in the remark of a U.S. analyst, a former Ambassador to Israel and Syria, who speculated that by targeting civilians and infrastructure Israel aimed 'to create enough pain on the ground so there would be a local
political reaction to Hezbollah's adventurism'.80 Similarly a retired Israeli army colonel told the Washington Post that 'Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy
price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-
the available critical, interpretive or
languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform or
refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question
here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought
and remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war
doctrines seek mainly to improve the accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart
from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82 In the case
land.'81 Conclusion: Violent Ontologies or Peaceful Choices? I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that
performative
of a theorist like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences
have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat and espouses a moral community that
stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires
the resort to war as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a
performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I suspect that
The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of
'human beings as we know them' -- which ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates
(indeed reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an ontology of being for one of
becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new possibilities through agonistic relation to others,
provides a less destructive and violent way of acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference .85 My argument here, whilst
normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and
rational instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and community -- my analysis
even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the is.
Neither the progressive flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an
international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the conceptual
and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come , against everything Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress,
modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not
simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing ...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility
does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation.
that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic
the challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government,
technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our entire
space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -- militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert
intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive not merely from particular
choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical' discourses of
scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment images of being. Confined within such an
epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers' choices become necessities, their actions become
inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die . Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which
builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained
through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may
simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing
cascade of discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses,
however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does, admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it
is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are
utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark
ontology of the friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and
power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that
choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making
even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to
produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities .88) There seems no point in
following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique.
However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the
modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that
would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his
decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that,
faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that
policy choices could aim to bring into
being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the
space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a
very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the
choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully,
questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and autonomy? Do
they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and environmental price?
Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and
effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and
consequences which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and
more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and
violence? Will our thought?
Reject the affirmative’s security discourse – this untimely intervention is the only chance for a counter-discourse
Calkivik 10 – PhD in Poli Sci @ Univ Minnesota (Emine Asli, 10/2010, "DISMANTLING SECURITY," PhD
dissertation submitted to Univ Minnesota for Raymond Duvall,
http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/99479/1/Calkivik_umn_0130E_11576.pdf)
It is this self-evidence of security even for critical approaches and the antinomy stemming from dissident voices reproducing the language of those they dissent from that constitutes the starting point for this chapter, where I elaborate
the suggestion to dismantle security was itself deemed as an
untimely pursuit in a world where lives of millions were rendered brutally insecure by poverty, violence, disease, and ongoing
political conflicts. Colored by the tone of a call to conscience in the face of the ongoing crisis of security, it was not the time, interlocutors argued, for self-indulgent critique. I will argue that it is the
element of being untimely, the effort, in the words of Walter Benjamin, “to brush history against the grain” that gives critical thinking its
power.291 It might appear as a trivial discussion to bring up the relation between time and critique because conceptions of critical thinking in the discipline of International Relations already possess the notion that critical
on the meaning of dismantling security as untimely critique. As mentioned in the vignette in the opening section,
thought needs to be untimely. In the first section, I will tease out what this notion of untimeliness entails by visiting ongoing conversations within the discipline about critical thought and political time. Through this discussion, I hope
to clarify what sets apart dismantling security as untimely critique from the notion of untimeliness at work in critical international relations theory. The latter conception of the untimely, I will suggest, paradoxically calls on critical
This notion of the untimely demands that
critique be strategic and respond to political exigency, that it provide answers in this light instead of raising more questions about which questions could be raised or what
thought to be “on time” in that it champions a particular understanding of what it means for critical scholarship to be relevant and responsible for its times.
presuppositions underlie the questions that are deemed to be waiting for answers. After elaborating in the first section such strategic conceptions of the untimeliness of critical theorizing, in the second section I will turn to a different
sense of the untimely by drawing upon Wendy Brown’s discussion of the relation between critique, crisis, and political time through her reading of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”292 In contrast to a notion of
untimeliness that demands strategic thinking and punctuality, Brown’s exegesis provides a conception of historical materialism where
critique is figured as a force of disruption, a
form of intervention that reconfigures the meaning of the times and “contest[s] the very senses of time invoked to
declare critique ‘untimely’.”293 Her exposition overturns the view of critique as a self-indulgent practice as it highlights the immediately
political nature of critique and reconfigures the meaning of what it means for critical thought to be relevant.294 It is in this sense of the untimely, I will suggest, that
dismantling security as a critique hopes to recover. I should point out that in this discussion my intention is neither to construct a theory of critique nor to provide an exhaustive review and evaluation of the forms of critical theorizing
in International Relations. Rather, my aim is to contribute to the existing efforts that engage with the question of what it means to be critical apart from drawing the epistemological and methodological boundaries so as to think about
how one is critical.295 While I do not deny the importance of epistemological questions, I contend that taking time to think about the meaning of critique beyond these issues presents itself as an important task. This task takes on
additional importance within the context of security studies where any realm of investigation quickly begets its critical counterpart. The rapid emergence and institutionalization of critical terrorism studies when studies on terrorism
were proliferating under the auspices of the so-called Global War on Terror provides a striking example to this trend. 296 Such instances are important reminders that, to the extent that epistemology and methodology are reified as the
sole concerns in defining and assessing critical thinking297 or “wrong headed refusals”298 to get on with positive projects and empirical research gets branded as debilitating for critical projects, what is erased from sight is the
political nature of the questions asked and what is lost is the chance to reflect upon what it means for critical thinking to respond to its times. In his meditation on the meaning of responding and the sense of responsibility entailed by
writing, Jean-Luc Nancy suggests that “all writing is ‘committed.’” 299 This notion of commitment diverges from the programmatic sense of committed writing. What underlies this conception is an understanding of writing as
there is always an
ethical commitment prior to any particular political commitment , such a notion of writing contests the notion of creative autonomy premised on the idea of a free, selfresponding: writing is a response to the voice of an other.In Nancy’s words, “[w]hoever writes responds” 300 and “makes himself responsible to in the absolute sense.”301 Suggesting that
legislating subject who responds. In other words, it discredits the idea of an original voice by suggesting that there is no voice that is not a response to a prior response. Hence, to respond is configured as responding to an expectation
rather than as an answer to a question and responsibility is cast as an “anticipated response to questions, to demands, to still-unformulated, not exactly predictable expectations.”302 Echoing Nancy, David Campbell makes an
The question, then, is not
whether as scholars we are engaged or not, but what the nature of this engagement is. Such a re-framing of the question is intended to highlight the political nature
important reminder as he suggests that as international relations scholars “we are always already engaged,” although the sites, mechanisms and quality of engagements might vary.303
of all interpretation and the importance of developing an “ethos of political criticism that is concerned with assumptions, limits, their historical production, social and political effects, and the possibility of going beyond them in
It is
this ethos of critique that dismantling security hopes to recover for a discipline where security operates as the
foundational principle and where critical thinking keeps on contributing to security’s impressing itself as a self-evident condition.
thought and action.”304 Taking as its object assumptions and limits, their historical production and social and political effects places the relevancy of critical thought and responsibility of critical scholarship on new ground.
Critical Theory and Punctuality Within the context of International Relations, critical thought’s orientation toward its time comes out strongly in Kimberley Hutchings’s formulation.305 According to Hutchings, no matter what form it
what distinguishes critical international relations theory from other forms of theorizing is “its orientation towards
change and the possibility of futures that do not reproduce the hegemonic power of the present .”306 What this implies about the nature
takes,
of critical thought is that it needs to be not only diagnostic, but also self-reflexive. In the words of Hutchings, “all critical theories lay claim to some kind of account not only of the present of international politics and its relation to
possible futures, but also of the role of critical theory in the present and future in international politics.” 307 Not only analyzing the present, but also introducing the question of the future into analysis places political time at the center
of critical enterprise and makes the problem of change a core concern. It is this question of change that situates different forms of critical thinking on a shared ground since they all attempt to expose the way in which what is presented
their efforts to go against the dominant currents and challenge the hegemony of
by showing how contemporary practices and discourses contribute to the perpetuation of structures of
power and domination, critical theorists in general and critical security studies specialists in particular take on an untimely endeavor. It is this understanding
of the untimely aspect of critical thinking that is emphasized by Mark Neufeld, who regards the development of critical approaches to security as “one of the more
hopeful intellectual developments in recent years.”308 Despite nurturing from different theoretical traditions and therefore harboring “fundamental differences between modernist and postmodernist
as given and natural is historically produced and hence open to change. With their orientation to change,
existing power relations
commitments,” writes Neufeld, scholars who are involved in the critical project nevertheless “share a common concern with calling into question ‘prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are
The desire for change—through being untimely and making the way to alternative futures that would no longer resemble the present—have led some scholars to
emphasize the utopian element that must accompany all critical thinking. Quoting Oscar Wilde’s aphorism—a map of the world that
does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, Ken Booth argues for the need to restore the role and reputation of utopianism in the theory and practice of international
organized.’” 309
politics. 310 According to Booth, what goes under the banner of realism—“ethnocentric self-interest writ large”311 — falls far beyond the realities of a drastically changed world political landscape at the end of the Cold War. He
describes the new reality as “an egg-box containing the shells of sovereignty; but alongside it a global community omelette [sic] is cooking.”312 Rather than insisting on the inescapability of war in the international system as political
realists argue, Booth argues for the need and possibility to work toward the utopia of overcoming the condition of war by banking on the opportunities provided by a globalizing world. The point that critical thought needs to be
critical theory purport[s] to ‘think against’ the
prevailing current” and that “[c]ritical security studies is no exception” to this enterprise.313 According to the authors, the function of critical
approaches to security is to problematize what is taken for granted in the disciplinary production of knowledge about
security by “resist[ing], transcend[ing] and defeat[ing]…theories of security, which take for granted who is to be
secured (the state), how security is to be achieved (by defending core ‘national’ values, forcibly if necessary) and from
whom security is needed (the enemy).”314 While critical theory in this way is figured as untimely, I want to suggest that this notion of untimeliness gets construed paradoxically in a quite timely
untimely by going against its time is also emphasized by Dunne and Wheeler, who assert that, regardless of the form it takes, “
fashion. With a perceived disjuncture between writing the world from within a discipline and acting in it placed at the center of the debates, the performance of critical thought gets evaluated to the extent that it is punctual and in
synch with the times. Does critical thought provide concrete guidance and prescribe what is to be done? Can it move beyond mere talk and make timely political interventions by providing solutions? Does it have answers to the
strategic questions of progressive movements? Demanding that critical theorizing come clean in the court of these questions, such conceptions of the untimely demand that critique respond to its times in a responsible way, where
being responsible is understood in stark contrast to a notion of responding and responsibility that I briefly discussed in the introductory pages of this chapter (through the works of Jean-Luc Nancy and David Campbell). Let me visit
two recent conversations ensuing from the declarations of the contemporary crisis of critical theorizing in order to clarify what I mean by a timely understanding of untimely critique. The first conversation was published as a special
issue in the Review of International Studies (RIS), one of the major journals of the field. Prominent figures took the 25th anniversary of the journal’s publication of two key texts—regarded as canonical for the launching and
development of critical theorizing in International Relations—as an opportunity to reflect upon and assess the impact of critical theory in the discipline and interrogate what its future might be. 315 The texts in question, which are
depicted as having shaken the premises of the static world of the discipline, are Robert Cox’s 1981 essay entitled on “Social Forces, States, and World Orders”316 and Richard Ashley’s article, “Political Realism and Human
Interests.”317 In their introductory essay to the issue, Rengger and Thirkell-White suggest that the essays by Cox and Ashley—followed by Andrew Linklater’s Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations318 —
represent “the breach in the dyke” of the three dominant discourses in International Relations (i.e., positivists, English School, and Marxism), unleashing “a torrent [that would] soon become a flood” as variety of theoretical
approaches in contemporary social theory (i.e., feminism, Neo-Gramscianism, poststructuralism, and post-colonialism) would get introduced through the works of critical scholars.319 After elaborating the various responses given to
and resistance raised against the critical project in the discipline, the authors provide an overview and an assessment of the current state of critical theorizing in International Relations. They argue that the central question for much of
the ongoing debate within the critical camp in its present state—a question that it cannot help but come to terms with and provide a response to—concerns the relation between critical thought and political practice. As they state, the
“fundamental philosophical question [that] can no longer be sidestepped” by critical International Relations theory is the question of the relation between “knowledge of the world and action in it.”320 One of the points alluded to in
the essay is that forms of critical theorizing, which leave the future “to contingency, uncertainty and the multiplicity of political projects” and therefore provide “less guidance for concrete political action”321 or, again, those that
problematize underlying assumptions of thought and “say little about the potential political agency that might be involved in any subsequent struggles”322 may render the critical enterprise impotent and perhaps even suspect. This
point comes out clearly in Craig Murphy’s contribution to the collection of essays in the RIS’s special issue. 323 Echoing William Wallace’s argument that critical theorists tend to be “monks,”324 who have little to offer for political
actors engaged in real world politics, Murphy argues that the promise of critical theory is “partially kept” because of the limited influence it has had outside the academy towards changing the world.Building a different world, he
suggests, requires more than isolated academic talk; that it demands not merely “words,” but “deeds.”325 This, according to Murphy, requires providing “knowledge that contributes to change.”326 Such knowledge would emanate
from connections with the marginalized and would incorporate observations of actors in their everyday practices. More importantly, it would create an inspiring vision for social movements, such as the one provided by the concept of
human development, which, according to Murphy, was especially powerful “because it embodied a value-oriented way of seeing, a vision, rather than only isolated observations.”327 In sum, if critical theory is to retain its critical
edge, Murphy’s discussion suggests, it has to be in synch with political time and respond to its immediate demands. The second debate that is revelatory of this conception of the timing of critical theory—i.e., that critical thinking be
strategic and efficient in relation to political time—takes place in relation to the contemporary in/security environment shaped by the so-called Global War on Terror. The theme that bears its mark on these debates is the extent to
which critical inquiries about the contemporary security landscape become complicit in the workings of power and what critique can offer to render the world more legible for progressive struggles.328 For instance, warning critical
theorists against being co-opted by or aligned with belligerence and war-mongering, Richard Devetak asserts that critical international theory has an urgent “need to distinguish its position all the more clearly from liberal
imperialism.”329 While scholars such as Devetak, Booth,330 and Fierke331 take the critical task to be an attempt to rescue liberal internationalism from turning into liberal imperialism, others announce the “crisis of critical
theorizing” and suggest that critical writings on the nature of the contemporary security order lack the resources to grasp their actual limitations, where the latter is said to reside not in the realm of academic debate, but in the realm of
political practice.332 It is amidst these debates on critique, crisis, and political time that Richard Beardsworth raises the question of the future of critical philosophy in the face of the challenges posed by contemporary world
politics.333 Recounting these challenges, he provides the matrix for a proper form of critical inquiry that could come to terms with “[o]ur historical actuality.”334 He describes this actuality as the “thick context” of modernity (“an
epoch, delimited by the capitalization of social relations,” which imposes its own philosophical problematic—“that is, the attempt, following the social consequences of capitalism, to articulate the relation between individuality and
collective spirit”335 ), American unilateralism in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the growing political disempowerment of people worldwide. Arguing that “contemporary return of religion and new forms of
irrationalism emerge, in large part, out of the failure of the second response of modernity to provide a secular solution to the inequalities of the nation-state and colonization,”336 he formulates the awaiting political task for critical
endeavors as constructing a world polity to resist the disintegration of the world under the force of capital.It is with this goal in mind that he suggests that “responsible scholarship needs to rescue reason in the face irrational war”337
and that intellectuals need to provide “the framework for a world ethical community of law, endowed with political mechanisms of implementation in the context of a regulated planetary economy.”338 He suggests that an aporetic
form of thinking such as Jacques Derrida’s—a thinking that “ignores the affirmative relation between the determining powers of reason and history”339 —would be an unhelpful resource because such thinking “does not open up to
where work needs to be done for these new forms of polity to emerge.”340 In other words, critical thinking, according to Beardsworth, needs to articulate and point out possible political avenues and to orient thought and action in
concrete ways so as to contribute to progressive political change rather than dwelling on the encounter of the incalculable and calculation and im-possibility of world democracy in a Derridean fashion. In similar ways to the first
debate on critique that I discussed, critical thinking is once again called upon to respond to political time in a strategic and efficient manner. As critical inquiry gets summoned up to the court of reason in Beardsworth’s account, its
realm of engagement is limited to that which the light of reason can be shed upon, and its politics is confined to mapping out the achievable and the doable in a given historical context without questioning or disrupting the limits of
what is presented as “realistic” choices. Hence, if untimely critical thought is to be meaningful it has to be on time by responding to political exigency in a practical, efficient, and strategic manner. In contrast to this prevalent form of
understanding the untimeliness of critical theory, I will now turn to a different account of the untimely provided by Wendy Brown whose work informs the project of dismantling security as untimely critique. Drawing from her
untimely critique of security entails, simultaneously, an attunement to the times
and an aggressive violation of their self-conception . It is in this different sense of the untimely that the suggestion of dismantling security needs to be situated. Critique and
Political Time As I suggested in the Prelude to this chapter, elevating security itself to the position of major protagonist and extending a call to “dismantle security” was itself
declared to be an untimely pursuit in a time depicted as the time of crisis in security. Such a declaration stood as an exemplary moment (not in the
sense of illustration or allegory, but as a moment of crystallization) for disciplinary prohibitions to think and act otherwise—perhaps the moment when a doxa exhibits its most powerful hold. Hence, what is first
needed is to overturn the taken-for-granted relations between crisis, timeliness, and critique. The roots krisis and kritik can be traced back to
discussion of the relationship between critique, crisis, and political time, I will suggest that
the Greek word krinõ, which meant “to separate”, to “choose,” to “judge,” to “decide.”341 While creating a broad spectrum of meanings, it was intimately related to politics as it connoted a “divorce” or “quarrel,” but also a moment
of decision and a turning point. It was also used as a jurisprudential term in the sense of making a decision, reaching a verdict or judgment (kritik) on an alleged disorder so as to provide a way to restore order. Rather than being
separated into two domains of meaning—that of “subjective critique” and “objective crisis”—krisis and kritik were conceived as interlinked moments. Koselleck explains this conceptual fusion: [I]t wasin the sense of “judgment,”
“trial,” “legal decision,” and ultimately “court” that crisis achieved a high constitutionalstatus, through which the individual citizen and the community were bound together. The “for and against” wastherefore present in the original
meaning of the word and thisin a manner that already conceptually anticipated the appropriate judgment. 342 Recognition of an objective crisis and subjective judgments to be passed on it so as to come up with a formula for restoring
the health of the polity by setting the times right were thereby infused and implicated in each other.343 Consequently, as Brown notes, there could be no such thing as “mere critique” or “untimely critique” because critique always
entailed a concern with political time: “[C]ritique as political krisis promise[d] to restore continuity by repairing or renewing the justice that gives an order the prospect of continuity, that indeed ma[de] it continuous.”344 The breaking
of this intimate link between krisis and kritik, the consequent depoliticization of critique and its sundering from crisis coincides with the rise of modern political order and redistribution of the public space into the binary structure of
sovereign and subject, public and private.345 Failing to note the link between the critique it practiced and the looming political crisis, emerging philosophies of history, according Koselleck, had the effect of obfuscating this crisis. As
he explains, “[n]ever politically grasped, [this political crisis] remained concealed in historico-philosophical images of the future which cause the day’s events to pale.”346 It is this intimate, but severed, link between crisis and critique
in historical narratives that Wendy Brown’s discussion brings to the fore and re-problematizes. She turns to Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and challenges conventional understandings of historical
practice of critical theory appeals to a concern with time to the
that “[t]he crisis that incites critique and that critique engages itself signals a rupture of temporal continuity , which is at the same time a rupture in
political imaginary .”348 Cast in these terms, it is a particular experience with time, with the present, that Brown suggests Benjamin’s theses aim to capture. Rather than an unmoving or an automatically overcome
present (a present that is out of time), the present is interpreted as an opening that calls for a response to it. This call for a response highlights the idea that, far from being
a luxury, critique is non-optional in its nature. Such an understanding of critical thought is premised on a historical consciousness that grasps the present historically so as to break with the selfconception of the age. Untimely
critique transforms into a technique to blow up the present through fracturing its apparent seamlessness by
insisting on alternatives to its closed political and epistemological universe .349 Such a conception resonates with the distinction that Žižek
makes between a political subjectivity that is confined to choosing between the existing alternatives—one that takes the limits of what is given as
the limits to what is possible—and a form of subjectivity that creates the very set of alternatives by “transcend[ing] the coordinates
of a given situation [and] ‘posit[ing] the presuppositions’ of one's activity” by redefining the very situation within
which one is active.”350 With its attempt to grasp the times in its singularity, critique is cast neither as a breaking free from the weight of time (which would amount to ahistoricity) nor being weighed down
by the times (as in the case of teleology).351 It conceives the present as “historically contoured but not itself experienced as history because not necessarily
continuous with what has been.”352 It is an attitude that renders the present as the site of “non-utopian possibility” since it is
historically situated and constrained yet also a possibility since it is not historically foreordained or determined.353 It entails contesting the delimitations of choice and
challenging the confinement of politics to existing possibilities . Rather than positing history as existing objectively outside of narration, what Brown’s discussion
materialism, which conceives of the present in terms of unfolding laws of history.347 According to Brown, the
extent
highlights is the intimate relation between the constitution of political subjectivity vis-à-vis the meaning of history for the present. It alludes to “the power of historical discourse,” which Mowitt explains as a power “to estrange us
what we believe to have happened to us bears concretely on what we are
prepared to do with ourselves both now and in the future.”354 Mark Neocleous concretizes the political stakes entailed in such
encounters with history—with the dead—from the perspective of three political traditions: a conservative one, which aims to reconcile the dead
with the living, a fascist one, which aims to resurrect the dead to legitimate its fascist program, and a historical
materialist one, which seeks redemption with the dead as the source of hope and inspiration for the future.355 Brown’s
from that which is most familiar, namely, the fixity of the present” because “
discussion of critique and political time is significant for highlighting the immediately political nature of critique in contrast to contemporary invocations that cast it as a self-indulgent practice, an untimely luxury, a disinterested,
attempt to trace critique vis-à-vis its relation to political time provides a counter-narrative to the
conservative and moralizing assertions that shun untimely critique of security as a luxurious interest that is committed to
abstract ideals rather than to the “reality” of politics—i.e., running after utopia rather than modeling “real world” solutions. Dismantling security as untimely
critique entails a similar claim to unsettle the accounts of “what the times are” with a “bid to reset time.” 356 It aspires to be
untimely in the face of the demands on critical thought to be on time; aims to challenge the moralizing move , the call to conscience
that arrives in the form of assertions that saying “no!” to security, that refusing to write it, would be untimely .
Rather than succumbing to the injunction that thought of political possibility is to be confined within the framework of security, dismantling security aims to open up space for
alternative forms, for a different language of politics so as to “stop digging” the hole politics of security have dug us
and start building a counter-discourse. Conclusion As an attempt to push a debate that is fixated on security to the limit and explore what it means to dismantle security, my
engagement with various aspects of this move is not intended as an analysis raised at the level of causal interpretations or as an attempt to find better solutions to a problem that already has a name. Rather, it tries to
recast what is taken-for-granted by attending to the conceptual assumptions, the historical and systemic conditions
within which the politics of security plays itself out. As I tried to show in this chapter, it also entails a simultaneous move of refusing to
be a disciple of the discipline of security . This implies overturning not only the silent disciplinary protocols about
which questions are legitimate to ask, but also the very framework that informs those questions. It is from this perspective that I devoted two
distanced, academic endeavor. Her
chapters to examining and clarifying the proposal to dismantle security as a claim on time. After explicating, in Chapter 4, the temporal structure that is enacted by politics of security and elaborating on how security structures the
relation between the present and the future, in this chapter, I approached the question of temporality from a different perspective, by situating it in relation to disciplinary times in order to clarify what an untimely critique of security
such a notion of
the untimely paradoxically calls on critical thought to be on time in the sense of being punctual and strategic. Turning to
Wendy Brown’s discussion of the relation between critique and political time, I elaborated on the sense of untimely critique that dismantling security strives for—a critique that goes
against the times that are saturated by the infinite passion to secure and works toward taking apart the
architecture of security.
means. I tried to elaborate this notion of the untimely by exploring the understanding of untimeliness that informs certain conceptions of critical theorizing in International Relations. I suggested that
3
GOP will retake the Senate – strong candidates, low Obama popularity, congressional ballot lead, weak Dem
incumbents
Kristol 9/18/14 (William, Founder and Editor @ Weekly Standard + Political/Foreign Policy Commentator, "All
Together Now," http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/all-together-now_805307.html)
November 4 is likely to lead to a GOP takeover of the Senate after eight long years of Democratic control, and to perhaps the
largest GOP majority in the House in modern times. It’s an election that could—that should—set the stage for victory in 2016, as the Democrats’
triumph in 2006 set the stage for victory in 2008. So even though it’s contrary to interest for an opinion magazine to suggest a time out from
groaning and sniping and grumbling—and even though we reserve the right to groan and snipe and grumble at our discretion—maybe it’s a good
moment for everyone out there who thinks the country is endangered by Barack Obama, that it is being damaged by Harry Reid, and that it would
be ruined by another Democratic presidential victory in 2016 to take a deep breath, let bygones be bygones, leave future concerns to the future,
and work to win in November. Fear of the Democrats should be a sufficient motive. But is there anything else to be said to inspire voters to vote,
donors to donate, and activists to activate? Yes. The Republican class of 2014 candidates are very impressive. A glance at their
biographies would show an unusual number of high-quality men and women, many of whom have real achievements outside politics, few of
whom are career politicians or children of politicians. From Tom Cotton in Arkansas to Joni Ernst in Iowa; from Ben Sasse in
Nebraska to Dan Sullivan in Alaska; from Elise Stefanik in upstate New York to Lee Zeldin on Long Island; from Marilinda Garcia in
western New Hampshire to Martha McSally in southeastern Arizona—a new generation of Republicans has stepped forward
worthy of support. And a glance at their birth dates would show that the Grand Old Party is this year the party of youth. For example: There
are seven marquee Senate races in which the Republican candidate has a good chance to take a Democratic seat (on
top of virtually certain pickups in West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota ). It is on these races that control of the Senate
will hinge. In all of these contests—Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire—the
Republican challenger is younger than his or her Democratic opponent. Looking at the GOP field in 2014, it’s perhaps an exaggeration to
invoke John F. Kennedy’s words: “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans . . . tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and
bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has
always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” But looking at these candidates, Republicans
would be justified in thinking—as Democrats thought in 1958, two years before Kennedy’s inauguration—that theirs is the party of youth and
energy, of new ideas and bold imagination. In the 1958 off-year elections, Democrats increased their majority in the House by 48
and won 13 Republican Senate seats, defeating 10 Republican incumbents. The GOP won’t achieve a victory of that magnitude in
But they can aspire to big gains , especially when polls show disapproval of Obama high, Republicans leading
in the generic congressional ballot, and a slew of Democratic incumbents below 50 percent .
2014.
Obama gets the blame - midterms are a referendum on his performance
Podhoretz 3/18/14 (John, editor of Commentary magazine, columnist for the New York Post, the author of several
books on politics, and a former presidential speechwriter, NY Post, "Obama’s failed foreign policy just another drag
on Democrats," http://nypost.com/2014/03/18/obamas-failed-foreign-policy-just-another-drag-on-democrats/)
He is the president. It’s his watch . Americans may be war-weary, but they still look to the man in the White House
to provide an overall sense of stability and safety.¶ Democrats need Americans to feel positively about the president
going into the 2014 elections. All election experts say the party’s showing nationally in November will correlate strongly
with how the country feels about the job the president is doing.
Legalization means Dems keep the Senate – boosts turnout and ensures support for
endangered candidates
Hudak 8/21/14 (John, Political Analyst + Fellow in Governance Studies @ Brookings Institution, "Here's Why
Marijuana Legalization Just Might Keep the Senate Blue," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/marijuanalegalization-senate_n_5697958.html)
Marijuana legalization might ensure Harry Reid remains the Senate Majority Leader in 2014. In a year in which the battle
for majority control of the Senate is the biggest story of the midterms, every race counts. One of the more competitive battles for
the Senate is taking place in Alaska, where incumbent Sen. Mark Begich is fighting for another six-year term. However, the Senate race
is not the only choice Alaskans will face this November. They will decide whether their state will legalize recreational
marijuana, following their counterparts to the south: Washington and Colorado. There are many reasons why the Alaska Senate race is
competitive. Begich eked out a win in 2008 over the late Senator Ted Stevens. Alaska is a conservative, Republican-voting state. Mitt Romney
carried the state by 14 points in 2012. In fact, Alaska has only given its electoral votes to a Democratic candidate once since statehood, during
LBJ’s 1964 landslide victory. Finally, this year’s Senate race falls during a midterm, when electorates tend to favor Republican
candidates, particularly with an unpopular Democrat in the White House. Marijuana legalization could change that by
dramatically changing the character and nature of the midterm electorate in Alaska , and helping Sen. Begich win
reelection . People turn out for elections when they feel passion about a candidate or a race, but ballot initiatives can also
generate interest, passion and turnout. Research by Smith, DeSantis & Kassel illustrate that ballot initiatives in 2004 centering on outlawing same
sex marriage generated additional turnout (even in a presidential year) among conservatives in key states.
Passion about marijuana
legalization can do the same, and we have evidence of this effect . In 2012, Colorado and Washington had statewide
referenda on the question of marijuana legalization. With those initiatives on the ballot, the composition of each state’s electorate changed in
significant ways. Using exit poll data to compare changes in the characteristics of the electorate in each state between 2008 and 2012, we can
make inferences about the effects of legalization initiatives. brookings Marijuana legalization supporters, particularly passionate ones, tend to be
younger and either more liberal or more libertarian in nature—though recent polls suggest broader support in the electorate. In Washington in
2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 10% of the electorate. In 2012, with legalization on the ballot, that number increased to 21% of the
electorate—a more than 100% increase. The effect was even more pronounced for the 18-24 demographic, where electoral composition increased
from 5% to 13%. In addition, in 2008, 27% of the electorate called themselves “liberal.” In 2012, that number increased to 31%. brookings
Similar trends existed in Colorado. In 2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 14% of the electorate. In 2012, that group composed 20% of
voters. In fact, in Colorado the 18-24 demographic increased from 5% to 12% of the electorate from 2008 to 2012. The ideological composition
of turnout changed as well. In 2008, 17% of the electorate called itself liberal. In 2012, that figure skyrocketed to 28%. In Washington and
Colorado, the composition of those who turned out to vote changed dramatically between 2008 and 2012—each a presidential year. Nationally,
there was little change in the composition of the electorate in terms of youth and liberalism. But in the states with marijuana legalization
initiatives it did, dramatically. brookings There is also evidence those electoral shifts helped Democrats. In Colorado, those who voted in favor of
Amendment 64 (marijuana legalization) voted for President Obama at a rate of 68%—far above his support among all Colorado voters (51%).
Similarly, in Washington, among those who voted in favor of Initiative 502 (marijuana legalization), 72% also voted for President Obama. The
president won about 56% statewide. Roll Call’s Henry Decker and FireDogLake’s Jon Walker have also offered great insight into how electoral
changes coincide with marijuana legalization initiatives. However, there is more to this story than simply turnout. In many ways,
Democrats have missed a real opportunity to make electoral gains—or limit losses—by pushing legalization
initiatives. Some credit President Bush’s reelection in 2004 to the push for same sex marriage initiatives on statewide ballots by spurring social
conservative turnout. Democrats could have received a similar boost by pushing legalization initiatives that would
alter the electorate in a year when Democrats need it for structural and political reasons .
Democratic control of the Senate dooms TPA – GOP control key to passage
Hatch 14 (Orrin, Ranking Member of US Senate Finance Committee, "HATCH PUSHES FOR SENATE ACTION
ON BILL TO HELP BOOST JOB-CREATING TRADE PACTS," 2/4, States News Serivce, lexis)
Put simply, if Congress does not renew TPA, the TPP negotiations and those with the European Union will almost certainly
fail . That is why it is so disconcerting to me to see how some of my colleagues across the aisle have responded to President Obamas call for
TPA renewal.¶ TPA is one of the few issues where both parties can and should be able work together to achieve a common goal. I know that I,
along with my Republican colleagues, stand ready and willing to work with the administration to approve TPA as soon
as possible.¶ I believe the bipartisan bill Chairman Baucus and I recently introduced to renew TPA would receive strong bipartisan
support in the Senate if it were allowed to come up for a vote .¶ Indeed, I am confident that the vast majority of my
colleagues would join me in supporting the bill.¶ The problem is, Republicans are not in the majority in the
Senate. It is the Democrats that control the agenda . And, unfortunately, the Presidents call to renew TPA does not
appear to be a priority for them.¶ The question is: Will Senate Democrats work with the President on this issue?¶ I dont know the answer
to that question. But, I have to say that things dont look good.¶ Instead of robust support for the President and his trade agenda, the response weve
seen from Democrats has ranged from awkward silence on TPA to outright hostility. ¶ Needless to say, Im extremely disappointed by this.¶ Mr.
President, the issue here is fairly simple.¶ If we want to grow our economy through trade, the Congress must approve TPA and do so soon. ¶ The
President can play a key role here. By forcefully advocating for TPA renewal, he can help turn some of the skeptics in his party around.¶
Recently, the Financial Times published a powerful editorial which outlined the need for TPA and the role the President must play for TPA to
succeed. According to the editorial:¶ Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton pulled out all the stops to push through approval of the
controversial North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. He was able to squeak through a narrow victory by deft lobbying
of lawmakers and a willingness to make a strong case for globalization to the American public. Mr. Obama is lagging behind his predecessor on
both counts. The case for TTIP and TPP are both strong. The time for Mr. Obama to make those arguments has arrived. He has every incentive to
succeed. Failure to secure [TPA] would be a grievous blow to his presidency¶ Now, I understand that there are some powerful political forces that
lead some of my friends on the other side of the aisle to oppose international trade. However, lets be clear, if we fail to approve TPA, we
will be doing our nation and our economy a great disservice.¶ International trade is a good thing for our country. It is
one of the few tools Congress has to grow our economy that does not add to the federal deficit.¶ Mr. President, as I mentioned,
Senator Baucus and I, along with Chairman Camp, have negotiated and introduced a bipartisan, bicameral TPA bill. It is, in my opinion, the only
TPA bill that stands a chance of getting passed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. ¶ My colleagues on the other side of
the aisle have a choice. They can either work with Republicans to pass our bill and empower our country to complete
these important trade agreements, or they can throw up more roadblocks and cast more uncertainty on the Presidents
trade agenda.¶ As I stated, Republicans stand ready to work with President Obama on these issues and to help these trade
negotiations succeed. For the sake of our country and our economy, I sincerely hope my Democratic colleagues here in the Senate are
willing to do the same.
TPA passage vital for the economy and global trade
Kennedy and McLarty 2/12/14 (Mark and Mack, director of George Washington University's Graduate School of
Political Management + White House chief of staff and Special Envoy for the Americas under President Bill
Clinton, "Expand trade, improve economy: Column," http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/12/tradepromotion-authority-obama-economic-growth-column/5340989/)
After struggling with anemic growth for the last six years, the nation now finds itself with an opportunity to renew its vitality
through the most powerful economic elixir: expanded trade.¶ This benefit cannot be achieved without giving our
partners the confidence that the United States is negotiating in good faith, free from last minute changes and additions. This requires giving
President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (commonly known as TPA or "fast track") to present trade agreements for an up or down vote in
Congress.¶ Passing TPA is distasteful to both Republicans who do not the trust the president and Democrats who believe the benefits of free trade
are overstated. Yet before they added cherry flavors, many medicines with powerful cures had a bitter flavor. For the sake of America's
economic health , Congress must come together in a bipartisan fashion to give President Obama fast track authority, a power
granted to every chief executive since 1974.¶ The Obama Administration, led ably by United States Trade Representative (USTR) Michael
Froman, has engaged the European Union and nations in the Pacific in serious negotiations for high standard trade agreements. These two
accords would increase ties with historic allies, make us more competitive, increase job opportunities, enhance incomes and allow American
businesses to effectively sell to the fast growing Asian region.¶ Critics would have you believe that somehow these agreements would weaken
environmental and labor standards, but most partner countries in question are already high-income nations that embrace strong worker and
environmental protections.¶ Ambassador Froman attempted to assuage those fears saying, "We have made clear that we're committed to
negotiating a high-standard, ambitious comprehensive deal." The TPA bill introduced by Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah,
already incorporates new protections to ensure that all partner countries meet rigorous guidelines. ¶ As President Clinton's chief of staff when the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed and one of the deciding votes the last time Congress granted Fast Track authority,
we know how hard it is to move a significant trade accord. We also know how the dire predictions of skeptics are often shown to be illusory.¶ The
only sucking sound induced by NAFTA was the gasps of trade skeptics whose economic chimeras failed to materialize. NAFTA has instead
exceeded expectations.¶ It launched Mexico on a path to strengthen its democratic institutions and progressively open its economy. A more
democratic and competitive Mexico, along with a more tightly integrated supply chain between the three North American economies, makes each
member of the NAFTA trio more competitive in world markets. Similar benefits await if we proceed with the proposed Asian and European
accords.¶ Passing TPA will require significant attention and effort from President Obama and Congress. Over 500
advocacy groups have written to lawmakers urging a vote against it. To date, 49 more House Democrats are on record opposing fast track than
supported NAFTA in 1994.¶ Advocating for free trade will require the president to stand up to members of his own party
to further his economic agenda.¶ It will take courage to forcefully advocate for an issue that splits one's party , but the benefits
to the nation will far outweigh any intra-party strife. That is what presidential leadership is all about.¶ There has never been an
economic golden age without trade. It has been the driving force behind new innovation. Its expansion has allowed countless
people the chance to achieve financial prosperity and advance civilization.¶ Trade has a wonderful history, but we believe its
best days are still ahead. Every trade liberalization advance has enhanced the well being of mankind. The United States has
arrived at a monumental opportunity to craft landmark trade agreements with the world. Let us not fail to build accords that will
spark economic growth , create a better future for our children and launch a new golden era of trade .
That prevents multiple scenarios for global WMD conflict
Panzner 8 (Michael, faculty at the New York Institute of Finance, 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and
currency markets who has worked in New York and London for HSBC, Soros Funds, ABN Amro, Dresdner Bank,
and JPMorgan Chase “Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse,” pg. 136-138)
Continuing calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United States and other nations to spew
forth protectionist legislation like the notorious Smoot-Hawley bill. Introduced at the start of the Great Depression, it triggered a series
of tit-for-tat economic responses, which many commentators believe helped turn a serious economic downturn into a prolonged and
devastating global disaster. But if history is any guide, those lessons will have been long forgotten during the next collapse. Eventually, fed by a
mood of desperation and growing public anger, restrictions on trade, finance, investment, and immigration will almost certainly intensify.
Authorities and ordinary citizens will likely scrutinize the cross-border movement of Americans and outsiders alike, and lawmakers may even
call for a general crackdown on nonessential travel. Meanwhile, many nations will make transporting or sending funds to other countries
exceedingly difficult. As desperate officials try to limit the fallout from decades of ill-conceived, corrupt, and reckless policies, they will
introduce controls on foreign exchange. Foreign individuals and companies seeking to acquire certain American
infrastructure assets, or trying to buy property and other assets on the cheap thanks to a rapidly depreciating dollar,
will be stymied by limits on investment by noncitizens. Those efforts will cause spasms to ripple across economies
and markets, disrupting global payment, settlement, and clearing mechanisms. All of this will, of course, continue to
undermine business confidence and consumer spending. In a world of lockouts and lockdowns, any link that
transmits systemic financial pressures across markets through arbitrage or portfolio-based risk management, or that
allows diseases to be easily spread from one country to the next by tourists and wildlife , or that otherwise facilitates
unwelcome exchanges of any kind will be viewed with suspicion and dealt with accordingly. The rise in isolationism and protectionism will
bring about ever more heated arguments and dangerous confrontations over shared sources of oil, gas, and other key
commodities as well as factors of production that must, out of necessity, be acquired from less-than-friendly nations. Whether involving raw
materials used in strategic industries or basic necessities such as food, water, and energy, efforts to secure adequate supplies will take increasing
precedence in a world where demand seems constantly out of kilter with supply. Disputes over the misuse, overuse, and pollution of the
environment and natural resources will become more commonplace. Around the world, such tensions will give rise to full-scale
military encounters, often with minimal provocation. In some instances, economic conditions will serve as a convenient pretext
for conflicts that stem from cultural and religious differences. Alternatively, nations may look to divert attention
away from domestic problems by channeling frustration and populist sentiment toward other countries and cultures.
Enabled by cheap technology and the waning threat of American retribution, terrorist groups will likely boost the
frequency and scale of their horrifying attacks, bringing the threat of random violence to a whole new level.
Turbulent conditions will encourage aggressive saber rattling and interdictions by rogue nations running amok . Ageold clashes will also take on a new, more heated sense of urgency. China will likely assume an increasingly belligerent posture
toward Taiwan, while Iran may embark on overt colonization of its neighbors in the Mideast. Israel, for its part,
may look to draw a dwindling list of allies from around the world into a growing number of conflicts . Some observers,
like John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have even speculated that an “intense confrontation” between the United
States and China is “inevitable” at some point. More than a few disputes will turn out to be almost wholly ideological. Growing cultural and
religious differences will be transformed from wars of words to battles soaked in blood. Long-simmering
resentments could also degenerate quickly, spurring the basest of human instincts and triggering genocidal acts.
Terrorists employing biological or nuclear weapons will vie with conventional forces using jets, cruise missiles,
and bunker-busting bombs to cause widespread destruction. Many will interpret stepped-up conflicts between Muslims and
Western societies as the beginnings of a new world war .
4
Text – The United States should begin a process of negotiated rulemaking over marihuana in the United States,
including an announced intention to remove marihuana from the Controlled Substance Act within a year and
convene affected parties for binding mediation over the substance of this policy. We’ll clarify.
Competes –
It doesn’t fiat topical action. The process is uncertain and open-ended --- mutually exclusive with the plan
USDA 6 (The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service administers programs that facilitate
the efficient, fair marketing of U.S. agricultural products, including food, fiber, and specialty crops “What is
Negotiated Rulemaking?”, http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5089434)
How reg-neg differs from “traditional” notice-and-comment rulemaking The “traditional” notice-and-comment
rulemaking provided in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires an agency planning to adopt a rule on a particular
subject to publish a proposed rule (NPRM) in the Federal Register and to offer the public an opportunity to comment. The
APA does not specify who is to draft the proposed rule nor any particular procedure to govern the drafting process.
Ordinarily, agency staff performs this function, with discretion to determine how much opportunity is allowed for public input. Typically, there
is no opportunity for interchange of views among potentially affected parties, even where an agency chooses
to conduct a hearing . The “traditional” notice-and-comment rulemaking can be very adversarial. The dynamics encourage parties to take
extreme positions in their written and oral statements – in both pre-proposal contacts as well as in comments on any published proposed rule as
well as withholding of information that might be viewed as damaging. This adversarial atmosphere may contribute to the expense and delay
associated with regulatory proceedings, as parties try to position themselves for the expected litigation. What is lacking is an opportunity for the
parties to exchange views, share information, and focus on finding constructive, creative solutions to problems. In negotiated
rulemaking, the agency, with the assistance of one or more neutral advisors known as “convenors,” assembles a
committee of representatives of all affected interests to negotiate a proposed rule. Sometimes the law itself will specify
which interests are to be included on the committee. Once assembled, the next goal is for members to receive training in interest-based problemsolving and consensus-decision making. They then must make sure that all views are heard and that each committee member
agrees to a set of ground rules for the negotiated rulemaking process. The ultimate goal is to reach consensus on a text
that all parties can accept . The agency is represented at the table by an official who is sufficiently senior to be able to speak
authoritatively on its behalf. Negotiating sessions are chaired by a neutral mediator or facilitator skilled in assisting in the
resolution of multiparty disputes. The Checklist—Advantages as well as Misperceptions The advantages of negotiated rulemaking
include: Producing greater information sharing and better communication; Enhancing public awareness and involvement; Providing a
“reality check” to agencies and other interests; Encouraging discovery of more creative options for rulemaking; Increasing compliance with
rules; Saving time, money and effort in the long run; Allowing earlier implementation dates; Building cooperative relationships among
key parties; Increasing the certainty of the outcome for all and thus enabling better planning; Producing superior rules on technically
complex topics because of the input of all parties; Giving rise to fewer legislative “end runs” against the rule; and Reducing post-issuance
contentiousness and litigation. What negotiating rulemaking does not do: It does not cause the agency to delegate its ultimate obligation to
determine the content of the proposed and final regulations; It does not exempt the agency from any statutory or other requirements; It does
not eliminate the agency’s obligation to produce any economic analysis; paperwork or other regulatory analysis requirements imposed by law or
agency policy; It does not require parties or non-parties to set aside their legal or political rights as a condition of participating; and It is not
compulsory, participation is voluntary, for the agency and for others.
Solves the whole case --- reg neg facilitates a consensus decision that’s legitimate and quickly enforced
Harter 97 (Philip J., Visiting Associate Professor and Director of the Program on Consensus, Democracy, and
Governance – Vermont Law School, “Fear of Commitment: An Affliction of Adolescents”, Duke Law Journal,
April, 46 Duke L.J. 1389, Lexis)
The most well developed of these techniques, other than the public hearings and meetings that are adjuncts of the APA itself, [*1400] is
negotiated rulemaking (reg neg). 43 Fifteen years ago, when the theory of negotiated rulemaking was just emerging, I predicted a number
of major benefits from the practice. 44 Among them was the fact that the parties would be able to participate directly and
immediately in the decision, thereby providing a legitimacy that is missing from hybrid rulemaking. In addition, the
costs of developing the rule may be lower since the parties would not have to engage in as much adversarial research
and positioning. The parties could focus on the issues that actually separate them and on the issues of importance to them. " Rulemaking
by negotiation can reduce the time and cost of developing regulations by emphasizing practical and empirical
concerns rather than theoretical predictions." 45 The parties have the experience and ability to focus on the details necessary to make a
rule work day-to-day in the field. Interestingly, the lack of judicial review was not advocated as a prime benefit. It would be a likely
ancillary benefit of the parties' mutual acceptance of the rule and its ensuing legitimacy, but was not an end in itself. Such
were the predictions before any reg negs were actually undertaken. Formal evaluations are extraordinarily expensive and face the difficulties
inherent in making counter-factual predictions (i.e., what would have happened if some other process were used to develop the rule), or finding a
suitably analogous rule with which to compare a given proceeding. 46 As a result, few formal evaluations have been conducted, so that it is
difficult to deter- [*1401] mine in a rigorous way the extent to which the theory has been borne out. One major evaluation has been undertaken
to compare negotiated rules at the EPA with those developed by the traditional notice-and-comment process. The study is currently being
conducted for the EPA by Cornelius M. Kerwin, Dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University and Professor Laura I. Langbein.
They have released a draft report of their analysis of the reg neg portion of their study. 47 Their initial conclusions include: Based on the data
presented above, negotiated rulemaking is successful on several critical dimensions. It is widely perceived by participants as an
effective means for developing regulations on virtually all important qualitative dimensions . The criteria established
in literature and law for the selection of candidates for reg neg appear to be relevant in the selection process used by EPA, although their
importance appears to vary from case to case and the discretion exercised by key Agency officials in the use of techniques is obviously
considerable. The opportunity to participate in the process appears to be extended broadly, albeit not universally, and EPA or the facilitator it
secured were frequently identified as an initiator of participation. The process of negotiation itself emerges as a very powerful
vehicle for learning what the participants in the process value highly, and there are many types of information that is exchanged.
The interviews suggest further that what is learned has long-term value and is not confined to a particular rulemaking... The negotiation process
employs a number of devices to subdivide issues, such as working groups and caucuses, that were viewed as effective by a substantial number of
respondents. And the use of non-committee observers serves as a device to expand participation without inflating the negotiating groups past
workable limits. Facilitators were generally viewed as competent, unbiased and providing a number of services that promoted consensus.
[*1402] Most participants believe their participation had a substantial effect on the agreement that was produced and
report that the opportunity to have an impact on the outcome was one of the aspects of the process they considered
most valuable. 48
Genuine reg neg spills over --- causes mainstreaming of cooperative environmentalism
Spence 1 (David B., J.D., Ph.D., and Assistant Professor of Legal and Regulatory Environment of Business –
University of Texas Graduate School of Business, “The Shadow of the Rational Polluter: Rethinking the Role of
Rational Actor Models in Environmental Law”, California Law Review, 89 Calif. L. Rev. 917, July, Lexis)
Presumably, defenders of the traditional model of regulation will continue to argue that even if cooperative regulation provides
all these tangible benefits, there are unacceptable process-related dangers, particularly the risk of capture, that are associated with
informal cooperation. Reformers [*995] cannot prove a negative, and no amount of success with cooperative approaches can
prove that capture will never occur. The more formal, adversarial and rule-based approach to regulation does make it
more difficult for influential firms to capture the regulatory process, and strict adherence to formally promulgated
rules does ensure a kind of policy transparency. 379 The price for these benefits, however, may be the slow erosion
of the regulatory system's legitimacy. Moreover, there are other reasons why the traditionalists' attack against informal
collaborative pressures rings hollow. First, in the modern environmental era, industry and environmental groups alike have
complained about departures from traditional or formal policymaking procedures to advance their respective policy goals.
Environmental groups have long enjoyed the kind of less formal contacts with the EPA that firms are now getting. And just as
critics challenge bargaining-based regulatory reform experiments as "perversions" of the public interest and subversions of the
rule of law, 380 so industry criticizes environmental groups' use of settlements with the EPA as a way to achieve policy gains in
arenas from which industry is excluded. 381 If informal influence poses a risk to democracy, it poses the same risk when
environmental groups exercise that influence. Second, these process-based objections elevate form over substance. If the current
system is not reflexive, adaptable and efficient enough, it is an insufficient answer to say that at least the system was created by a
transparent and formal process. If broader environmental audit immunities and cooperative regulatory programs produce
improvements in firms' environmental performance, critics should bear the burden of demonstrating that the downside risks of
these programs are sufficient to forgo those benefits. All of this implies that the EPA should continue and expand its use of
cooperative approaches to regulation. [*996] It seems unlikely, however, that the future of cooperative regulation will hinge on
arguments like these. The EPA's ambivalence toward cooperative regulation suggests that regardless of its theoretical
merits, cooperative regulation's future depends upon its ability to prove its worth to people inside and outside
government who exercise policy influence. Defenders of the rational polluter model within and without the agency
have proven their ability to resist heavy-handed attempts to force change, implying that a lighter touch is more likely
to be effective. Perhaps these experiments in cooperative regulation will sell themselves to an ever-broader
universe of policymakers as they produce real benefits incrementally. Unless and until that happens, cooperative
regulation will continue to be employed only at the margins of the regulatory process.
That spurs innovative solutions --- critical to solve warming
Siegel 10 (Joseph A., Senior Attorney – EPA, Adjunct Professor – Pace Law School, and Alternative Dispute
Resolution Specialist, “Collaborative Decision Making on Climate Change in the Federal Government”, Pace
Environmental Law Review, 27 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 257, Lexis)
Collaborative decision making can provide a forum for broad participation by multiple stakeholders, facilitate
cooperative learning among the participants, and result in selection of the best policy choices . 15 It ensures an opening
for group creativity and innovation that is often lacking in traditional regulatory processes. Collaborative decision
making can be particularly powerful in the context of complex public policy issues, such as climate change, because it can
create a dialogue based on hope 16 that can transcend the despair that leads to inaction. 17 By promoting ownership and
empowerment among the stakeholders, collaborative decision-making can increase the likelihood of prompt action while reducing the likelihood
of litigation. 18 While [*263] collaborative decision-making may appear to be quite resource intensive because it often requires investment of
more time up-front, it can ultimately produce results faster and with fewer resources than traditional processes. 19 As a result of up-front efforts
that engender buy-in from multiple stakeholders, decisions made through collaborative processes are more lasting and more likely to be
implemented than decisions made via traditional processes. 20 Collaborative decision-making does not mean that the government cedes its
authority to make decisions. It retains ultimate authority to impose its own solutions using traditional processes. In fact, collaborative decisions
may actually thrive when the government's authorities are clear and purposeful. 21 Likewise, stakeholders retain their right to any alternatives to
the collaborative process that are otherwise available to them. 22 Collaborative decision-making is not a panacea alternative to traditional
environmental regulation and will not always be the appropriate means of making environmental decisions. 23 It does not guarantee that
cooperation among stakeholders will come easily nor does its adoption mean that resolution of complex issues will be achieved. However, it is
an important option to be [*264] considered, particularly for intractable problems like climate change, where
government needs to take advantage of a wide range of opportunities for making progress. The following section discusses why
collaborative decision making is particularly well suited for addressing climate change. B. Collaborative Decision Making as a Strategy to
Address Climate Change The federal government is at a turning point on how it will reckon with climate change. The
Obama Administration has taken bold steps to ensure that the issue remains front and center on the national agenda and that progress is made on a
response. In the first nine months after President Obama's inauguration, the Administration, among other things, set in motion a process for
establishing vehicle greenhouse gas emissions standards and stringent fuel economy standards, 24 issued a proposed and final Greenhouse Gas
Reporting rule, 25 reversed the prior Administration's denial 26 of California's request for a waiver under the Clean Air Act to regulate
greenhouse gases from motor vehicles, 27 responded to the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA 28 by proposing an endangerment
finding [*265] under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, 29 and initiated a rulemaking process to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary
sources. 30 The President has also championed cap-and-trade legislation and is prepared to use the Clean Air Act as a backstop if Congress does
not take action. 31 Despite these efforts, after eight years of relative inaction on climate change by the Bush Administration, there is a major task
at hand to build capacity on climate change science, law and policy, education, and technology. There is also a great need to build
capacity on collaborative decision-making and public involvement on climate change. This can be accomplished, in part,
by increasing the numbers of climate change stakeholder representatives and neutrals who are skilled in the process of
collaborative decision-making. While building process capacity may not always flow from the need to build substantive capacity on any
particular environ-mental issue, many characteristics of the climate change problem suggest a need for process-oriented capacity-building now.
32 Among the factors that call for collaborative decision making are: (1) the need for adaptive management in the
face of uncertainty; (2) the benefits of drawing upon the significant expertise gained by many state and local governments
during the years of federal government inaction; (3) the expectation that a climate bill will necessitate intensive rulemaking; (4) the federal
government's unique role in responding to natural disasters; (5) the international trans-boundary nature of impacts and solutions; and (6) the
anticipated stress on infrastructure and resources due to climate change. A number of these factors also reflect the importance of the federal
government as an agent for collaborative decision making. Each of these six factors are [*266] discussed below. While they are by no means
exclusive, these factors represent some of the most compelling reasons for why collaborative decision making should be embraced
as a process solution to climate change.
Extinction
Mazo 10 (Jeffrey Mazo – PhD in Paleoclimatology from UCLA, Managing Editor, Survival and Research Fellow
for Environmental Security and Science Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, 3-2010,
“Climate Conflict: How global warming threatens security and what to do about it,” pg. 122)
The best estimates for global warming to the end of the century range from 2.5-4.~C above pre-industrial levels, depending
on the scenario. Even in the best-case scenario, the low end of the likely range is 1 .goC, and in the worst 'business as usual'
projections, which actual emissions have been matching, the range of likely warming runs from 3.1--7.1°C. Even keeping emissions at
constant 2000 levels (which have already been exceeded), global temperature would still be expected to reach 1.2°C (O'9""1.5°C)above preindustrial levels by the end of the century." Without early and severe reductions in emissions , the effects of climate
change in the second half of the twenty-first century are likely to be catastrophic for the stability and security of
countries in the developing world - not to mention the associated human tragedy. Climate change could even undermine the
strength and stability of emerging and advanced economies, beyond the knock-on effects on security of widespread
state failure and collapse in developing countries.' And although they have been condemned as melodramatic and alarmist, many
informed observers believe that unmitigated climate change beyond the end of the century could pose an existential
threat to civilisation." What is certain is that there is no precedent in human experience for such rapid change or such climatic conditions,
and even in the best case adaptation to these extremes would mean profound social, cultural and political changes.
5
Courts are currently managing their dockets but increased litigation forces resource trade-offs
Levy 13 (Martin K. – Associate Professor, Duke University School of Law, “Judicial Attention as a Scarce
Resource: A Preliminary Defense of How Judges Allocate Time Across Cases in the Federal Courts of Appeals”,
2013, http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5539&context=faculty_scholarship)
For the past several decades, appellate judges and court scholars have struggled with the existence o f, and potential responses
to, an overwhelming predicament: the growth of the federal appellate caseload has far outpaced the growth of the
federal appellate judiciary. 1 The average annual filings per active judgeship stood at 73 in1950 , 2 jumped to 137
by 1978, 3 and hovers around 330 today 4 —even though the number of judgeships has nearly tripled in that time. 5 No
wonder then that the phrase “crisis in volume” was coined, 6 and is now commonly used, 7 to describe the
workload of the federal courts of appeals. To cope with their expanding caseload, appellate courts have adopted a wide
array of case management techniques . 8 These include holding oral argument 9 and publishing opinions in a
smaller percent- age of cases, 10 and having staff attorneys prepare dispositions in a larger percentage of cases. 11 Although
specific practices vary considerably from circuit to circuit, 12 their animating rationale is the same: to keep the courts running,
some sets of cases must receive considerably less judicial attention than others . 13
Plan causes a wave of litigation
Walters 14 (John P. – director of drug control policy for President George W. Bush, is chief operating officer of the
Hudson Institute , “First Legalization, Then Lawsuits “, 5/26, http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/firstlegalization-then-lawsuits_792870.html)
With the open sale of formerly illegal drugs, the number of users will grow. Some advocates expect legalization to destroy criminal markets
by providing cheaper drugs, which should boost sales. If the legal market does not produce discounts, however, the black market will
continue to operate in parallel with the new higher-end market—a kind of “fast-food” network persisting alongside the new “gourmet” outlets.
Either way, the result is increased use and increased profits. But communities are not helpless before this onslaught. Even when
the criminal law has been compromised at the state level, resort to civil procedure might offer protection. Legal or
illegal, marijuana injures users—researchers call it a “neurotoxin”—and those who distribute it for profit are liable for its
known effects. Its production and distribution, after all, are still federal crimes. America’s tort attorneys could respond by suing
drug retailers for the harm done by their product to particular addicts, then collecting damages for the clients and legal fees for
themselves. This approach would not depend on the president or federal, state, or local government policy. It would require only a victim, a drug
trafficker, a capable lawyer, and a sympathetic jury. Some law firms could afford to take such cases as a pro bono service to
families. They already see for themselves that growing drug addiction makes their communities unattractive to legitimate businesses.
Philanthropies concerned about the disadvantaged could also push this initiative forward. Some clever attorneys might
partner directly with treatment providers for referrals . Others might advertise on billboards, buses, television, and radio. They might
find that YouTube and sites on the Internet are a vast repository of self-incrimination. In addition, the retailers of marijuana as
medicine—whether for smoking or eating in baked goods, candy, and ice cream— should be easy targets of legal action. There is
scant evidence of legitimate medical efficacy and much evidence that “medical marijuana” is a calculated fraud producing large profits. Far from
approving it, the FDA has written a letter denying that smoked marijuana is medicine. If you think trial lawyers made a windfall on
tobacco, just wait until they get a handle on marijuana. The scientific and medical evidence against marijuana now dwarfs what we
knew about tobacco at the time of the surgeon general’s report of 1964. No warning label in the world could shield marijuana
growers and sellers from the tsunami of tort liability they should face from distributing a product with so many
known harmful effects.
The link is huge and statistically proven --- only consensus-based policy ensures compliance
Coglianese 97 (Cary, Assistant Professor of Public Policy – Harvard, “Assessing Consensus: The Promise and
Performance of Negotiated Rulemaking”, Duke Law Journal, April, 46 Duke L.J. 1255, Lexis)
Of course, the fact that groups have challenged some negotiated rules does not fully respond to the claim that a
consensus-based approach
reduces the frequency of litigation. 179 To determine whether the litigation rate for negotiated rules is notably lower than that for
conventional rules, as the NPR report suggested, it is first necessary to determine the actual litigation rate for [*1296] conventional rules. Since
the EPA has often been used as the benchmark, I use the EPA for purposes of my analysis as well. It has been widely believed that interest
groups challenge virtually every EPA regulation in court. 180 In arguing that judicial review has imposed undesirable costs on
agency management, for example, political scientist James Q. Wilson emphasized that "over 80 percent of the three hundred or so
regulations EPA issues each year wind up in the courts." 181 Making a similar argument, Philip Howard invoked this statistic in his
best-selling critique of the modern regulatory state. 182 As Appendix D shows, the belief that 80 percent of EPA rules get challenged in court has
woven its way into an exhaustive body of work by journalists, governmental officials, and scholars. 183 The original source of the 80 percent
statistic has remained largely obscure. 184 The statistic, which originated in speeches given by William Ruckelshaus, 185 has been attributed at
different [*1297] times to at least two other EPA administrators: Lee Thomas 186 and William Reilly. 187 Part of the ambiguity of the 80
percent statistic stems from confusion about precisely what it means. In some accounts the 80 percent figure purports to be the litigation rate for
all EPA "decisions;" 188 in others it is the rate for all EPA "rules" or "regulations;" 189 and in still others it represents the litigation rate for all
"nonroutine" or "major" rules. 190 Sometimes the 80 percent rate has even been inflated to 85 percent. 191 Amazingly, no EPA analyses
underlay the origin of this statistic, even though it has taken on a life of its own. 192 In order to [*1298] test the validity of the statistic, I
collected data from the EPA's litigation docket as well as from the dockets at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 193
The EPA dockets included litigation filed against the agency in any federal court during 1987-1991. During this time, the EPA issued 1568 rules
and was named as a defendant in 411 cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeals, where rule challenges must be filed. 194 The major environmental
statutes typically require that petitions for judicial review be filed within a few months after the EPA promulgates a rule, 195 so most petitions for
review of a rule are filed in the year when the rule is published. Some small portion of suits are not filed in the same year as the rule, but
aggregating the entire five-year period minimizes any error due to such a time lag. The litigation rate for rules issued during the 1987-1991 period
covered by the EPA docket, even conservatively calculated, turned out to be much lower than widely believed: only 26 percent of rules issued
were challenged. In calculating this rate, I have used what I take to be the most realistic estimate for EPA rules. I have relied on a computer
search of the Federal Register which specifically excluded those rules that were minor corrections, technical amendments, or clarifications of
other rules. 196 When [*1299] other available estimates of the total number of EPA rules were used, the litigation rate dropped even lower. For
instance, using Office of Management and Budget (OMB) data on the number of final EPA rules promulgated during the same time period, the
litigation rate amounted to only 19 percent - precisely the opposite of the rate widely assumed. 197 As is sometimes acknowledged, the 80
percent figure was not originally intended to describe the rate at which all EPA rules were litigated, but only those
rules significant enough to be published in the EPA's semiannual Regulatory Agenda. 198 Since the rules appearing
in the Regulatory Agenda are by definition more significant, 199 the litigation rate can be expected to be higher
than that for all EPA rules.
Litigation overloads the court --- crushing enforcement mechanisms that are crucial to signal a commitment to
international human rights
Cosgrove 00 (Michael F., J.D. Candidate – Case Western Reserve University School of Law, “Protecting the
Protectors: Preventing the Decline of the Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights”, Case Western
Reserve Journal of International Law, 32 Case W. Res. J. Int'l L. 39, Winter, Lexis)
International human rights enforcement mechanisms depend upon the support of nation-states. 2 Any human rights system "is only
as strong as its members. Its effectiveness will be significantly reduced if countries pull out whenever they perceive the
[system] as posing an obstacle to domestic practice." 3 The Inter-American system for human rights protection once
occupied a strong position in regional human rights protection. However, the strength of the system has begun fading since it turned its attention
from [*41] country reports to individual petitions. Procedural delay in the individual petition process is weakening the system's support among countries whose application of the death penalty
The system must respond to concerns
over delays in death penalty cases in order to maintain or increase its effectiveness in protecting human rights. Part I of this Note describes the
is undermined by this delay. The weakening of the support is manifesting itself in the withdrawal of some States from the system.
operation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Part II analyzes the problem of backlog and delay in the system. Part III discusses
the negative impact of delay on the application of the death penalty and illuminates the conflict between the Court and the Commission on one hand and States attempting to address the "death
row phenomenon" on the other. Part IV evaluates the status quo and currently available options for reform. This Note argues in favor of an alternative "fast track" procedure for death penaltyrelated petitions. The fast track procedure will reduce delay and eliminate the conflict between the system's institutions and the States concerned. The resolution of this conflict will help to retain
members and thus strengthen the human rights regime for the Americas. I. THE INTER-AMERICAN SYSTEM FOR THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS The Inter-American system
for human rights protection is a creation of the Organization of American States (OAS). In addition to Member States of the OAS, the system consists of the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights (the "Commission") and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the "Court"). Part A discusses the creation and procedures of the Commission. Part B discusses the
development and operation of the Court. A. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: Rising to the Challenge 1. The Development and Strengthening of the Commission As a result
of the evolution of the system, the Commission operates within two distinct spheres. Upon its creation in 1959, the Commission was given the responsibility of promoting respect for human
rights. 4 The Commission initially promoted human rights by reporting on the human rights situation in the Member States of the OAS and making [*42] recommendations for promoting
human rights to the Member States. 5 In 1965, the Commission was empowered to receive individual communications and to recommend remedies to Member States concerning those petitions.
6 Subsequently, the Commission became an organ of the OAS, thus securing its place within the regional system. 7 In 1978, the American Convention on Human Rights (the Convention or the
American Convention) entered into force and the Commission became an organ of the Convention. 8 Thus, the Commission has a dual role in the Inter-American human rights system. 9 First, as
an organ of the OAS, the Commission may conduct investigations of and receive petitions from citizens of any Member State of the OAS. 10 Second, the Commission has independent
jurisdiction over the States Parties to the American Convention. 11 In contrast, the Court, discussed below, has jurisdiction only over States Parties to the Convention that have specifically
acceded to the Court's contentious jurisdiction. 12 This Note focuses on the Convention-based system. 13 The Commission is composed of seven members who are "persons of high moral
character and recognized competence in the field of human rights." 14 The General Assembly elects Commission members in their personal capacity for a four-year term, and these members may
only be reelected once. 15 The Commission meets for eight weeks each year and [*44] determines the number of regular sessions at its discretion during these eight weeks. 16 The Chairman of
the Commission or an absolute majority of the Commission's members may convoke special sessions when necessary. 17 The General Secretary of the OAS appoints the Commission's
secretariat. 18 The Commission has at its disposal two primary tools. The first, the individual petition process, is discussed in detail below. The second tool is the country report. Country reports
detail the status of human rights in a particular country and examine a government's conduct concerning human rights in general. 19 Utilization of this tool has decreased proportionately to the
Commission's increasing reliance on individual petitions. 20 Country reports carry with them many benefits. First, the Commission may initiate investigations at its own discretion. 21 Second,
information may be gathered from any source. 22 Third, the procedure is short and flexible. 23 Fourth, the Commission issues recommendations promptly and sets a deadline for government
compliance. 24 Fifth, the Commission may conduct an observation in loco with the consent of the government. 25 Sixth, the reports allow the Commission to make greater use of publicity. 26
These benefits make country reports an effective tool for pressuring national leaders to end human rights abuses. 27 Despite these benefits, the "process of on-site investigations and issuing
specific country reports on the mission's findings has now virtually disappeared" because of a lack of resources and the focus on individual [*45] petitions. 28 A renewed use of country reports
(or thematic reports, as suggested by a former Commission President), while lacking an immediate benefit to any particular petitioner, could improve overall respect for human rights in the
Americas. 29 2. The Lengthy Individual Petition Procedures of the Commission The American Convention also allows individual victims direct access to the Commission. Under the
Convention, any person, group of persons, or nongovernmental organization recognized in at least one Member State of the OAS may file a petition with the Commission. 30 As will become
evident below, the petition process can be long and cumbersome. Upon receiving a petition, the Commission must first determine its admissibility. The primary requirement for admissibility is
the exhaustion of domestic remedies. 31 There are several exceptions to this requirement. The petitioner need not exhaust domestic remedies if domestic law does not afford due process, if he
was prevented from exhausting domestic remedies, or if there is an unwarranted delay in rendering final judgment. 32 Additionally, a remedy that is not adequate in a particular case need not be
exhausted. 33 A petitioner need not exhaust domestic remedies if he is unable to do so because of indigence or generalized fear in the legal community. 34 In addition to exhausting domestic
remedies, the petition must meet four other requirements of admissibility. First, the petition must be lodged within six months of the petitioner's notification of final judgment. 35 Second, the
subject of the petition cannot be pending in another [*46] international proceeding. 36 Third, the petition must contain certain information identifying the petitioner or his legal representative.
37 Fourth, the petition must state facts that, if true, would tend to establish a violation of rights under the American Convention. 38 The Commission is not required to make a formal or express
determination of admissibility unless the government contests admissibility. 39 If the petition is admissible, 40 the investigation process begins. The Commission provides the State with
information in the petition (although no information pertaining to the identity of the petitioner is released) and requests information from the State. 41 The government has ninety days to provide
the information, but may request a thirty-day extension. 42 The government may not be given more than 180 days from the date of the Commission's communication, however. 43 If the
government fails to respond within the 180-day period, the Commission may assume the truth of the facts submitted to the State. 44 After the government response (or lack thereof), the replies
and accompanying documents are then made known to the petitioner, who is given thirty days to submit observations and contrary evidence. 45 The government then has another thirty days to
make its final observations. 46 Thus, theoretically the initial processing of a petition should take a maximum of 240 calendar days. The Commission examines the case at its next session either
after the government fails to respond to the original communication, after the petitioner's response time or the government's final response time has elapsed without a response, or after the
government's final response. 47 The Commission may hold a hearing and request oral and written statements and any other pertinent information from the parties. 48 If necessary,
the [*47] Commission may conduct an on-site investigation within the respondent country's territory. 49 At any time during this process, the Commission may work with the parties to achieve a
friendly settlement of the dispute, either at the request of the parties or on its own initiative. The Commission need not pursue friendly settlement at its own initiative if it determines it to be
unsuitable or unnecessary. 50 Once the investigation is completed, the Commission has 180 days to prepare its decision. 51 If there is no friendly settlement, the Commission prepares a report,
along with its proposals and recommendations, and transmits the report to the government. 52 The government may choose to settle the matter or request reconsideration once within a ninety-day
deadline if it invokes new facts or legal arguments. 53 Alternatively, the Commission or the government may transmit the case to the Court within three months of transmitting the report to the
government. 54 If the case is not forwarded to the Court and the government does not settle the matter, the Commission prepares a second report. This report contains the Commission's opinion
and conclusions, as reached by a vote of an absolute majority of the Commission's members. 55 In making recommendations, the Commission may prescribe a period in which the government
must adopt the measures. 56 The Commission transmits the report to the parties, but it may not be published. 57 After the period set by the Commission for the government to adopt the
recommendations in the second report expires, the Commission determines whether the State has fulfilled its obligation and whether to publish the report. 58 Additionally, the report may be
submitted to the [*48] General Assembly of the OAS as part of the Commission's Annual Report. 59 As stated above, if the Member State involved has acceded to the contentious jurisdiction of
the Court, the Commission may refer the case to the Court after it transmits the initial report to the government. 60 The foregoing process, although complex and time-consuming in itself, is
further drawn out by the practical operation of the process. The Commission has often treated its individual petition procedure with flexibility. Before the American Convention entered into
force, the Commission would send a letter incorporating the allegations to the Foreign Minister of the respondent State. 61 After time passed and the Commission prodded the government, the
government would respond in a predictable manner, celebrating the country's commitment to human rights in the first paragraph, praising the Commission in the second paragraph, and denying
the charges or stating that the charges were being inquired into in the final paragraph. 62 If the government was still investigating the charges, the Commission would prod more, resulting in a
more or less identical letter, but with the third paragraph stating that the investigation had revealed the accusation to have no basis. 63 The petitioner might cut in to provide new information, and
the Commission and the government would resume their dance. 64 Occasionally, the Commission would allow petitioners and the governments to argue their cases ex parte, without any rules of
evidence or procedure being followed and no record being kept. 65 Eventually (long after the six months the government was provided with to come forth with information), the Commission
would "accept the allegations as true and include the case in its annual report to the OAS General Assembly." 66 This process is not prompt; however, the flexibility "gives the States the
opportunity to rectify the anomalous situations that have occasioned the complaints." 67 Because the Commission's reports are not legally binding, the Commission must be able to negotiate
flexibly with governments in order to secure compliance. The Commission was created as a quasi-diplomatic body and retains diplomatic qualities despite the growth of its [*49] quasi-judicial
functions. 68 Its diplomatic nature necessitates a flexible procedure that allows for fluid discussion between the parties. 69 The American Convention did not initially change the Commission's
informal handling of cases. However, pressure from human rights lawyers and the Court has prompted a somewhat more case-oriented approach. 70 B. The Inter-American Court on Human
Rights: Strengthening the System's Effectiveness 1. The Origin and Structure of the Court The Court is a relative newcomer to the Inter-American system. The Court came into being in May
1979, one year after the American Convention entered into force. 71 The Court is composed of seven judges, who may be nationals of any OAS Member State. Judges are elected only by the
States Parties to the American Convention for a six-year term. 72 The Court meets on a part-time basis, twice a year for several weeks per session. 73 However, judges must remain at the Court's
disposal at all times. 74 The Court has two forms of jurisdiction: Advisory jurisdiction and contentious (adjudicatory) jurisdiction. Under its advisory jurisdiction, the Member States and organs
of the OAS may consult the Court on issues related to the interpretation of the American Convention and other treaties "concerning the protection of human rights in the American States,"
allowing the Court to render a non-binding decision concerning the issue. 75 [*50] Member States may also request an opinion concerning the compatibility of domestic laws with these treaties.
76 Unlike its advisory jurisdiction, the Court's contentious jurisdiction does not apply to a Member State unless that Member State has ratified the American Convention and specifically acceded
to the Court's contentious jurisdiction. 77 Under its contentious jurisdiction, the Court may render a binding judgment, award damages to an injured party, and order that a breach of the American
Convention be remedied. 78 This Note addresses the Court's contentious jurisdiction. 2. The Procedures Before the Court The Court's procedures also add to the amount of time that it takes a
petition to navigate the system. When the Court receives an application to hear a case, the respondent State and the Commission appoint their delegates within one month of notification of the
application by the Secretary of the Court. 79 Preliminary objections, such as those based upon grounds for inadmissibility, must be filed within two months of notification of the application. 80
Presentation of preliminary objections does not suspend the proceedings on the merits. 81 The parties may submit written briefs on these objections within thirty days of notification of the
objections. 82 The respondent has four months from the date of notification to file an answer. 83 Next, the parties may enter additional written pleadings with the permission of the President of
the Court and within the time limits set by the President. 84 Oral proceedings commence after the pleadings are filed. The President sets the date for oral proceedings. 85 The parties may only
offer [*51] evidence if the application, reply, or preliminary objections give notification of the evidence, although exceptional circumstances allow for flexibility. 86 The Court may also obtain
evidence on its own motion, invite the parties to provide useful evidence, or even commission one of its members to obtain evidence through an in situ investigation. 87 The State has the burden
of producing evidence over which it has exclusive control, 88 although a recent decision has brought this rule into question. 89 The Court may discontinue the case at any time if a friendly
settlement has been reached or if the party bringing the case does not intend to proceed with it. 90 The power of the Court to order provisional measures under its contentious jurisdiction also
bears noting. In "cases of extreme gravity and urgency," the Court may order a government to take provisional measures to prevent "irreparable damage to persons." 91 This power extends to
cases before the Commission that have not yet been submitted to the Court. 92 Until recently, governments have recognized the importance of and attended the Court's hearings concerning
provisional measures, usually putting forth the appearance of compliance. 93 The Court begins its decision-making process after the completion of oral proceedings. The Court conducts a
general discussion of the case and comes to a basic agreement about the salient issues and the manner in which they should be handled. 94 The Court does not follow a particular decision-making
methodology. In general a judge assigned by the President drafts an opinion, or in complex matters several judges are assigned to write proposals. The provisional opinion or proposals become
the basis for the Court's deliberations after the initial discussion of the case. 95 The provisional opinions or proposals are distributed before the Court meets, so that each member of the Court
arrives for deliberations ready to make revisions. 96 The Court then renders its decision and establishes reparations [*52] if necessary. 97 Either party may request an interpretation of the
meaning or scope of the judgment within ninety days of the notification of the judgment. 98 The President may invite relevant written comments within an established time limit. 99 However, the
request for interpretation will not suspend the effect of the judgment. 100 3. The Ambiguous Role of the Commission Before the Court: Reinforcing Redundancy The Commission's relationship
with the Court initially appeared to be an uneasy one. During the first decade of the Court's existence, the Commission forwarded few cases to the Court, resulting in only three contentious cases
being decided by 1990. 101 Some critics attribute this phenomenon to institutional distrust and jealousy on the part of the Commission, while others argue that the Commission simply was not
accustomed to working with the Court. 102 The Commission may have been concerned with governmental attempts to use the Court to slow down the Commission. 103 Also, the Commission's
focus on country reports prevented it from devoting its limited resources to individual petitions. 104 Whatever the reason for the lack of cooperation between the Court and the Commission, the
Commission is now making more frequent use of the Court's contentious jurisdiction. 105 Once a case has been forwarded to the Court, the Commission's role is ambiguous. The American
Convention provides that the "Commission shall appear in all cases before the Court," but does not detail the role the Commission plays before the Court. 106 The Commission's intended role is
that of ministerio publico, a "representative of the general interest of the inter-American community." 107 However, the Court undermined this role by rejecting the Commission's assertion that
its factual findings were [*53] binding upon the Court. 108 According to the Court, it "is not bound by what the Commission may have previously decided," because "its power to examine and
review all actions and decisions of the Commission derives from its character as sole judicial organ . . . concerning the [American] Convention." 109 In effect, the Court treats the Commission as
the representative of the victim-petitioner, and thus as an adversary before the Court rather than a ministerio publico. 110 II. THE PROBLEM OF BACKLOG AND DELAY IN THE INTERAMERICAN SYSTEM The above procedures create the potential for backlog and delay, a common problem in both domestic and international tribunals. In both the domestic and international
spheres the problem bears similar characteristics and attracts similar solutions. Part A of this section discusses backlog and delay in domestic courts. Part B applies the analysis from Part A to the
Delay and backlog is a common problem in many domestic legal
systems. 111 Understanding the causes of backlog and delay in the domestic context will assist in analyzing the Inter-American system.
The causes of backlog and delay are both systemic and procedural. Systemic causes of backlog and delay can be traced to lack of resources.
112 Procedural causes of backlog and delay include free access to courts without mechanisms to deter frivolous suits , lack of court
administration and case management mechanisms (which lead to repetition, fragmentation, and discontinuity), and lack of incentives for consensual settlements.
113 [*54] Practical solutions to limit backlog and delay are not easily implemented. 114 The obvious solution to systemic causes of delay is to devote more
resources to the system, but finite resources make this solution impossible. Procedural solutions focus on "litigation prevention, procedural streamlining
Inter-American system. A. The Problem of Delay and Backlog Generally
and case management measures, and alternative dispute resolution." 115 First, litigation prevention uses measures such as filing fees and sanctions to deter frivolous use of the system. 116 These
measures may be undesirable, however, because they inhibit persons from exercising their rights. 117 Second, procedural streamlining and case management techniques include implementing a
strict timetable for filing documents with the court, increasing the allocation of resources for court administration, and increasing judicial intervention. 118 These measures may enhance
efficiency at the cost of judicial impartiality and increase the complexity of pre-trial procedure without adequate safeguards to control abuse. 119 Third, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms
include those employed at the participants' consent to render binding decisions, as well as mechanisms required by court order without the requirement that the dispute be resolved. 120
Alternative dispute mechanisms reduce the effect of resource disparities by making a neutral judge or panel responsible for developing legal argumentation and gathering evidence, rather than
delay and backlog is a
significant problem in the Inter-American system. Commentators have long criticized the slowness of the process from the petitioner's perspective. 122 As Sonia
allocating that responsibility to each party. 121 B. The Problem of Delay and Backlog in the Inter-American System As in domestic legal systems,
Picado, former Vice-President for the Court, states, "it takes a lot of time and money to exhaust the domestic remedies, to then go to Washington to the Commission, and then, if the Commission
so decides (and in many cases it does not), to take the case to the Court." 123 Governments often delay justice for victims of human rights abuses by exploiting the [*55] Commission's
procedures. 124 States may refuse to respond to requests for information until the last possible moment or exceed their allotted reply period by "promising" to reply if another extension is
granted. 125 These tactics can result in significant delay before the Court even receives a case. For example, the petition for the Velasquez case, which was forwarded to the Court on April 24,
1986, had been received by the Commission on October 7, 1981. 126 Ironically, the exploitation of these procedures by death row petitioners is now a source of concern in the Caribbean
countries. 127
Human rights cred is key to Russian democracy
Mendelson 9 (Sarah, Senior Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program – Center for Strategic and International
Studies, “U.S.-Russia Relations and the Democracy and Rule of Law Deficit”, 6-19, http://www.tcf.org/publicat
ions/internationalaffairs/US-RussianRelationsandtheDemocracyandRuleofLawDeficit.pdf)
In fact, coping
with authoritarian trends in Russia (and elsewhere) will involve changes in U.S. policies that have, on the
surface, nothing to do with Russia. Bush administration counterterrorism policies that authorized torture, indefinite detention of
terrorist suspects, and the rendering of detainees to secret prisons and Guantánamo have had numerous negative unintended consequences for
U.S. national security, including serving as a recruitment tool for al Qaeda and insurgents in Iraq.4 Less often recognized, these policies also
have undercut whatever leverage the United States had, as well as limited the effectiveness of American decision-makers, to push
back on authoritarian policies adopted by, among others, the Putin administration. At its worst, American departures from the
rule of law may have enabled abuse inside Russia. These departures certainly left human rights defenders isolated.5
Repairing the damage to U.S. soft power and reversing the departure from human rights norms that characterized the Bush
administration’s counterterrorism policies will provide the Obama administration strategic and moral authority and improve
the ability of the United States to work with allies. It also can have positive consequences for Obama’s Russia
policy.
Global nuclear war
Goodby 2 (James E., Former Fellow – US Institute of Peace, and Piet Buwalda and Dmitriĭ Trenin, A Strategy for
Stable Peace: Toward a Euroatlantic Security Community, p. 27-29)
A decade after the Cold War was solemnly buried, there is still no stable peace between Russia and the Western
countries. Moreover, from the late 1990s the dynamic of the relationship has taken a negative direction. NATO's
expansion to the east, the Kosovo crisis, and the second Chechen war stand out as milestones of the gradual slide
toward something alternately described as a "cold peace" and a "new cold war." Frustration is steadily building on both sides.
Mutual expectations have been drastically lowered. In the Western world, and in North America in particular, public expectations for Russia and
its affairs have plummeted. "Russia fatigue" is widespread in Europe as well. In Russia itself, Western, especially U.S., policies are often
described as being aimed at keeping Russia weak and fragmented, with a purpose of subjugating it. It would appear, then, that today is anything
but a propitious starting point for an effort to chart the road toward a security community centered on Europe that would include Russia. But such
an effort is necessary and should not be delayed. At worst, a Russia that is not properly anchored in a common institutional
framework with the West can turn into a loose nuclear cannon. If conflicts arise between Russia and its smaller
neighbors, the West will not be able to sit them out. And a progressive alienation between Russia and the Western world
would have a very negative impact on domestic developments in Russia. Now that the German problem has been solved, the
Russian problem looms as potentially Europe's largest. The United States will not be able to ignore Russia's strategic nuclear
arsenal, and the European Union can hardly envisage a modicum of stability along its eastern periphery unless it finds
a formula to co-opt Russia as Europe's reliable associate. RUSSIAN DEMOCRATIZATION In the decade since the
demise of the Soviet Union and the communist system, Russia has evolved into a genuinely pluralist society, although it is
still a very incomplete democracy. To its credit, Russia has a constitution that proclaims separation of powers; it has a working parliament, an
executive president, and a nominally independent judiciary. Between 1993 and 2000, three parliamentary and two presidential elections were
held; for the first time in Russia's long history, transfer of power at the very top occurred peacefully and in accordance with a democratic
constitution. This is already becoming a pattern. Power has been decentralized vertically as well as horizontally. Power monopoly is a thing of the
past. Russia's regions have started to form distinct identities. The regional governors, or presidents of republics, within Russia are popularly
elected, as are city mayors and regional legislatures. The national economy has been largely privatized. The media, though not genuinely
independent either of the authorities or of the various vested interests, are free in principle. There is a large degree of religious freedom, and
ideological oppression is nonexistent. Finally, Russians are free to travel abroad. These achievements are significant, and most of them are irreversible. Yet, Russia's development is handicapped by major hurdles to speedier societal transformation, as is
occurring in Poland or Estonia. One hurdle is poor governance, stemming from the irresponsibility of the elites as
much as from sheer incompetence. Toward the end of the Yeltsin era, the state itself appeared privatized, with parts
of it serving the interests of various groups or strongmen. Corruption and crime are pervasive. Accustomed to living
in an authoritarian state, many Russians began to associate democracy with chaos and thuggery. Another major
problem is widespread poverty and the collapse of the social infrastructure, including health care. Too many
Russians believe they have gained little or nothing from the economic and social changes of the past decade. Taken
together, these factors work toward the restoration of some form of authoritarian and paternalistic rule.
Cartels – D
Cartels are diverse – Doing one thing doesn’t spill over
French 5 [Taylor W. French, JD candidate, Vanderbilt; “NOTE: Free Trade and Illegal Drugs: Will NAFTA
Transform the United States Into the Netherlands?”; Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law¶ March, 2005 38
Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 501; Lexis]
In the post-NAFTA era, it has become harder for authorities to detect and destroy drug cartels, as narcotics traffickers have set
up intricate networks and complex business practices. n274 Modern drug traffickers typically create "legitimate businesses" that
they use as fronts for their illegal activities. n275 Such companies often revolve around trucking, shipping, railway, and storage, all of
which play integral roles in the drug trade. n276 Moreover, the Mexican cartels have adopted distinctive non-cartel like qualities
that reduce the likelihood of their exposure to law enforcement. n277 Unlike their predecessors, Mexican drug rings are normally
structured in small cells, each capable of independent operation. n278 Hence, if officials are able to destroy one group, the
larger organization remains [*530] unaffected. n279 In addition, " Mexican traffickers have evolved into "poly-drug'
traffickers ." n280 By transporting many types of drugs, the new cartels are much less dependent upon one substance as a
"cash crop." n281 The result is that approximately thirty percent of the heroin imported into the United States comes
from Mexico, and sixty percent of the cocaine imported into the United States comes from Mexico, buttressing the cannabis market
that "Mexico continues to dominate." n282 Thus, Mexican drug cartels have emerged as sophisticated and diversified operations
that operate in the shadows of legal businesses to supply the United States with illicit substances of all kinds. n283
How are you supposed to get a nuclear weapon across the Atlantic, we have radiological radars in the border – cx
was bad here. Only ev is from “analysis intellifence” with no quals
Cartel-led violence is decreasing now - Mexican security efforts are increasingly successful
Higa 14 (Daniel, "Mexico: Homicides decrease, but kidnapping, extortion rising,"
http://infosurhoy.com/en_GB/articles/saii/features/main/2014/06/02/feature-01)
MEXICO CITY – Thanks to the intervention of federal forces, the arrest of major drug lords and the weakening of
criminal groups, the homicide rate in Mexico is decreasing , according to the Ministry of the Interior. Between January and
March 2014, there were 4,497 homicides, compared to 18,447 during all of 2013. In 2012, authorities registered 21,732 killings after recording
22,853 the previous year, according to the National Public Security System. “We can confirm the homicide rate is on the decrease
and one of the reasons is that the federal forces’ presence in certain regions has led to the control of violence,” Leonel
Fernández Novelo, a researcher for the NGO México Evalúa, said . Authorities have struck hard against violent
criminal structures, such as Los Zetas and the Knights Templar, resulting in a decrease in these groups’ use of violence ,
according to Jorge Kawas, an expert in security and intelligence and an associate at the Center for Interdisciplinary MexicanBritish Research in Mexico City. “The government has focused its efforts on the most bloodthirsty criminal organizations
and has attacked their operational leadership, which has hurt their ability to reorganize themselves quickly, and
they have fragmented ,” he said. From December 2012 to May 2014, the Mexican government has apprehended or killed 80 high- ranking
criminals, the most prominent being Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the head of the Sinaloa cartel; Los Zetas’ leaders Miguel Ángel Treviño, alias
“Z-40”; Galdino Mellado Cruz (“Z-9”) and Fernando Martínez Magaña (“Z-16”); in addition to Knights Templar leaders Nazario Moreno – the
founder of the criminal organization – and Enrique Plancarte – the cartel’s No. 2 leader – both being killed in military operations. At the same
time, organized crime groups can no longer sustain the costs of extreme violence, according to Athanasios Hristoulas, a
researcher of the Autonomous Institute of Technology of Mexico. “The violence reached a tipping point ,” he said.
“ The most powerful criminal groups have been weakened in certain aspects , so it’s likely they have been forced to reach
agreements and form alliances to safeguard their territories and their markets.” For President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, this is the
direct result of his official strategy to fight organized crime. “The security and law enforcement policy has managed to reduce
violence, lower the crime rate, break up various criminal organizations and reduce their operational capacity in
several regions of the country,” Minister of the Interior Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said. “We have applied focused strategies that have
succeeded, and in only a year and a half, there is a noticeable difference in states such as Michoacán, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Nayarit and
Guerrero.”
Marijuana doesn’t stop cartels – they’ll shift
Bender 13 [Steven Bender, Professor, Seattle University School of Law; “Overdose: The Failure of the U.S. Drug
War and Attempts at Legalization: ARTICLE: JOINT REFORM?: THE INTERPLAY OF STATE, FEDERAL,
AND HEMISPHERIC REGULATION OF RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA AND THE FAILED WAR ON
DRUGS”; 2013¶ Albany Government Law Review¶ 6 Alb. Gov't L. Rev. 359; Lexis]
Gauging the effect of U.S. legalization requires some sense of the economic importance of marijuana to the Mexican drug cartels. Unfortunately,
the nature of the beast of an illegal enterprise with diffuse money laundering throughout the hemisphere is that estimates of revenues vary widely,
both as to the dollar amount of overall revenues and the percentage role that marijuana plays in cartel proceeds from a variety
of drugs.
No doubt by any measure those revenues are enormous, with the swing in estimated annual revenue to Mexican cartels ranging from one estimate
of $ 80 billion to a U.S. government estimate of $ 13.8 billion - with $ 8.5 billion of that revenue coming from marijuana and the vast amount
coming from U.S. sales. n174 According to this government estimate, marijuana comprises more than 60% of cartel revenue, with the remainder
coming from cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking, as well as other illicit drugs and activities. n175 As I speculated in Run for the Border, if
this estimate is accurate, legalization of marijuana should have a "cataclysmic effect" on the Mexican cartels, n176 allowing cross-border
enforcement to better focus on remaining (and more dangerous) illicit drugs for which U.S. demand is less pervasive. Presumably, the south-ofthe-border violence might ultimately ease as the cartels succumb to this economic squeeze. Yet there are many reasons to be less
optimistic about the impact [*388] of state legalization on Mexican trafficking, even if that reform takes hold nationally.
First, some commentators discount the estimate that marijuana plays such a key role in cartel revenues , with one
commentator suggesting a more accurate figure falls in the range of 15-to-26%. n177 Having become the gateway for illicit
Mexican cartels might also send their product elsewhere, such
as Canada or within Mexico, n178 redouble their efforts to export drugs that remain illicit in the United States, such
as cocaine and methamphetamine, or concentrate on expanding demand for these illicit drugs as cartels did within
Mexico when enhanced U.S.-border enforcement prompted them at times to liquidate their inventory to Mexican users. n179
Presumably, legalization within the United States that leaves minors unable to purchase marijuana lawfully might reserve
some of that illicit market to cartels, yet the likelihood is that, as with alcohol, this demand would be supplied through fake identification
drugs from South and Central America into the United States,
or by friends and relatives purchasing lawful marijuana for minors. Some commentators have looked to the tobacco market and speculated that
should government tax legal marijuana too steeply, an illicit market might emerge, n180 perhaps to be supplied by the cartels [*389] rather than
by licensed domestic producers operating outside the law. Still, given the history of spraying of illicit marijuana crops with toxic
chemicals, the lesser environmental policing in Mexico, and the reality that some marijuana has been smuggled, while soaked in
gasoline or perfume, in such unsanitary conveyances as the inside of a full septic tank truck, n181 presumably most U.S. users would be
willing to pay extra for the assurance of some quality and safety control over the production of legalized marijuana.
Surely, too, the cost of bribes that divert a fair share of cartel revenue is an expense that lawfully produced marijuana need not duplicate. Most
alarmingly, however, Mexican drug cartels of late have augmented their drug profits with other enterprises for
which their infrastructure of vast capital, weaponry, manpower, and graft is well suited. These sidelines include
kidnapping the family members of the wealthy for ransom, n182 trafficking undocumented immigrants and sex
workers into and within the United States, n183 and robbing undocumented immigrants, whether from Mexico or Central America, who
aim to reach U.S. employers. n184 The most ominous scenario ahead is one in which the drug cartels expand these other
ventures to replace marijuana revenues . Immigration is driven and limited by job opportunities available within the United States
and thus depends on labor demand. Therefore, cartels searching for replacement revenue presumably would be drawn to
expand their kidnappings or their role in illicit sex markets, such as those for underage prostitutes. n185 Overall, then, the impact
of legalization on cartel revenues, and the surging violence within Mexico, is hard to predict.
Drugs aren’t the root cause of Mexican instability – lack of strong political institutions outweighs
Hope 14 (Alejandro, security policy analyst at IMCO, a Mexico City research organization and former intelligence
officer, “Legal U.S. Pot Won’t Bring Peace to Mexico,” Bloomberg, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/201401-21/legal-u-s-pot-won-t-bring-peace-to-mexico)
Since Jan. 1, Colorado has had a legal marijuana market. The same will soon be true in Washington State, once retail licenses are issued. Other
states, such as California and Oregon, will likely follow suit over the next three years. So does this creeping legalization of marijuana
in the U.S. spell doom for the Mexican drug cartels? Not quite . The illegal marijuana trade provides Mexican organized crime
with about $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year. That’s not chump change, but according to a number of estimates, it represents no more
than a third of gross drug export revenue. Cocaine is still the cartels’ biggest money-maker and the revenue accruing
from heroin and methamphetamine aren’t trivial. Moreover, Mexican gangs also obtain income from extortion,
kidnapping, theft and various other types of illegal trafficking. Losing the marijuana trade would be a blow to their
finances, but it certainly wouldn’t put them out of business. But surely Mexico would experience less violence if marijuana was
legal? Yes, to some extent, but the decline wouldn’t be sufficient to radically alter the country’s security outlook. In all
likelihood, marijuana production and marijuana-related violence are highly correlated geographically. Marijuana
output is concentrated in five states (Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa, Michoacan and Guerrero) that accounted for approximately a third of
all homicides committed in Mexico in 2012. Assuming improbably that half of all murders in those areas were marijuana-related, we can estimate
that the full elimination of the illegal marijuana trade would reduce Mexico’s homicide rate to 18 per 100,000
inhabitants from 22 -- still about four times the U.S. rate. Well, but couldn’t the Mexican government gain a peace dividend by
redirecting some resources from marijuana prohibition to other law enforcement objectives? Yes, but the effect would probably be modest. Only
4 percent of all Mexican prison inmates are serving time exclusively for marijuana-related crimes. In 2012, drug offenses represented less than 2
percent of all crime reports in the country. When it comes to only federal crimes (7 percent of the total), the share of drug offenses rises to 20
percent, but that percentage has been declining since 2007. So the legalization of marijuana won’t free up a huge trove of
resources to be redeployed against predatory crime. Whatever the legal status of marijuana, Mexico needs to
tackle its many institutional malfunctions. Its police forces are underpaid, undertrained, under motivated and
deeply vulnerable to corruption and intimidation. Its criminal justice system is painfully slow, notoriously inefficient
and deeply unfair. Even with almost universal impunity, prisons are overflowing and mostly ruled by the inmates
themselves. Changing that reality will take many years. Some reforms are under way, some are barely off the
ground. As a result of a 2008 constitutional reform, criminal courts are being transformed, but progress across states has been uneven. With a
couple of local exceptions, police reform has yet to find political traction. The federal Attorney General’s Office is set to become an independent
body, but not before 2018. The reformist zeal that President Enrique Pena Nieto has shown in other policy areas (education, energy,
telecommunications) is absent in security and justice. Security policy remains reactive, driven more by political considerations than by strategic
design. And results have been mixed at best: Homicides declined moderately in 2013, but both kidnapping and extortion reached record levels.
Marijuana legalization won’t alter that dynamic. In the final analysis, Mexico doesn’t have a drug problem, much less a marijuana
problem: It has a state capacity problem. That is, its institutions are too weak to protect the life, liberty and
property of its citizens. Even if drug trafficking might very well decline in the future, in the absence of stronger
institutions, something equally nefarious will replace it.
Cartels are unrelated to nuclear terror -- border security is not great, but we have radiological detectors that could
definitely pick up a nuke -- even if they build a nuke, they don't have the capacity to ship it to Mexico and launch it
there is NO capacity for terrorists to acquire and execute a nuclear attack
Mueller and Stewart 12 [John Mueller is Senior Research Scientist at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies and Adjunct
Professor in the Department of Political Science, both at Ohio State University, and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Mark
G. Stewart is Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow and Professor and Director at the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and
Reliability at the University of Newcastle in Australia, “The Terrorism Delusion”, International Security, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Summer 2012), pp. 81–
110, Chetan]
It seems increasingly likely that the official and popular reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been
substantially deluded —massively disproportionate to the threat that al-Qaida has ever actually presented either as an
international menace or as an inspiration or model to homegrown amateurs. Applying the extensive datasets on terrorism that have been
generated over the last decades, we conclude that the chances of an American perishing at the hands of a terrorist at present rates is one in 3.5
million per year—well within the range of what risk analysts hold to be “acceptable risk.”40 Yet, despite the importance of responsibly
communicating risk and despite the costs of irresponsible fearmongering, just about the only official who has ever openly put the threat
presented by terrorism in some sort of context is New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who in 2007 pointed out that people should “get a
life” and that they have a greater chance of being hit by lightning than of being a victim of terrorism—an observation that
may be a bit off the mark but is roughly accurate.41 (It might be noted that, despite this unorthodox outburst, Bloomberg still managed to be reelected two years later.) Indeed, much of the reaction to the September 11 attacks calls to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of delusion, “The
Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which con artists convince the emperor’s court that they can weave stuffs of the most beautiful colors and elaborate
patterns from the delicate silk and purest gold thread they are given. These stuffs, they further convincingly explain, have the property of
remaining invisible to anyone who is unusually stupid or unfit for office. The emperor finds this quite appealing because not only will he have
splendid new clothes, but he will be able to discover which of his officials are unfit for their posts—or in today’s terms, have lost their
effectiveness. His courtiers, then, have great professional incentive to proclaim the stuffs on the loom to be absolutely magnificent even while
mentally justifying this conclusion with the equivalent of “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Unlike the emperor’s new clothes ,
terrorism does of course exist. Much of the reaction to the threat, however, has a distinctly delusionary quality. In
Carle’s view, for example, the CIA has been “spinning in self-referential circles” in which “our premises were flawed, our facts used to fit
our premises, our premises determined, and our fears justified our operational actions, in a self-contained process that arrived at
a conclusion dramatically at odds with the facts.” The process “projected evil actions where there was, more often, muddled indirect
and unavoidable complicity, or not much at all.” These “delusional ratiocinations,” he further observes, “were all sincerely, ardently held to have
constituted a rigorous, rational process to identify terrorist threats” in which “the avalanche of reporting confirms its validity by its quantity,” in
which there is a tendency to “reject incongruous or contradictory facts as erroneous, because they do not conform to accepted reality,” and in
which potential dissenters are not-so-subtly reminded of career dangers: “Say what you want at meetings. It’s your decision. But you are doing
yourself no favors.”42 Consider in this context the alarming and profoundly imaginary estimates of U.S. intelligence agencies in the year after the
September 11 attacks that the number of trained al-Qaida operatives in the United States was between 2,000 and 5,000.43 Terrorist cells, they
told reporters, were “embedded in most U.S. cities with sizable Islamic communities,” usually in the “run-down sections,” and were “up and
active” because electronic intercepts had found some of them to be “talking to each other.”44 Another account relayed the view of “experts” that
Osama bin Laden was ready to unleash an “11,000 strong terrorist army” operating in more than sixty countries “controlled by a Mr. Big who is
based in Europe,” but that intelligence had “no idea where thousands of these men are.”45 Similarly, FBI Director Robert Mueller assured
the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 11, 2003, that, although his agency had yet to identify even one al-Qaida
cell in the United States, “I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing, ” a sentence rendered in bold lettering in his
prepared text. Moreover, he claimed that such unidentified entities presented “the greatest threat,” had “developed a support
infrastructure” in the country, and had achieved both the “ability” and the “intent” to inflict “signi ficant casualties in the US with little
warning.”46 Over the course of time, such essentially delusionary thinking has been internalized and institutionalized in
a great many ways. For example, an extrapolation of delusionary proportions is evident in the common observation
that, because terrorists were able, mostly by thuggish means, to crash airplanes into buildings, they might therefore
be able to construct a nuclear bomb. Brian Jenkins has run an internet search to discover how often variants of the term “al-Qaida”
appeared within ten words of “nuclear.” There were only seven hits in 1999 and eleven in 2000, but the number soared to 1,742 in 2001 and to
2,931 in 2002.47 By 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was assuring a congressional committee that what keeps every senior government
leader awake at night is “the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear.”48 Few of the sleepless, it
seems, found much solace in the fact that an al-Qaida computer seized in Afghanistan in 2001 indicated that the group’s budget for research on
weapons of mass destruction (almost all of it focused on primitive chemical weapons work) was $2,000 to $4,000.49 In the wake of the
killing of Osama bin Laden, officials now have many more al-Qaida computers, and nothing in their content appears
to suggest that the group had the time or inclination, let alone the money, to set up and staff a uranium-seizing
operation, as well as a fancy, super-high-technology facility to fabricate a bomb. This is a process that requires
trusting corrupted foreign collaborators and other criminals, obtaining and transporting highly guarded material,
setting up a machine shop staffed with top scientists and technicians, and rolling the heavy, cumbersome, and
untested finished product into position to be detonated by a skilled crew—all while attracting no attention from
outsiders.50 If the miscreants in the American cases have been unable to create and set off even the simplest conventional bombs, it stands to
reason that none of them were very close to creating, or having anything to do with, nuclear weapons—or for that
matter biological, radiological, or chemical ones. In fact, with perhaps one exception, none seems to have even dreamed
of the prospect; and the exception is José Padilla (case 2), who apparently mused at one point about creating a dirty bomb—a device that
would disperse radiation—or even possibly an atomic one. His idea about isotope separation was to put uranium into a pail and then to make
himself into a human centrifuge by swinging the pail around in great arcs.51 Even if a weapon were made abroad and then brought
into the United States, its detonation would require individuals in-country with the capacity to receive and handle
the complicated weapons and then to set them off. Thus far, the talent pool appears, to put mildly, very thin.
Lots of factors prevent great power conflict without hegemony
Fettweis 10 (Christopher J. Professor of Political Science at Tulane, Dangerous Times-The International Politics of
Great Power Peace, pg. 175-6)
If the only thing standing between the world and chaos is the US military presence, then an adjustment in grand strategy would be
exceptionally counter-productive. But it is worth recalling that none
of the other explanations for the decline of war
– nuclear weapons, complex economic interdependence, international and domestic political
institutions, evolution in ideas and norms – necessitate an activist America to maintain their
validity. Were American to become more restrained, nuclear weapons would still affect the
calculations of the would be aggressor; the process of globalization would continue, deepening the
complexity of economic interdependence; the United Nations could still deploy peacekeepers where necessary; and
democracy would not shrivel where it currently exists. More importantly, the idea that war is a
worthwhile way to resolve conflict would have no reason to return. As was argued in chapter 2, normative
evolution is typically unidirectional. Strategic restraint in such a world be virtually risk free.
States
Cards are too old -- doesn't assume Colorado and Washington -- they have explicitly legalized and the DOJ said they
won't prosecute -- set a precedent that allows states to experiment.
-- Visas are a drop in the bucket --- only one issue --- ag subsidies, ITER, etc. overwhelm the plan
--Collapse inevitable
Lempert 8 (Richard, Eric Stein Distinguished University Professor of Law and Sociology – University of Michigan
Law School and Research Professor – George Washington Institute of Public Policy, “Maintaining U.S. Scientific
Leadership,” 3-3, Science Progress, http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/03/maintaining-us-scientific-leadership/)
Countries much larger than the United States, most notably India and China, are experiencing economic growth that
outstrips ours, and as they grow in wealth they are rapidly improving their educational systems and basic science
infrastructures. Moreover, as globalization leads companies born in the United States to move research and
production capacity abroad, market demand for trained scientists and engineers is increasing elsewhere while it is
being dampened here. Even if the United States retains a per capita education and investment advantage over India
and China, population differences alone mean that the number of trained scientists and engineers in these countries
will soon dwarf the number in America, with differences in the quantity and quality of science innovation likely to
follow. Added to the Asian challenge is a Europe that can no longer be seen as a set of discrete countries when it
comes to science. Rather, cross-border research teams are being encouraged, and European Union-wide funding
mechanisms are being established. In short, several decades from now we may find that we are not the world’s
number one country when it comes to science, however measured, but perhaps no. 4 behind China, India, and the
EU. We may also find that being in fourth place is not altogether bad. When children in China are vaccinated against polio, they are not worse
off because the vaccine was invented in the United States. When an Indian inventor draws on two decades of U.S. government-funded research to
achieve a technological breakthrough, her accomplishment will not be lessened because it would not have happened had research in the United
States not paved the way. As the world no. 1 in science, U.S. science investments have had substantial spillover effects, improving the quality of
life in other countries and enabling scientific, technological, and medical accomplishments that have benefited people abroad. As other countries
improve their science, the progress of American science and the lives of our people will increasingly benefit from educational and infrastructure
investments made elsewhere and from research supported by currencies other than the dollar. Acknowledging the inevitable and seeing a bright
side does not, however, mean we should regard what is happening as an unalloyed blessing and passively allow American science to slip. There
are substantial costs should U.S. science capacity sink absolutely, and real costs even if slippage is only relative. Scientific advances create
intellectual property, and wealth creation through intellectual property has become an increasingly important part of the U.S. and world
economies. What’s more, the world remains a dangerous place, and it may become more so should countries like China develop expansionist
ambitions. Science for security must remain a high national priority, and although we may not be able to keep other nations from catching up, we
do not want to be surprised by their achievements or surpassed.
-- Long-time frame --- its solvency based --- migrants have to come and boost growth first --- can’t solve quick
impacts
-- Big alt causes --A) Education
Glod 7 (Maria, Wash Post Staff Writer, “U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test”, 12-5,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/04/AR2007120400730.html]
The disappointing performance of U.S. teenagers in math and science on an international exam, in scores released
yesterday, has sparked calls for improvement in public schools to help the country keep pace in the global economy. The
scores from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment showed that U.S. 15-year-olds trailed their peers from many
industrialized countries. The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world's richest countries. The U.S. students were further behind
in math, trailing counterparts in 23 countries. "How are our children going to be able to compete with the children of the
world? The answer is not well," said former Colorado governor Roy Romer, chairman of Strong American Schools, a nonpartisan group
seeking to make education prominent in the 2008 presidential election. The PISA test, given every three years, measures the ability of 15-yearolds to apply math and science knowledge in real-life contexts. About 400,000 students, including 5,600 in the United States, took the 2006
exam. There is also a reading portion, but results for U.S. students were thrown out because the tests were printed incorrectly. Students in
Finland received the top scores in science and math. Mexico was at the bottom. The PISA results underscore concerns that too few
U.S. students are prepared to become engineers, scientists and physicians, and that the country might lose ground to
competitors. An expert panel appointed last year by President Bush is preparing to recommend ways to improve public school math
instruction, with a focus on algebra.
B) Ideology
Britt 8 (Robert Roy, LiveScience Managing Editor, “Scientists Say Bush Stifles Science and Lets Global
Leadership Slip”, 1-30, http://www.livescience.com/technology/080130-bush-legacy.html)
But several scientists around the country aren't
buying what they see as rhetoric not backed by funding. And they are
frustrated by what they view as the White House's morality-based politics that they say ignores scientific evidence,
distorts facts and leads to outright censorship of reports and scientists. The White House responded to the criticisms point-bypoint. In email interviews this week with 21 researchers in various fields of study, LiveScience and SPACE.com found
widespread criticism for Bush's "retardation of research," as one scientist put it, that threatens to knock the country out
of its global leadership role in science and technology. "Science has been seriously undermined by the censorship
and alteration of testimony and news releases," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research. "Science and facts are not a factor in decisions, and ideology dominates ." (A Democratic congressional report in
December stated: "The Bush administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and
mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.")
C) Lab funding cuts
Treder 8 (Mike, Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, “US Basic Science in Decline”, 1-15
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/us-basic-science-decline-15233.html)
Over at the blog For Entrepreneurs , we read about more big cuts in science research funding: In Illinois, we have two great
National Labs: Argonne and Fermilab. Both of these Illinois National Labs have had their budgets slashed to the point where
there are massive layoffs underway and many important scientific research projects have been cancelled or put on
hold. These are not "cut the fat" changes. Rather, these are "cut out the essential organs" cuts. They put a big part of our national
scientific research efforts on life support and jeopardize our national competitiveness. Indeed, the Fermilab Today site
reports that: The diminished funds will have a powerful impact at Fermilab, requiring workforce adjustments and forcing the cancellation of
R&D for experiments and technology key to the future of particle physics. And there is more bad news from the pages of American
Medical News : For the fifth consecutive year, the National Institutes of Health budget will fail to keep pace with growth
in the cost of conducting biomedical research. . . There aren't many positives for scientific research in the 2008
budget, said David Moore, senior associate vice president for government relations for the Association of American Medical Colleges. "What
we're going to see is less research, a slowing down of certain research programs," he said. "It's a slowing of medical progress." Why is all this
important? Does it really matter to the rest of the world if science funding in the United States is flat or declining? I think it does matter, partly
because the U.S. economy and federal budgets are by far the largest in the world -- meaning they have the ability to support more basic science
research than anyone else -- but also because so much important policy toward science and technology emanates from the United States. If the
U.S. government is unwilling to provide adequate funding for basic science, that sends a message to business,
government, and research institutions worldwide: that science is less important than other priorities (such as making war and
making profits), and that the benefits of basic research are not worth supporting, even if it means that future generations -- not to
mention our own generation -- will suffer as a result. It is disgraceful.
-- Science diplomacy fails
Lord and Turekian 7 (Kristin M - Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, and
Vaughan C - Chief international officer, AAAS, “SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: Time for a New Era of Science
Diplomacy”, Science Magazine, Vol 315 no 5813 p 769-770, Feb 9th,
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/315/5813/769)
in an era where international skepticism about U.S. foreign policy abounds, government can only do so much.
Ultimately civil society--including scientists and engineers--will need to join in this diplomacy of deeds in order for
the new science diplomacy to succeed. The fact that science is, and should remain, outside the realm of politics only
makes scientists better suited for this task. How can the U.S. science community contribute to science diplomacy and remind the world that Americans are defined by more than specific U.S.
Yet,
government policies? Individual scientists can contribute by realizing that they are valuable ambassadors of goodwill. They can intensify their global activities and promote greater engagement with counterparts worldwide. They can
increase their efforts to invite foreign peers to review scientific articles and papers. Senior U.S. researchers can use their own international networks, including former students and postdocs working outside of the United States, to
reach out to junior scientists in other countries, to collaborate with peers, and to promote broader international cooperation. U.S. scientists should make a special effort to engage with scientists from countries where the United States is
misunderstood or disliked--not to justify or promote any government policy, but to build bridges and trust. They can engage more with university students and the general public overseas, not just other scientists, and let them know
how scientists from all nations make a collective difference in their lives. In so doing, U.S. scientists will make the world a better place, and perhaps improve foreigners' views of America along the way. Scientists can also encourage
their universities, research institutions, professional societies, and laboratories to adopt global engagement as a priority. Although a large sum of individual efforts is important, effective global engagement will be most influential if it
engages whole organizations as well. Many of the major U.S. scientific and engineering societies already have specific offices or initiatives dedicated to international collaborations. To give just one example, in January AAAS joined
the U.S. Department of State, the Kuwaiti government, and a Kuwaiti science NGO to convene a conference in Kuwait City to promote networks of women scientists and engineers in the broader Middle East (see figure above).
AAAS has also recently started a pilot program that remotely links U.S. researchers with university-level science students in developing and emerging countries in order to share and discuss seminal papers across a range of scientific
disciplines (13). Yet, despite current efforts, scientific organizations can do more. Of course, all this assumes that scientists and engineers are willing to be ambassadors and to participate in the new science diplomacy. Why would
they? The answer is threefold. First, while science holds great benefits for diplomacy, diplomacy also benefits science. For instance, in large-scale programs such as International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) (14),
scientists from major powers such as China, India, Russia, Korea, Japan, the European Union, and the United States will work together in an unprecedented international agreement to develop fusion energy. Moreover, diplomacy can
create opportunities to conduct research in parts of the world critical to scientific advancement. Scientific research ranging from astronomical observation in Australia to archaeological research in Libya depends on broader access, as
well as diplomatic support. Second, the health of the U.S. scientific community depends on the continued willingness of foreign scientists and students to come to the United States for study, research, and work. Visa difficulties,
combined with a perception that the United States does not welcome foreigners, reduced the number of foreign students coming to the United States after 9/11. This trend is beginning to reverse, but negative perceptions persist and it
is important to remain vigilant. The U.S. economy benefits greatly from foreign scientists and science (15).We must ensure that the United States remains attractive and welcoming. Third, scientists are citizens. Like their counterparts
outside of the scientific community, many scientists and engineers share concerns about negative perceptions of the United States. The good news is that scientists have some ability to change those perceptions for the better. The Way
Who should lead a renewed effort toward science diplomacy? Unfortunately, there is currently no ideal U.S.
government agency to lead a sustained effort. Technical agencies, such as the Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, and National Aeronautics and Space
Administration are (not inappropriately) focused on their core missions and interested in international collaboration to the extent it
advances those missions. The National Science Foundation has a broader mandate than these agencies, but NSF's
goal is to foster basic research. Consequently, its international activities are designed to address specific research questions.
The Department of State is designed to focus on diplomacy--but, unfortunately, is not well equipped to engage in
science diplomacy. With limited resources for S&T cooperation, limited scientific expertise, and pressure to focus on the day's crises rather than long-term engagement, the department's efforts must be
complemented by the work of other agencies. Unless those resources increase dramatically, which we do not believe is likely, the Department of State will need much more support in the area of science diplomacy. It is time
for the scientific community to increase its role in diplomacy--and maybe even take the lead. Nongovernmental scientific
organizations are more credible, more nimble, and--as honest brokers--in many cases more respected than the U.S. government
overseas. They work at the grassroots level on global problems such as energy, clean water, and health. A vigorous new science diplomacy, oriented to foreign citizens as well as their
governments, will promote human well-being, will benefit science, and will catalyze public diplomacy. Our country needs a new era of science diplomacy, and we need the commitment of the U.S.
science community behind it.
Forward
2NC – CP, Case
Cp
A2: Perm – Do Both
-- Mutually exclusive – reg neg is an alternative strategy to traditional rulemaking that rejects immediacy and
allows modification – either links or severs – that’s USAID. Severance is a voter: makes offense impossible.
-- Intrinsic – adds non-binding negotiation – in neither plan nor counterplan. Voting issue: allows them to fiat
out of offense
-- Links to politics – includes the plan, which crushes support --- more evidence
Ackerman 94 (Susan Rose, Professor of Jurisprudence – Yale University, “Consensus Versus Incentives: A
Skeptical Look at Regulatory Negotiation”, Duke Law Journal, 43 Duke L.J. 1206, April, Lexis)
Of course, regulatory negotiation and incentive systems need not be mutually exclusive alternatives; they could be
complements. For example, the regulations that are needed under a market scheme could be produced by consensual methods . However, the
commitment to least cost solutions, which is a precondition for incentive-based systems, would rule out some of the political
compromises that might arise under regulatory negotiation. The regulatory issues in the design of incentive schemes are usually
technical and informational -- not the kind of bureaucratic problems that can be solved by negotiation.
-- Genuine key --- perm dictates a results, destroying the process
Harter 9 (Philip J., Professor of Law – University of Missouri and Member – Center for the Study of Dispute
Resolution, “Collaboration: The Future of Governance”, Journal of Dispute Resolution, 2009 J. Disp. Resol. 411,
Lexis)
F. Role of the Agency
The agency plays an absolutely critical role in a negotiated rulemaking. If it does not take its obligation seriously, both
substantively and procedurally, the result will be neither legitimate 78 nor successful. The agency, after all, represents the sovereign in the
negotiations. It is responsible for implementing, for better or [*430] for worse, the policy choices made by the body politic as embodied in
legislation. Statutes typically afford considerable latitude in making policy choices, and agencies enjoy broad discretion in enforcement matters.
Organic statutes rarely dictate a single "right" answer, but rather they usually afford leeway as to how to achieve the statutory goal. That is the
stuff of negotiation: it is the agency's obligation to ensure that the result is within the bounds of the statute, 79 and the negotiations concern how
to get to the desired goal. Thus, the agency is clearly the primary player in a negotiation-the first among equals. That is the case not just because
the agency represents the government, but because the agency will forcibly implement the decision. 80 But it would destroy the entire
purpose of a negotiation if the agency were to attempt to dictate a result . That would not only undermine the very
function of the negotiation-which is to build on the collective expertise and acceptance of the committee and its constituents-but it will
also likely result in angering committee members; since they would feel the agency misled them into believing
they could contribute to the development of a policy important to them. Since the private parties customarily deal with the
agency in a hierarchical manner in which the agency alone makes the decision, they frequently are not accustomed to an open give-and-take
among committee members. Thus, while the agency needs to [*431] guide the negotiations and determine its boundaries, it often needs to
stimulate that discussion, encouraging the parties to put forth ideas and assuring them that it is "safe" to talk. It is precisely the resulting synergy
that is so important and beneficial in developing a powerful result.
-- Severs certainty --- plan must be done immediately --- key to all ground based on time-sensitive arguments
--- if it doesn’t, it links because it cuts-off negotiation mid-process --- collapsing compliance
Martin 91 (Herbert J., Partner – Crowell & Moring, JD – Catholic University Law School, and BA and MA –
Fordham University, “Alternative Dispute Resolution: Coming to Proceedings Near You”, Public Utilities
Fortnightly, 3-1, Lexis)
The act also includes highly detailed provisions governing the use of binding arbitration in agency proceedings. The focus on arbitration
and the level of detail devoted to it appears to be a function of the binding nature of this form of dispute resolution. The act
allows the head of an agency to terminate an arbitration proceeding or vacate an arbitration award before it becomes final.
If this power is exercised to vacate an award, parties may recover their attorney fees and expenses incurred in connection
with the arbitration, unless the agency head determines that such recovery would be unjust. These provisions were inserted to satisfy the
concerns of the Department of Justice that arbitration decisions binding the government would constitute an unlawful delegation of executive
authority. The expectation is that this summary power will be exercised rarely; otherwise, parties will quickly lose faith
in arbitrations involving the government. In fact, despite the focus on binding arbitration in the act, other nonbinding forms of dispute
resolution may find greater favor in agency proceedings.
Solvency – 2NC (A2: Veto/Say No)
CP solves 100% of the case --- reg neg will approve the plan --1. It causes a quick consensus decision. The atmosphere of negotiation encourages agreement because parties
meet face-to-face and get initial input. Transparency builds respect and the process is key --- that’s Harter
2. Social psychology. Don’t evaluate evidence that isn’t in the context of reg neg. Even if parties generally HATE
the plan, negotiated rulemaking creates an environment of inclusion that changes their psychological orientation
to produce agreement.
Freeman 00 (Jody, Acting Professor of Law – University of California Los Angeles, “The Private Role in Public
Governance”, New York University Law Review, June, 75 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 543, Lexis)
Perhaps this form of public/private interdependence might increase the willingness of regulated entities to
submit to the regulation, even when the outcome does not favor them. Social psychology teaches us that
parties are more likely to view outcomes as legitimate when they play a meaningful role in the process. Parties
may derive satisfaction not solely from getting what they want in a bargaining process, but from being included
in the enterprise, taken seriously, and offered explanations for decisions. Evidence from the most recent study
of regulatory negotiation supports such claims. Although speculative, it is reasonable to believe that a direct role in
rulemaking will facilitate policy implementation or improve relationships among repeat players, producing
payoffs down the line. Without more information about the nature of the public/private interaction, however, it proves difficult to
assess its implications for accountability. Neither economists nor political scientists have sufficiently explored the deliberative dimension of
public/private interaction, and how it might alter parties' preferences, for example. Traditionally, economists have modeled
behavior assuming fixed preferences, but preferences form through the confluence of culture, environment,
and experience. Conceivably, they shift as a function of both time and context. Recent research in cognitive
psychology suggests, in fact, that preferences are not as fixed as traditional economics assumes. Perhaps
deliberative processes present opportunities not only to readjust one's own preferences, but also to influence
those of others.
Prefer our evidence: the effect is huge and supported by data
Freeman 00 (Jody, Acting Professor of Law – University of California Los Angeles, and Laura Langbein, Professor
– School of Public Affairs, American University, “Regulatory Negotiation and the Legitimacy Benefit”, New York
University, Environmental Law Journal, 9 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J. 60, Lexis)
At first glance, one might assume that cognitive dissonance explains the higher satisfaction rates - after all, participants devoted considerable time and resources to
regulatory negotiation. But we think that this possibility, even if plausible, is largely irrelevant. 20 First, these sophisticated parties did not hesitate to criticize reg neg;
despite their overall positive evaluations, fully 95% identified things they disliked. 21 Second, and more important, however, we simply reiterate the facts: regardless
of the reason reported, participant satisfaction is higher for negotiated than for conventional rules (on which participants also expended effort), and the legitimacy of
the outcomes in their eyes is also greater. Cognitive dissonance (or some other psychological
mechanism) might help to explain how
regulatory negotiation works, but it does nothing to diminish the value of the process, unless the intervening psychological mechanism responsible for the
legitimacy benefit has some independent negative status. 22 In other words, reports of satisfaction may be "biased," but it makes no difference to the legitimacy
benefit. 23 One might also suspect that higher satisfaction rates correspond to disproportionate influence over the agency, which would suggest that the purported
legitimacy benefit simply disguises capture of the agency by interested parties. Based on the reported data, however, this is unlikely. The results of the study indicate
that the agency was equally responsive to stakeholders in both conventional and negotiated rulemaking contexts. 24 Although participants did perceive that some
parties exerted disproportionate influence in the reg neg process, the types of parties believed to have exerted that influence were fairly evenly [*66] distributed. In
fact, the parties that were perceived as exerting the most influence in both types of rulemakings were EPA itself and big business groups of all stripes. 25
Environmental groups were slightly more likely to be seen as exercising disproportionate influence in reg negs than in conventional rulemaking. 26 Moreover,
perceptions of disproportionate influence in conventional rulemaking occurred with the same relative frequency as those in reg negs. 27 We think it would be
inaccurate to suggest that satisfaction depends on, or disguises, undue influence over the agency that is exacerbated by reg neg. At worst, then, we believe that
regulatory negotiation might enable partial capture, but no more so than conventional rulemaking. Further, if there is any capture in rulemaking processes, there is no
evidence that the nature or extent of the capture produced through this consensus-based process is greater or more sinister than the capture that occurs through
traditional notice and comment rulemaking. Powerful groups, such as industry trade associations or government agencies, may fare better in all decision contexts
because of resource, information, and political asymmetries that work in their favor, but there is no reason to believe that regulatory negotiation enhances their
advantage. Although in this article we identify and recommend ways to ameliorate these asymmetries among parties in the reg neg context, we doubt the differences
can be eradicated. As to whether reg neg produces "better rules" in some objective sense, we cannot say. We note only that participants, including EPA, rate the
outcomes of negotiated rules as better than the outcomes from conventional rulemaking. 28 Empirically assessing rule quality is challenging, of course, given the
difficulty of measuring the net social value of any regulation, however it is produced. 29 Participants claim the rules were improved partly [*67] because they
perceive that the outcomes favor their interests. Indeed, the data show that for each additional point that a respondent ascribes to the net benefits of the rule for her
organization and to the overall efficiency of the rule, her rating of the overall process increases by 0.3 on an eleven-point scale. 30 We emphasize, however, that these
variables alone do not explain satisfaction rates. 31 The higher satisfaction with outcomes reported by reg neg participants remains, independently of the participants'
view of the rule's net economic benefit to them and independently of their estimation of its overall economic efficiency. Further, we note that greater participant
satisfaction could well be consistent (or at least not inconsistent) with the interests of the larger public. That is, higher satisfaction with reg neg among a group of
participants does not necessarily indicate that the product of reg neg is any worse for the greater public than the outcome of the conventional process. The results of
this study are consistent with the possibility that satisfaction
does not wholly depend on perceptions of "winning" or exacting gains
from other groups. Instead, the data suggest that the legitimacy benefit turns, to a significant extent, on participation in a
process, specifically one that presents an opportunity to affect the outcome. This view is bolstered by the work of social
psychologists, which indicates that involvement in a process enhances perceptions of legitimacy among participants,
independently of whether outcomes ultimately favor these participants. 32 This interpretation is consistent with yet
another [*68] finding of the study: two-thirds of the participants in negotiated rulemakings, regardless of group affiliation, believe that their effect on the outcome
was substantial. 33 In
sum, the data here support what numerous other studies have already demonstrated: process
matters .
3. Solves even if they say no --- process creates linkages that facilitate adoption of the plan
Harter 82 (Philip J., JD and MA in Mathematics – University of Michigan, “Negotiating Regulations: A Cure for
Malaise”, Georgetown Law Journal, October, 71 Geo. L.J. 1, Lexis)
Even if the parties are unable to reach agreement on all issues, the regulatory negotiation process may have significant
benefits . Because the areas of disagreement will be narrowed the issue will be better defined. The resolution
process, whether regulatory, legislative, or judicial in nature, can focus on these narrowly drawn issues. Moreover, to the extent
that the negotiation process reveals true interests as opposed to initial positions, those interests can be taken into
account in the subsequent process. Thus, the regulatory negotiation process will streamline the subsequent
regulatory process by enabling the decisionmakers to focus on the true issues and interests in dispute. Participants in
some of the environmental negotiations have found that working together toward a decision can bring the parties closer together
so they develop an ongoing working relationship . n594 That relationship in turn can enable them to work out disputes
among themselves as opposed to resorting to a more intensive adversarial process. Thus, the initial working relationship may have
established the norms against which subsequent dealings were conducted. Even if no agreement is reached on a proposed regulation, the
definition of the issues involved and the establishment of a forum in which the parties may work together is alone a
substantial benefit.
4. No deficit --- if backlash is substantial, it jacks solvency just as much
Susskind and McMahon 85 (Lawrence, Professor of Urban Studies and Planning – MIT, and Gerald, Director of
the Public Disputes Program on Negotiation – Harvard Law School, Yale Journal on Regulation, Fall, p. 136-137)
While these developments have increased agency accountability, they have not fully responded to concerns about the legitimacy of regulatory actions. Limiting the role of nonagency participants to adversarial challenges to the rulemaking record has been an ineffective means of building
support for the policy choices that agencies have had to make. The current rulemaking process is bound to generate
dissatisfaction as long as regulatory agencies retain the exclusive responsibility for making the technical judgments
and political compromises needed to develop a rule. By encouraging and empowering regulatees to challenge
agency decisionmaking in an effort to enhance the political legitimacy of the rulemaking process, Congress and the courts have simply increased
the complexity, cost, and time it takes to generate rules that can be implemented. A number of scholars have
suggested negotiated rulemaking as a response to these problems of delay, increased cost, and loss of political
legitimacy. 25 In negotiated rulemaking, an agency and other parties with a significant stake in a rule participate in facilitated face-to-face interactions designed to produce a consensus.
Together the parties explore their shared interests as well as differences of opinion, collaborate in gathering and analyzing technical information, generate options, and bargain and trade across
these options according to their differing priorities. If a consensus is reached, 26 it is published in the Federal Register as the agency's notice of proposed rulemaking, and then the conventional
Because most of the parties likely to comment have already agreed on the notice of
proposed rulemaking, the review period should be uneventful. The prospects of subsequent litigation should be all
but eliminated.
review and comment process takes over.
5. Empiricism --- every reg neg has reached consensus
Harter 97 (Philip J., Visiting Associate Professor and Director of the Program on Consensus, Democracy, and
Governance – Vermont Law School, “Fear of Commitment: An Affliction of Adolescents”, Duke Law Journal,
April, 46 Duke L.J. 1389, Lexis)
The rules that emerge through reg neg reflect a shop-floor insight and expertise. Hence, they can develop considerable
innovation and take account of issues that would likely escape the attention of an agency in a traditional rulemaking. EPA's
equipment leak standard is such an example. 56 So is the steel erection standard: 57 the committee identified a vast number of issues that would
greatly improve safety beyond the relatively narrow set of issues initially foreseen by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA). 58 Interestingly, there is some indication that rules that emerge from reg negs are more stringent than those the
agency would [*1404] have been able to issue on its own; nevertheless, these rules are cheaper to implement precisely because the
committee can focus on ways to get the greatest return. As for judicial review, there
has never been a judicial challenge to a
negotiated rule where the agency issued the rule as negotiated and the parties agreed not to challenge it. 59 Unlike other
forms of administrative procedure, reg negs and other means of consensus building have few fixed rules. Their hallmark is their
flexibility: they are highly adaptive and can be modified to take account of changing circumstances . While pliable, they
are not formless. The benefits of negotiated rulemaking have resulted from a careful attention to detail and a few fundamental precepts. Since
both the integrity of the process and its success turn on their observance, it is worth emphasizing them here.
Solvency – Cheating DA – 2NC
Compliance DA --Plan gets cheated – groups avoid regulation
Rechtschaffen 98 (Clifford, Professor and Co-Director of the Environmental Law & Justice Clinic – Golden Gate
University School of Law, “Deterrence vs. Cooperation and the Evolving Theory of Environmental Enforcement”,
Southern California Law Review, September, 71 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1181, Lexis)
In Scholz's view, cooperation is not an altruistic strategy but one which helps both regulated entities and enforcers
maximize their utility over the long term. The contingent nature of enforcement, however, results in a type of
prisoners' dilemma when a cooperative strategy is used. Firms will be tempted to cheat to avoid compliance costs,
since instances of noncompliance are less likely to be detected in a cooperative scheme. Conversely, agencies
uncertain that all firms are complying are tempted to retreat from cooperation because deterrence-based enforcement
is more likely to detect noncompliance. Firms then have no guarantee that if they act exceptionally and do more than
the law requires, the agency still will not enforce the law strictly against them. The result is that, while mutual
cooperation is in the long-term interest of both sides, it is unlikely to occur in a single encounter because of the
short-term temptation to cheat.
Fiat doesn’t solve --- implementation gets undercut --- only the CP avoids
Freeman 97 (Jody, Professor of Law – UCLA, and JD – Harvard University, UCLA Law Review, October, p. 2223)
The collaborative claim that problem solving tends to produce higher-quality rules rests upon the belief that
unanticipated or novel solutions are likely to emerge from face-to-face deliberative engagement among
knowledgeable parties who would never otherwise share information or devise solutions together. A process
conducive to the disclosure and debate of data is more likely to make better use of available information and expose
information gaps than one that promotes secrecy and indirect communication. Moreover, parties have a difficult
time insisting on arbitrary or indefensible positions when they are confronted with data or arguments that undermine
their view. Problem-oriented deliberation is widely thought to be more conducive to creativity and innovation than
either positional bargaining or indirect communication through a paper record. In addition, parties are thought to
be more likely to implement rules produced by a consensus in which they are a part. Giving stakeholders an
opportunity to participate directly in the rule-making process grants them a degree of "ownership" over a rule and
increases their commitment to its successful implementation. Sustained interaction is also likely to ameliorate the
adversarialism of stakeholder relationships that are usually forged in the context of litigation. For some, improving
civility has an independent value, but it can also be instrumental in fostering the trust and good faith necessary to
overcome setbacks in the implementation process. Improved relationships may increase the likelihood of
cooperation in future interactions.
2NC Multi-Condo Good
Condo’s good
1. Neg flex – can’t use kritiks and counterplans and test the aff from different angles
2. Information processing – multiple choices make for more tactile and harder debate – fosters 2ac tech skills
3. Real-world – policy-makers aren’t forced to stick to their opinions if they realize a flaw
[4. Research – sides have to learn a broader variety of issues instead of relying on generics
5. Checks new affs – neg needs to be able to test multiple options on the fly]
Counter-interpretation – we get [INSERT] – it’s a logical fixed limit that mitigates their offense
Not a voter –
[If going for] just a reason to stick us with the CP – solves 1AR allocation
[If not going for] just a reason conditional worlds should be banned – solves 1AR allocation
AT: Strat Skew
No reason we skewed you any more than disads, T, or impact turns would – our advocacies aren’t
contradictory
AT: In-depth education
2NR checks – still gain education but are forced to think about time allocation too – eventually will come
down to the best option
AT: Neg Bias
Aff has first and last speech, gets to pick the focus of the debate, and can go for a single dropped arg in the
2ar – this topic proves there is no predictable neg ground
AT: C/I – One Condo
Can’t solve either teams offense – means we can’t test new options on the fly and leads to staler debate
Arbitrary and self-serving – like saying you can cheat just not in the specific way you cheated in this debate –
if theory is entirely offense/defense, then all of our offense is a linear disad
AT C/I – Dispo
Arbitrary and not real-world – forces us into random rules to stick us with advocacies, let’s the aff frame the
debate
A2: Perm – Do the CP
Severance --Reg neg is an open-ended and indefinite process. The CP doesn’t fiat topical action. It mandates negotiation
which could but may not produce agreement that results in legalization
Negotiated rulemaking is mutually exclusive --- it competes with top-down policy like the plan --- that’s
USAID. Defer to field experts – they’re most knowledgeable, precise, and define the literature base that
should determine competition – it’s critical to topic education.
Voting issue --- destroys all ground
-- Severs certainty --A) Resolved requires certainty
OED 89 (Oxford English Dictionary, “Resolved,” Volume 13, p. 725)
1. a. of the mind, etc.: Freed from doubt or uncertainty, fixed, settled. Obs.
And “Should” is mandatory
Nieto 9 – Judge Henry Nieto, Colorado Court of Appeals, 8-20-2009 People v. Munoz, 240 P.3d 311 (Colo. Ct.
App. 2009)
"Should" is "used . . . to express duty, obligation, propriety, or expediency." Webster's Third New International Dictionary 2104
(2002). Courts [**15] interpreting the word in various contexts have drawn conflicting conclusions, although the weight of authority
appears to favor interpreting "should" in an imperative, obligatory sense . HN7A number of courts, confronted with the
question of whether using the word "should" in jury instructions conforms with the Fifth and Sixth Amendment protections governing the
reasonable doubt standard, have upheld instructions using the word. In the courts of other states in which a defendant has argued that the
word "should" in the reasonable doubt instruction does not sufficiently inform the jury that it is bound to find the defendant not guilty if
insufficient proof is submitted at trial, the courts have squarely rejected the argument. They reasoned that the word "conveys a sense of
duty and obligation and could not be misunderstood by a jury." See State v. McCloud, 257 Kan. 1, 891 P.2d 324, 335 (Kan.
1995); see also Tyson v. State, 217 Ga. App. 428, 457 S.E.2d 690, 691-92 (Ga. Ct. App. 1995) (finding argument that "should" is directional but
not instructional to be without merit); Commonwealth v. Hammond, 350 Pa. Super. 477, 504 A.2d 940, 941-42 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1986). Notably,
courts interpreting the word "should" in other types of jury instructions [**16] have also found that the word conveys to the
jury a
sense of duty or obligation and not discretion . In Little v. State, 261 Ark. 859, 554 S.W.2d 312, 324 (Ark. 1977), the
Arkansas Supreme Court interpreted the word "should" in an instruction on circumstantial evidence as synonymous with the
word "must" and rejected the defendant's argument that the jury may have been misled by the court's use of the word in the instruction.
Similarly, the Missouri Supreme Court rejected a defendant's argument that the court erred by not using the word
"should" in an instruction on witness credibility which used the word "must" because the two words have the same
meaning . State v. Rack, 318 S.W.2d 211, 215 (Mo. 1958). [*318] In applying a child support statute, the Arizona Court of Appeals
concluded that a legislature's or commission's use of the word "should" is meant to convey duty or obligation .
McNutt v. McNutt, 203 Ariz. 28, 49 P.3d 300, 306 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2002) (finding a statute stating that child support expenditures "should" be
allocated for the purpose of parents' federal tax exemption to be mandatory).
B) Mechanism --- Legalize means require to make lawful – the CP is open-ended until the result of mediation
Supreme Court of Colorado 92 (IN THE MATTER OF THE TITLE, BALLOT TITLE AND SUBMISSION
CLAUSE APPROVED SEPTEMBER 4, 1991, WITH REGARD TO THE PROPOSED INITIATED
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT CONCERNING LIMITED GAMING IN MANITOU SPRINGS,
FAIRPLAY AND IN AIRPORTS. KATHY VERLO, Petitioner, and GEORGE L. JAMES, RAYMOND
DELLACROCE, and CHARLES SARNER, Respondents, and GALE NORTON, BILL HOBBS and NATALIE
MEYER, Title Setting Board., NO. 91SA359, 826 P.2d 1241; 1992 Colo. LEXIS 53; 16 BTR 133,
http://www.leagle.com/decision/19922067826P2d1241_12034.xml/MATTER%20OF%20TITLE,%20BALLOT%2
0TITLE)
Turning to Verlo's claim, we are satisfied that the Board's use of the term "legalize" in the title and in the ballot title
and submission clause correctly and fairly expresses the true intent and meaning of the proposed constitutional
amendment. The word "legalize" means "to make legal" or "to give legal validity or sanction to." Webster's Third
New International Dictionary 1290 (1986); see also Black's Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990) (legalize means "[t]o
make legal or lawful" or "[t]o confirm or validate what was before void or unlawful"). In the context of the phrase
"to legalize limited gaming in the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay," the word "legalize" expresses the sense
that these cities will be required to legislate so as to make limited gaming legal within their respective
municipalities. Contrary to Verlo's argument, we do not construe the word "legalize" as somehow suggesting that
the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay will retain the discretion either to legalize or to prohibit limited gaming as
they see fit. The Board's decision to add a sentence to the summary stating that under the proposed constitutional
amendment the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay would be "required to enact certain ordinances to implement
limited gaming" merely expands upon what is conveyed in the title and in the ballot title and submission clause by
the phrase "to legalize limited gaming in the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay." Nothing in the record
persuades us that the Board's choice of language in the title and in the ballot title and submission clause is in any
way misrepresentative of the true intent and meaning of the proposed constitutional amendment.
C) Cross-ex: they said __________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________.
The CP doesn’t unconditionally increase. It creates an exception: where parties says “no”. CX is binding --otherwise it’s meaningless.
Voting issue --- certainty is key to Neg ground --- and prevents the Aff from losing on rollback
D) Severs immediacy – “should” means done now
Summer 94 (Justice, Oklahoma Supreme Court, “Kelsey v. Dollarsaver Food Warehouse of Durant”,
http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=20287#marker3fn14)
4 The legal question to be resolved by the court is whether the word "should"13 in the May 18 order connotes futurity
or may be deemed a ruling in praesenti.14 The answer to this query is not to be divined from rules of grammar;15 it
must be governed by the age-old practice culture of legal professionals and its immemorial language usage . To
determine if the omission (from the critical May 18 entry) of the turgid phrase, "and the same hereby is", (1) makes it an in futuro ruling - i.e., an
expression of what the judge will or would do at a later stage - or (2) constitutes an in in praesenti resolution of a disputed law issue, the trial
judge's intent must be garnered from the four corners of the entire record.16 ¶5 Nisi prius orders should be so construed as to give effect to
every words and every part of the text, with a view to carrying out the evident intent of the judge's direction.17 The order's language ought not to
be considered abstractly. The actual meaning intended by the document's signatory should be derived from the context in which the phrase to be
interpreted is used.18 When applied to the May 18 memorial, these told canons impel my conclusion that the judge doubtless intended
his ruling as an in praesenti resolution of Dollarsaver's quest for judgment n.o.v. Approval of all counsel plainly appears on the face of
the critical May 18 entry which is [885 P.2d 1358] signed by the judge. 19 True minutes20 of a court neither call for nor bear the approval of the
parties' counsel nor the judge's signature. To reject out of hand the view that in this context "should" is impliedly followed by the customary, "and
the same hereby is", makes the court once again revert to medieval notions of ritualistic formalism now so thoroughly condemned in national
jurisprudence and long abandoned by the statutory policy of this State.
[Continues – To Footnote]
14 In praesenti means literally "at the present time." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 792 (6th Ed. 1990). In legal parlance the
phrase denotes that which in law is presently or immediately effective, as opposed to something that will or would
become effective in the future [in futurol]. See Van Wyck v. Knevals, 106 U.S. 360, 365, 1 S.Ct. 336, 337, 27 L.Ed. 201
(1882).
-- Severs normal means –
Reg negs are rare
Dana 00 (David A., Professor of Law – Northwestern University School of Law and Faculty Fellow – Institute of
Policy Research, “Innovations in Environmental Policy: The New "Contractarian" Paradigm in Environmental
Regulation”, University of Illinois Law Review, 2000 U. Ill. L. Rev. 35, Lexis)
n43. In the context of some command-and-control-style rulemakings, the EPA has engaged in a negotiated
rulemaking process whereby representatives of environmental groups, representatives of regulated businesses, and
government officials negotiated the substantive contents of regulations. Such negotiated rulemakings, however, have
been relatively rare and (in terms of either environmental impact or economic cost) relatively insignificant. The
parties to the negotiations retain the right to challenge any regulation promulgated pursuant to the negotiations as if,
and on the same legal bases as, there had never been any prepromulgation negotiations. And, indeed, negotiated
rulemakings have often been the subject of legal challenges. See Charles C. Caldert & Nicholas A. Ashford,
Negotiations as a Means of Developing and Implementing Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety
Policy, 23 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 141, 143-45 (1999); Cary Coglianese, Assessing Consensus: The Promise and
Performance of Negotiated Rulemaking, 46 Duke L.J. 1255, 1259 (1997).
Normal means should govern competition: its based in literature, predictable for both sides, and fair because
they only have to defend one process of action
-- Textual competition is bad –
A) Stupid – doesn’t allow “ban the plan”, allows scramble perms and functional “plan plus” counterplans
B) Not logical – actions compete based on function – re-wording shouldn’t matter. Distorts real world
decision-making – biggest impact
-- No offense – bad counterplans can be beaten on theory – text comp isn’t necessary to eliminate them
Theory – 2NC
Crucial to topic education --- reg neg is an established practice that’s key to unlocking change in regulatory
policy --- it’s a core issue they should be prepared for. Topic evidence solves their offense: limits CPs to a
predictable set, proves it’s a process relating to core categories, and means there is literature for the aff to
build from
Focus on process is key to good policymaking
Harter 9 (Philip J., Professor of Law – University of Missouri and Member – Center for the Study of Dispute
Resolution, “Collaboration: The Future of Governance”, Journal of Dispute Resolution, 2009 J. Disp. Resol. 411,
Lexis)
IV. The Process of Negotiating Policy
So much of the discussion of collaborative
governance is at a high level of abstraction or philosophy. Before one can
be serious about it, however, one needs to understand or at least examine a bit of plumbing : the details are important .
Ironically, even those who are ardent supporters of collaboration often overlook the essential details. 41 But, as was urged early on, some
important fixed points-nodes in the system-need to be addressed. Thus, before we can fully appreciate collaborative governance, we need to
examine a bit of just how it is done. Federal agencies are authorized to use alternative means of dispute resolution to resolve
issues in controversy that relate to an administrative program. 42 The Negotiated Rulemaking Act (Act) makes this general
authority explicit with respect to developing regulations via consensus among the interests that would be significantly affected by the rule. 43
The Act then sets out the procedures to be followed in negotiating a consensus on a proposed rule. 44 While the Act only addresses negotiating
rules, 45 the same process can be used to develop other forms of policy. What follows is an elaboration on that process.
Its fair --- its an alternative to top-down change --- they get delay and say “no” arguments, structurally
building-in ground --- and tons of literature exists
Applegate 98 (John, Junior Professor of Law – University of Cincinnati, Indiana Law Journal, Summer, p. 901)
There is substantial literature on negotiated rulemaking. The interested reader might begin with the Negotiated Rulemaking Act
of 1990, 5 U.S.C. 561-570 (1994 & Supp. II 1996), Freeman, supra note 53, Philip J. Harter, Negotiating Regulations: A Cure for Malaise, 71
Geo. L.J. 1 (1982), Henry E. Perritt, Jr., Negotiated Rulemaking Before Federal Agencies: Evaluation of the Recommendations by the
Administrative Conference of the United States, 74 Geo. L.J. 1625 (1986), Lawrence Susskind & Gerard McMahon, The Theory and Practice of
Negotiated Rulemaking, 3 Yale J. on Reg. 133 (1985), and an excellent, just-published issue on regulatory negotiation, Twenty-Eighth Annual
Administrative Law Issue, 46 Duke L.J. 1255 (1997). For more skeptical views, see Cary Coglianese, Assessing Consensus: The Promise
and Performance of Negotiated Rulemaking, 46 Duke L.J. 1255 (1997), William Funk, When Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Regulatory
Negotiation and the Public Interest-EPA's Woodstove Standards, 18 Envtl. L. 55 (1987), Susan Rose-Ackerman, Consensus Versus
Incentives: A Skeptical Look at Regulatory Negotiation, 43 Duke L.J. 1206 (1994), and Patricia M. Wald, Negotiation of Environmental
Disputes: A New Role for the Courts?, 10 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 1 (1985). A very useful dialogue on regulatory negotiation as a form of citizen
participation may be found in Daniel Fiorino, Regulatory Negotiation as a Form of Public Participation, in Fairness and Competence in
Citizen Participation 223 (Ortwin Renn et al. eds., 1995), and Susan G. Hadden, Regulatory Negotiation as Citizen Participation: A Critique, in
Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation, supra, at 239.
Reg neg is predictable --- it’s a huge academic debate
Freeman 00 (Jody, Acting Professor of Law – University of California Los Angeles, and Laura Langbein, Professor
– School of Public Affairs, American University, “Regulatory Negotiation and the Legitimacy Benefit”, New York
University, Environmental Law Journal, 9 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J. 60, Lexis)
Notwithstanding that only a few agencies use regulatory negotiation 1 for a tiny minority of rules, the process
attracts a remarkable amount of scholarly attention. While proponents claim that negotiation improves rule
quality, reduces transaction costs and increases legitimacy, critics contend that the process fails to deliver its
purported benefits and abrogates an agency's responsibility to execute its delegated functions. Some commentators
have gone so far as to argue that consensus-based policy making of this sort is fundamentally undemocratic. 2
Key to Neg flex --- necessary to debate new Affs and capture unpredictable add-ons --- we need it: topic is Aff
biased
Not a voter --- reject the argument, not the team
Spillover – A2: Nuke War Turns Warming
Nuclear war will not cause warming
Robert Lamb, science writer for How Stuff Works, 2/24/2009, Global warming vs. nuclear winter, Science Stuff, p.
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/02/24/global-warming-vs-nuclear-winter/
In writing a recent article about nuclear winter, I ran across this outrageous statement quite a bit: “ Couldn’t we just cancel out global
warming with nuclear winter?” The short answer? Yes. And you can also cure a hangnail with a meat cleaver, though it’s
probably not quite the fix you’re looking for. To be fair, no one is seriously advocating the use of thermonuclear weapons to save the
environment. Most of the time, the suggestion is either a thoughtless joke or a shot at the theoretic (and therefore fallible) aspects of both global
warming and nuclear winter. When it comes to understanding our atmosphere, there’s a whole lot of room to wind up getting it wrong. The
bottom line is that, yes, scientists in a recent study theorize that the detonation of just 100 nuclear weapons in a regional
conflict (such as between India and Pakistan) would cloak the globe in enough smoke to produce a three-year temperature
drop of approximately 2.25 degrees F (1.25 degrees C). If you eject enough debris into the atmosphere, you could shield the surface
from solar radiation and cut down on the heat.
Case
Extra Cartels
Drugs aren’t the root cause of Mexican instability – lack of strong political institutions outweighs
Hope 14 (Alejandro, security policy analyst at IMCO, a Mexico City research organization and former intelligence
officer, “Legal U.S. Pot Won’t Bring Peace to Mexico,” Bloomberg, http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/201401-21/legal-u-s-pot-won-t-bring-peace-to-mexico)
Since Jan. 1, Colorado has had a legal marijuana market. The same will soon be true in Washington State, once retail licenses are issued. Other
states, such as California and Oregon, will likely follow suit over the next three years. So does this creeping legalization of marijuana
in the U.S. spell doom for the Mexican drug cartels? Not quite. The illegal marijuana trade provides Mexican organized crime
with about $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year. That’s not chump change, but according to a number of estimates, it represents no more
than a third of gross drug export revenue. Cocaine is still the cartels’ biggest money-maker and the revenue accruing
from heroin and methamphetamine aren’t trivial. Moreover, Mexican gangs also obtain income from extortion,
kidnapping, theft and various other types of illegal trafficking. Losing the marijuana trade would be a blow to their
finances, but it certainly wouldn’t put them out of business. But surely Mexico would experience less violence if marijuana was
legal? Yes, to some extent, but the decline wouldn’t be sufficient to radically alter the country’s security outlook. In all
likelihood, marijuana production and marijuana-related violence are highly correlated geographically. Marijuana
output is concentrated in five states (Chihuahua, Durango, Sinaloa, Michoacan and Guerrero) that accounted for approximately a third of
all homicides committed in Mexico in 2012. Assuming improbably that half of all murders in those areas were marijuana-related, we can estimate
that the full elimination of the illegal marijuana trade would reduce Mexico’s homicide rate to 18 per 100,000
inhabitants from 22 -- still about four times the U.S. rate. Well, but couldn’t the Mexican government gain a peace dividend by
redirecting some resources from marijuana prohibition to other law enforcement objectives? Yes, but the effect would probably be modest. Only
4 percent of all Mexican prison inmates are serving time exclusively for marijuana-related crimes. In 2012, drug offenses represented less than 2
percent of all crime reports in the country. When it comes to only federal crimes (7 percent of the total), the share of drug offenses rises to 20
percent, but that percentage has been declining since 2007. So the legalization of marijuana won’t free up a huge trove of
resources to be redeployed against predatory crime. Whatever the legal status of marijuana, Mexico needs to
tackle its many institutional malfunctions. Its police forces are underpaid, undertrained, under motivated and
deeply vulnerable to corruption and intimidation. Its criminal justice system is painfully slow, notoriously inefficient
and deeply unfair. Even with almost universal impunity, prisons are overflowing and mostly ruled by the inmates
themselves. Changing that reality will take many years. Some reforms are under way, some are barely off the
ground. As a result of a 2008 constitutional reform, criminal courts are being transformed, but progress across states has been uneven. With a
couple of local exceptions, police reform has yet to find political traction. The federal Attorney General’s Office is set to become an independent
body, but not before 2018. The reformist zeal that President Enrique Pena Nieto has shown in other policy areas (education, energy,
telecommunications) is absent in security and justice. Security policy remains reactive, driven more by political considerations than by strategic
design. And results have been mixed at best: Homicides declined moderately in 2013, but both kidnapping and extortion reached record levels.
Marijuana legalization won’t alter that dynamic. In the final analysis, Mexico doesn’t have a drug problem, much less a marijuana
problem: It has a state capacity problem. That is, its institutions are too weak to protect the life, liberty and
property of its citizens. Even if drug trafficking might very well decline in the future, in the absence of stronger
institutions, something equally nefarious will replace it.
No risk of accidental/unauthorized war.
Dr. Leonid Ryabikhin, General (Ret.) Viktor Koltunov and Dr. Eugene Miasnikov, June 2009. Senior Fellow at the
EastWest Institute; Deputy Director, Institute for Strategic Stability of Rosatom; and Senior Research Scientist, Centre for Arms
Control, Energy, and Environmental Studies, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. “De-alerting: Decreasing the
Operational Readiness of Strategic Nuclear Forces,” Discussion paper presented at the seminar on “Re-framing De Alert:
Decreasing the Operational Readiness of Nuclear Weapons Systems in the U.S.-Russia Context,”
www.ewi.info/system/files/RyabikhinKoltunovMiasnikov.pdf.
Analysis of the above arguments shows, that they do not have solid grounds. Today Russian and U.S.
ICBMs are not targeted at any state. High alert status of the Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear forces has not been
an obstacle for building a strategic partnership. The issue of the possibility of an “accidental” nuclear war
itself is hypothetical. Both states have developed and implemented constructive organizational and
technical measures that practically exclude launches resulting from unauthorized action of personnel or
terrorists. Nuclear weapons are maintained under very strict system of control that excludes any accidental or unauthorized use
and guarantees that these weapons can only be used provided that there is an appropriate authorization by the
national leadership. Besides that it should be mentioned that even the Soviet Union and the U nited S tates had taken
important bilateral steps toward decreasing the risk of accidental nuclear conflict. Direct emergency
telephone “red line” has been established between the White House and the Kremlin in 19 63 . In 19 71 the
USSR and USA signed the Agreement on Measures to Reduce the Nuclear War Threat. This Agreement
established the actions of each side in case of even a hypothetical accidental missile launch and it contains
the requirements for the owner of the launched missile to deactivate and eliminate the missile. Both the
Soviet Union and the U nited S tates have developed proper measures to observe the agreed requirements.
Doesn't collapse heg -- cartels have existed for decades and will continue to exist -- doesn't affect US power
projection in important areas that aren't Latin America.
-- Heg is resilient
Wohlforth 7 (William, Professor of Government – Dartmouth College, “Unipolar Stability”,
Harvard International Review, Spring, http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/1611/3/)
US military forces are stretched thin, its budget and trade deficits are high, and the country continues to finance its profligate ways by borrowing
from abroad—notably from the Chinese government. These developments have prompted many analysts to warn that the United
States suffers from “imperial overstretch.” And if US power is overstretched now, the argument goes, unipolarity can hardly be
sustainable for long. The problem with this argument is that it fails to distinguish between actual and latent power. One must be careful to take
into account both the level of resources that can be mobilized and the degree to which a government actually tries to mobilize them. And how
much a government asks of its public is partly a function of the severity of the challenges that it faces. Indeed, one can never know for sure what
a state is capable of until it has been seriously challenged. Yale historian Paul Kennedy coined the term “imperial overstretch” to describe the
situation in which a state’s actual and latent capabilities cannot possibly match its foreign policy commitments. This situation should be
contrasted with what might be termed “self-inflicted overstretch”—a situation in which a state lacks the sufficient resources to meet its current
foreign policy commitments in the short term, but has untapped latent power and readily available policy choices that it can use to draw on this
power. This is arguably the situation that the United States is in today. But the US government has not attempted to extract more
resources from its population to meet its foreign policy commitments. Instead, it has moved strongly in the opposite direction by
slashing personal and corporate tax rates. Although it is fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and claims to be fighting a global “war”
on terrorism, the United States is not acting like a country under intense international pressure. Aside from the volunteer
servicemen and women and their families, US citizens have not been asked to make sacrifices for the sake of national prosperity and
security. The country could clearly devote a greater proportion of its economy to military spending: today it spends
only about 4 percent of its GDP on the military, as compared to 7 to 14 percent during the peak years of the Cold War. It could
also spend its military budget more efficiently, shifting resources from expensive weapons systems to boots on the
ground. Even more radically, it could reinstitute military conscription, shifting resources from pay and benefits to training and
equipping more soldiers. On the economic front, it could raise taxes in a number of ways, notably on fossil fuels, to put its
fiscal house back in order. No one knows for sure what would happen if a US president undertook such drastic measures, but there
is nothing in economics, political science, or history to suggest that such policies would be any less likely to succeed
than China is to continue to grow rapidly for decades. Most of those who study US politics would argue that the likelihood and
potential success of such power-generating policies depends on public support, which is a function of the public’s perception
of a threat. And as unnerving as terrorism is, there is nothing like the threat of another hostile power rising up in opposition to
the United States for mobilizing public support. With latent power in the picture, it becomes clear that unipolarity
might have more built-in self-reinforcing mechanisms than many analysts realize. It is often noted that the rise of a peer
competitor to the United States might be thwarted by the counterbalancing actions of neighboring powers. For example, China’s rise might push
India and Japan closer to the United States—indeed, this has already happened to some extent. There is also the strong possibility that a peer
rival that comes to be seen as a threat would create strong incentives for the United States to end its self-inflicted
overstretch and tap potentially large wellsprings of latent power.
2NC Heg/War – Fettweis Biz
No wars absent hegemony – nuclear deterrence, globalization, insituitions and democracy will exist with or
without the US and will check great power conflict
Reject their vague assertions for conflict scenarios absent hegemony – their authors overestimate the
importance of the US - star this card
Fettweis 11 [Christopher J. Fettweis - Department of Political Science Tulane University and Professor of
National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, “Free Riding or Restraint Examining European Grand
Strategy”, Comparative Strategy; Sep/Oct2011, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p316-332, 17p, Chetan]
Assertions that without the combination of U.S. capabilities, presence and commitments
instability would return to Europe and the Pacific Rim are usually rendered in rather vague
language. If the United States were to decrease its commitments abroad, argued Robert Art, “the world will become a
more dangerous place and, sooner or later, that will redound to America’s detriment.”53 From where would this
danger arise? Who precisely would do the fighting, and over what issues? Without the United States,
would Europe really descend into Hobbesian anarchy? Would the Japanese attack
mainland China again, to see if they could fare better this time around? Would the Germans and French have another go at it? In
other words, where exactly is hegemony is keeping the peace? With one exception, these questions
are rarely addressed. That exception is in the Pacific Rim. Some analysts fear that a de facto surrender of U.S. hegemony
would lead to a rise of Chinese influence. Bradley Thayer worries that Chinese would become “the language of diplomacy, trade and
commerce, transportation and navigation, the internet, world sport, and global culture,” and that Beijing would come to “dominate science
and technology, in all its forms” to the extent that soon theworldwould witness a Chinese astronaut who not only travels to the Moon, but
“plants the communist flag on Mars, and perhaps other planets in the future.”54 Indeed Chin a is the only other major power that has
increased its military spending since the end of the Cold War, even if it still is only about 2 percent of its GDP. Such levels of effort do not
suggest a desire to compete with, much less supplant, the United States. The much-ballyhooed, decade-long
military
buildup has brought Chinese spending up to somewhere between one-tenth and onefifth of the U.S. level. It is hardly clear that a restrained United States would invite
Chinese regional, must less global, political expansion. Fortunately one need not ponder for too long the horrible specter of a red
flag on Venus, since on the planet Earth, where war is no longer the dominant form of conflict resolution, the threats posed by even a rising
China would not be terribly dire. The dangers contained in the terrestrial security environment are less severe than ever before.
Believers in the pacifying power of hegemony ought to keep in mind a rather basic tenet: When it
comes to policymaking, specific threats are more significant than vague, unnamed dangers. Without
specific risks, it is just as plausible to interpret U.S. presence as redundant, as overseeing a peace that has already arrived. Strategy
should not be based upon vague images emerging from the dark reaches of the
neoconservative imagination. Overestimating Our Importance One of the most basic insights of
cognitive psychology provides the final reason to doubt the power of hegemonic
stability: Rarely are our actions as consequential upon their behavior as we perceive them to be.
A great deal of experimental evidence exists to support the notion that people (and therefore states)
tend to overrate the degree to which their behavior is responsible for the actions of
others. Robert Jervis has argued that two processes account for this overestimation, both ofwhichwould seem to be especially relevant
in theU.S. case. 55 First, believing that we are responsible for their actions gratifies our national
ego (which is not small to begin with; the United States is exceptional in its exceptionalism). The hubris of the United States, long
appreciated and noted, has only grown with the collapse of the Soviet Union.56 U.S. policymakers famously have
comparatively little knowledge of—or interest in—events that occur outside of their
own borders. If there is any state vulnerable to the overestimation of its importance due
to the fundamental misunderstanding of the motivation of others, it would have to be
the United States. Second, policymakers in the United States are far more familiar with our actions than they are with the
decision-making processes of our allies. Try as we might, it is not possible to fully understand the threats,
challenges, and opportunities that our allies see from their perspective. The European great
powers have domestic politics as complex as ours, and they also have competent, capable strategists to chart their way forward. They
react to many international forces, of which U.S. behavior is only one. Therefore, for any actor
trying to make sense of the action of others, Jervis notes, “in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, the most obvious and
parsimonious explanation is that he was responsible.”57 It
is natural, therefore, for U.S. policymakers and strategists to
believe that the behavior of our allies (and rivals) is shaped largely by what Washington
does. Presumably Americans are at least as susceptible to the overestimation of their ability as any other people, and perhaps more so. At
the very least, political psychologists tell us, we are probably not as important to them as we think. The
importance of U.S. hegemony in contributing to international stability is therefore
almost certainly overrated . In the end, one can never be sure why our major allies have not gone to, and do not even plan
for, war. Like deterrence, the hegemonic stability theory rests on faith; it can only be falsified,
never proven . It does not seem likely, however, that hegemony could fully account for twenty years of strategic decisions made in
allied capitals if the international system were not already a remarkably peaceful place. Perhaps these states have no
intention of fighting one another to begin with, and our commitments are redundant. European great powers may
well have chosen strategic restraint because they feel that their security is all but assured, with or without the United
States.
Empirically the world grew more peaceful when heg declined
Fettweis 11 [Christopher J. Fettweis - Department of Political Science Tulane University and Professor of
National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, “Free Riding or Restraint Examining European Grand
Strategy”, Comparative Strategy; Sep/Oct2011, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p316-332, 17p, Chetan]
there is no evidence to support a direct relationship between the relative level of U.S.
activism and international stability. In fact, the limited data we do have suggest the opposite
may be true . During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defense
It is perhaps worth noting that
in real terms than it had in 1990. 51 To internationalists, defense hawks and believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible “peace dividend” endangered both national and global
security. “No serious analyst of American military capabilities,” argued Kristol and Kagan, “doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America’s responsibilities to
itself and to world peace.” 52 On the other hand, if the pacific trends were not based upon U.S. hegemony but a strengthening norm against interstate war, one would not have expected an
The world grew more peaceful while the
United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was endangered
by a less-capable United States military, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to
address power vacuums, no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races, and no
regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was diminished. The rest of the world acted
as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S.
capabilities. Most of all, the United States and its allies were no less safe. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military
increase in global instability and violence. The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain:
spending under President Clinton, and kept declining as the Bush ramped the spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two
are unrelated. Military spending figures by themselves are insufficient to disprove a connection between overall U.S. actions and international stability. Once again, one could presumably
argue that spending is not the only or even the best indication of hegemony, and that it is instead U.S. foreign political and security commitments that maintain stability. Since neither was
significantly altered during this period, instability should not have been expected. Alternately, advocates of hegemonic stability could believe that relative rather than absolute spending is
decisive in bringing peace. Although the United States cut back on its spending during the 1990s, its relative advantage never wavered. However, even if it is true that either U.S.
commitments or relative spending account for global pacific trends, then at the very least stability can evidently be maintained at drastically lower levels of both. In other words, even if
one can be allowed to argue in the alternative for a moment and suppose that there is in fact a level of engagement below which the United States cannot drop without increasing
international disorder, a rational grand strategist would still recommend cutting back on engagement and spending until that level is determined. Grand strategic decisions are never final;
continual adjustments can and must be made as time goes on. Basic logic suggests that the United States ought to spend the minimum amount of its blood and treasure while seeking the
maximum return on its investment. And if the current era of stability is as stable as many believe it to be, no increase in conflict would ever occur irrespective of U.S. spending, which
would save untold trillions for an increasingly debt-ridden nation. It is also perhaps worth noting that if opposite trends had unfolded, if other states had reacted to news of cuts in U.S.
defense spending with more aggressive or insecure behavior, then internationalists would surely argue that their expectations had been fulfilled. If increases in conflict would have been
the only
evidence we have regarding the likely systemic reaction to a more restrained United
States suggests that the current peaceful trends are unrelated to U.S. military spending. Evidently
the rest of the world can operate quite effectively without the presence of a global policeman.
Those who think otherwise base their view on faith alone.
interpreted as proof of the wisdom of internationalist strategies, then logical consistency demands that the lack thereof should at least pose a problem. As it stands,
International trade and economics aren’t dependent on military intervention
Fettweis 11 [Christopher J. Fettweis - Department of Political Science Tulane University and Professor of
National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, “Free Riding or Restraint Examining European Grand
Strategy”, Comparative Strategy; Sep/Oct2011, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p316-332, 17p, Chetan]
Second, it should be equally simple to demonstrate that these states
remain vigorously engaged in international
trade and economics. In fact, fourteen of the fifteen “most globalized” countries in 2010 are in Europe, according to the Swiss
Economic Institute.10 The major U.S. allies appear to believe that the market does not need
protection, and that prosperity is no longer dependent upon active military intervention
abroad. Multinational corporations today can generally access the entire world without much fear
of undue harassment from host governments, who have strong incentives to provide a
healthy, well-regulated environment for trade and prosperity to flourish. Threats to free trade still exist from a
variety of criminal predators, but their solution, according to this point of view, hardly requires costly military action. If and when local law
enforcement agencies prove incapable of providing protection for the businesses that operate in their territory, modern multinationals surely
have the resources to either provide it for themselves, or move out. In other words, the allies have reached the conclusion that
Microsoft does not need the Marine Corps and great powers no longer have to use force
to guard their economic interests. Today’s market will take care of itself.
Trade routes and globalization check conflict post-decline
Preble 10 [Christopher Preble (director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute) August 2010 “U.S. Military
Power: Preeminence for What Purpose?” http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/u-s-military-power-preeminence-for-whatpurpose/]
Most in Washington still embraces the notion that America is, and forever will be, the world’s indispensable nation. Some scholars,
however, questioned the
logic of hegemonic stability theory from the very beginning. A number continue to do so
routes need not be policed by a
single dominant power; the international economy is complex and resilient. Supply
disruptions are likely to be temporary, and the costs of mitigating their effects should be
borne by those who stand to lose — or gain — the most. Islamic extremists are scary, but hardly comparable to the
today. They advance arguments diametrically at odds with the primacist consensus. Trade
threat posed by a globe-straddling Soviet Union armed with thousands of nuclear weapons. It is frankly absurd that we spend more today to
Many
factors have contributed to the dramatic decline in the number of wars between nation-states;
it is unrealistic to expect that a new spasm of global conflict would erupt if the United States
were to modestly refocus its efforts, draw down its military power, and call on other countries
to play a larger role in their own defense, and in the security of their respective regions. But
fight Osama bin Laden and his tiny band of murderous thugs than we spent to face down Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao.
while there are credible alternatives to the United States serving in its current dual role as world policeman / armed social worker, the
foreign policy establishment in Washington has no interest in exploring them. The people here have grown accustomed to living at the
center of the earth, and indeed, of the universe. The tangible benefits of all this military spending flow disproportionately to this tiny corner
of the United States while the schlubs in fly-over country pick up the tab
Unipolarity is comparatively meaningless to other factors in preventing conflict
Legro 11 (Jeffrey W. – professor of politics and Randolph P. Compton Professor in the Miller Center at the
University of Virginia, Sell unipolarity? The future of an overvalued concept in International Relations Theory and
the Consequences of Unipolarity, p. EBook)
Such a view, however, is problematic. What seems increasingly clear is that the
role of polarity has been overstated or
misunderstood or both. This is the unavoidable conclusion that emerges from the
penetrating chapters in this volume that probe America’s current dominant status (unipolarity) with the
question “does the distribution of capabilities matter for patterns of international politics?”3 Despite the explicit claim that
“unipolarity does have a profound impact on international politics”4 what is surprising is how
ambiguous and relatively limited that influence is across the chapters. The causal impact of
unipolarity has been overvalued for three fundamental reasons. The first is that the effects of
unipolarity are often not measured relative to the influence of other causes that explain the
same outcome. When the weight of other factors is considered, polarity seems to pale in
comparison . Second, rather than being a structure that molds states, polarity often seems to be
the product of state choice. Polarity may be more outcome than cause . Finally, while
international structure does exist, it is constituted as much by ideational content as by
material capabilities. Again polarity loses ground in significance .
Hegemonic decline will not result in great power wars.
Ikenberry 11 (G. John – Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University, A World of Our Making, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Summer, p.
http://www.democracyjournal.org/21/a-world-of-our-making-1.php?page=all)
There are four reasons to think that some type of updated and reorganized liberal international order will
persist . First, the old and traditional mechanism for overturning international order—greatpower war—is no longer likely to occur . Already, the contemporary world has experienced the
longest period of great-power peace in the long history of the state system. This absence of great-power
war is no doubt due to several factors not present in earlier eras, namely nuclear deterrence and the
dominance of liberal democracies. Nuclear weapons—and the deterrence they generate—give great powers some
confidence that they will not be dominated or invaded by other major states. They make war among major states less
rational and there-fore less likely. This removal of great-power war as a tool of overturning
international order tends to reinforce the status quo. The U nited S tates was lucky to have
emerged as a global power in the nuclear age, because rival great powers are put at a
disadvantage if they seek to overturn the American-led system. The cost-benefit calculation of
rival would-be hegemonic powers is altered in favor of working for change within the system. But,
again, the fact that great-power deterrence also sets limits on the projection of American power presumably makes the existing international
order more tolerable. It removes a type of behavior in the system—war, invasion, and conquest between great powers—that historically
provided the motive for seeking to overturn order. If the
violent over-turning of international order is
removed , a bias for continuity is introduced into the system. Second, the character of liberal international order itself—
with or without American hegemonic leadership—reinforces continuity. The complex
interdependence that is unleashed in an open and loosely rule-based order generates expanding realms of exchange and
investment that result in a growing array of firms, interest groups, and other sorts of political stakeholders who
seek to preserve the stability and openness of the system. Beyond this, the liberal order is also relatively
easy to join. In the post-Cold War decades, countries in different regions of the world have made democratic transitions and connected
themselves to various parts of this system. East European countries and states within the old Soviet empire have joined NATO. East Asian
countries, including China, have joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). Through its many multilateral institutions, the
liberal
international order facilitates integration and offers support for states that are making transitions toward liberal
democracy. Many countries have also experienced growth and rising incomes within this order. Comparing international orders is tricky,
but the
current liberal international order, seen in comparative perspective, does appear to have unique
characteristics that encourage integration and discourage opposition and resistance. Third, the states that
are rising today do not constitute a potential united opposition bloc to the existing order. There are so-called rising states in various regions
of the world. China, India, Brazil, and South Africa are perhaps most prominent. Russia is also sometimes included in this grouping of
rising states. These states are all capitalist and most are democratic. They all gain from trade and integration within the world capitalist
system. They all either are members of the WTO or seek membership in it. But they also have very diverse geopolitical and regional
interests and agendas. They do not constitute either an economic bloc or a geopolitical one. Their ideologies and histories are distinct. They
share an interest in gaining access to the leading institutions that govern the international system. Sometimes this creates competition among
them for influence and access. But it also orients their struggles toward the reform and reorganization of governing institutions, not to a
united effort to overturn the underlying order. Fourth, all
the great powers have alignments of interests that will
continue to bring them together to negotiate and cooperate over the management of the system. All
the great powers—old and rising—are status-quo powers. All are beneficiaries of an open world economy and the
various services that the liberal international order provides for capitalist trading states. All
worry about religious radicalism
and failed states. Great powers such as Russia and China do have different geopolitical interests in various key trouble spots, such
as Iran and South Asia, and so disagreement and noncooperation over sanctions relating to nonproliferation and other security issues will
not disappear. But the
opportunities for managing differences with frameworks of great-power
cooperation exist and will grow. Overall, the forces for continuity are formidable . Of course, there are
many forces operating in the world that can generate upheaval and discontinuity. The
collapse of the global financial system and an economic depression that triggers massive protectionism are possibilities.
Terrorism and other forms of transnational violence can also trigger political panic and turmoil that would lead
governments to shut down borders and reimpose restrictions on the movement of goods and people. But in the face of these
seismic events in world politics, there are deep forces that keep the system anchored and stable .
1NR – DA
CP
Feedbacks are net positive – additional emissions cause runaway warming
Hanson 8 (James E., Head – NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor of Earth and
Environmental Science – Columbia University, “Tipping point: Perspective of a Scientist”, April,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/StateOfWild_20080428.pdf)
Fast feedbacks—changes that occur quickly in response to temperature change—amplify the initial temperature change, begetting
additional warming. As the planet warms, fast feedbacks include more water vapor, which traps additional heat, and
less snow and sea ice, which exposes dark surfaces that absorb more sunlight. Slower feedbacks also exist. Due to
warming, forests and shrubs are moving poleward into tundra regions. Expanding vegetation, darker than tundra, absorbs
sunlight and warms the environment. Another slow feedback is increasing wetness (i.e., darkness) of the Greenland and
West Antarctica ice sheets in the warm season. Finally, as tundra melts, methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is
bubbling out. Paleoclimatic records confirm that the long-lived greenhouse gases— methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous
oxide—all increase with the warming of oceans and land. These positive feedbacks amplify climate change over decades, centuries,
and longer. The predominance of positive feedbacks explains why Earth’s climate has historically undergone large swings: feedbacks work
in both directions, amplifying cooling, as well as warming, forcings. In the past, feedbacks have caused Earth to be whipsawed
between colder and warmer climates, even in response to weak forcings, such as slight changes in the tilt of Earth’s axis.2 The second
fundamental property of Earth’s climate system, partnering with feedbacks, is the great inertia of oceans and ice sheets. Given the oceans’
capacity to absorb heat, when a climate forcing (such as increased greenhouse gases) impacts global temperature, even after two or three decades,
only about half of the eventual surface warming has occurred. Ice sheets also change slowly, although accumulating evidence shows that they can
disintegrate within centuries or perhaps even decades. The upshot of the combination of inertia and feedbacks is that additional climate change is
already “in the pipeline”: even if we stop increasing greenhouse gases today, more warming will occur. This is sobering when one considers the
present status of Earth’s climate. Human civilization developed during the Holocene (the past 12,000 years). It has been warm enough to keep ice
sheets off North America and Europe, but cool enough for ice sheets to remain on Greenland and Antarctica. With rapid warming of 0.6°C in the
past 30 years, global temperature is at its warmest level in the Holocene.3 The warming that has already occurred, the
positive feedbacks that have been set in motion, and the additional warming in the pipeline together have brought us to the
precipice of a planetary tipping point. We are at the tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready
positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenland’s ice. Little additional forcing
is needed to trigger these feedbacks and magnify global warming. If we go over the edge, we will transition to an
environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity, and there will be no return within any
foreseeable future generation. Casualties would include more than the loss of indigenous ways of life in the Arctic and swamping of coastal cities.
An intensified hydrologic cycle will produce both greater floods and greater droughts. In the US, the semiarid states from central Texas through
Oklahoma and both Dakotas would become more drought-prone and ill suited for agriculture, people, and current wildlife. Africa would see a
great expansion of dry areas, particularly southern Africa. Large populations in Asia and South America would lose their primary dry season
freshwater source as glaciers disappear. A major casualty in all this will be wildlife.
1NR Overview
DA outweighs and turns the case – failure to pass TPA shuts down broader multilateral trade talks like the TPP
which collapses the global trade regime. Our Panzer evidence indicates that, that causes protectionist measures
escalating to resource wars drawing in China and the Middle East and spur biological and nuclear terrorism which
turns your terrorism impact – no impact defense in the 2AC means you give a 100% of the impact
TPA passage completes a US-EU trade deal which deters Russian aggression
Thune 14 (John, US Senator - SD/member of the Senate Finance Committee, "Senate Democrats must give Obama
the same powers President Bush had to advance trade.," http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/18/russiaban-imports-senate-isolate-russia-europe-sanctions-column/14082529/)
In response to new U.S. and EU sanctions, Russia
has announced a ban on a variety of U.S. and EU agricultural imports. This is just
the latest move from a nation growing increasingly antagonistic toward the West. The United States needs to further
isolate Russia from the global community and make it clear that the annexation of territory and incursions into sovereign
nations will not be tolerated. One of the best ways to isolate Russia and help our European friends withstand
Russian aggression is to strengthen our economic ties with the E uropean U nion. There are two important measures we can
take to do that: We can expedite the export of liquefied natural gas to Europe and we can pass trade promotion authority to expedite the U.S.-EU
free trade agreement – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Unfortunately, the Democrat-led Senate has failed to act
on either.. Many European countries are dependent on Russia's natural gas. Russia has used this as leverage against them. While it will take time
to get U.S. export facilities going, speeding up the approval process for exports of liquefied natural gas would send a signal to Russia that its days
of energy hegemony are numbered. Unfortunately, under our current system, increasing American exports of liquefied natural gas is extremely
difficult. Applications to export liquefied natural gas undergo a lengthy review process. The seven applications approved by the Obama
administration have taken an average almost 700 days to process. Twenty-seven applications are still in limbo. One has been waiting for over
1,000 days. I have co-sponsored a bipartisan bill in the Senate that would require the secretary of energy to automatically approve exports of
natural gas to our NATO allies and to any country where exports of natural gas would advance the national security interests of the United States.
Similar legislation has passed the House of Representatives and is waiting for Senate action. Along with increasing our liquefied natural gas
exports, the most important thing we can do to help our allies withstand Russian retaliatory trade measures is to pass the U.S.-EU free trade
agreement. And the best way Congress can help is to give the president trade promotion authority. Passing the free trade agreement would
strengthen our economic ties with the European Union, making EU countries less economically dependent on Russia. At the same time, it would
provide a huge economic benefit to American farmers, workers and businesses. Economists estimate that each additional $1 billion in exports
supports more than 5,000 good-paying U.S. jobs. With nearly 10 million Americans out of work and an unemployment rate over 6%, any
agreement that would create thousands of U.S. jobs should be a priority. The Obama administration began negotiations on the U.S.-EU
free trade agreement in 2013, but a substantial amount of work still needs to be done before this agreement can be finalized.
Giving the president trade promotion authority, which has been available to every other president over the past four decades, would
substantially speed up the process . With trade promotion authority, Congress sets the goals of a trade agreement and the rules that will
govern negotiations. In return, it gives the administration the ability to negotiate a final agreement within those rules and the promise of an up-ordown vote in Congress when the agreement is concluded. Trade promotion authority encourages other nations to bring their best offers to the
table when negotiating with the administration, because they don't need to worry that the agreement will be renegotiated in Congress.
Bipartisan trade promotion authority legislation has been introduced in both houses of Congress, and President Obama
has called for this authority as recently as his State of the Union address when he told Congress, "We need to work together on tools like
bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers, protect our environment, and open new markets to new goods stamped 'Made in the
USA.'" Unfortunately, the next day Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threw cold water on the idea . Democratic leaders in the
Senate have refused to consider trade promotion legislation because they are afraid it will cost them the support in November. And
since the State of the Union, President Obama has made scant effort to encourage members of his party to bring up this legislation. With the
U.S.-EU free trade agreement that is important for economic and national security reasons we need to reauthorize
trade promotion authority so we can get this agreement in place . Republicans are ready to work with the
president on this. We just need a willing and engaged partner.
Continued Russian aggression triggers global nuclear war – deterrence is key
Fisher 9/3/14 (Max, Political Analyst @ Vox, "Obama's Russia paradox: Why he just threatened WWIII in order to
prevent it," http://www.vox.com/2014/9/3/6101507/obama-just-committed-the-us-to-war-against-russia-if-itinvades)
President Obama gave a speech on Wednesday, in a city most Americans have never heard of, committing the United States to possible war
against Russia. He said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a Western military alliance better known as NATO, would fight to
defend eastern European members like Estonia against any foreign aggression. In other words, if Russian President
Vladimir Putin invades Estonia or Latvia as he invaded Ukraine, then Putin would trigger war with the US and most
of Europe. Obama's speech from the Estonian capital of Tallinn, though just a speech, may well be America's most important and aggressive
step yet against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. While the speech will do nothing for Ukraine, it is meant to stop Russia from invading, or
perhaps from sponsoring rebellions in, other European countries — so long as those European countries are part of NATO, as most are. "We'll be
here for Estonia. We will be here for Latvia. We will be here for Lithuania," President Obama said from the capital of Estonia, one of the three
Baltic states that were once part of the Soviet Union but now are members of NATO. "You lost your independence once before. With NATO, you
will never lose it again." Obama was making a promise, and a very public one meant to reverberate not just in European capitals but in Moscow
as well: If Russia invades any member of NATO, even these small Baltic states on the alliance's far periphery, then it will be
at war with all of them — including the United States. "The defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the
defense of Berlin and Paris and London," Obama said. To be really clear: that defense means war with Russia, which has the world's
second-largest military and second-largest nuclear arsenal, a prospect so dangerous that even during the angriest moments of the
Cold War, the world managed to avoid it. The idea, though, is not that Obama wants to go to war with Russia, it's that he
wants to avoid war with Russia — this is also why the US and Europe are not intervening militarily in Ukraine to push back the Russian
tanks — but that
avoiding war with Russia means deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading these
Baltic states in the first place by scaring him off. The risk of such an invasion, by the way, is real: these countries are about one-
quarter ethnic Russian, and Ukraine's own Russian minority which was Putin's excuse for invading Crimea in March. Putin also clearly sees
former Soviet states as fair game; he has invaded Ukraine and Georgia, both marked in red on the above map. So the Baltic states are rightly
terrified that they are next. Here is Obama's dilemma, and Europe's: They want to prove to Putin that they will definitely defend Estonia and
Latvia and other eastern European NATO members as if they were American or British or German soil, so that Putin will not invade those
countries as he did in Ukraine. But the entire world, including Putin, is suspicious as to whether or not this threat is a bluff. And the worst
possible thing that could happen, the thing that could legitimately lead to World War Three and global nuclear war , is for
Putin to call Obama's bluff, invade Estonia, and have Obama's bluff turn out to not be a bluff.
Top
National Review 9-12 [“Finally, a GOP Senate Agenda, Albeit a Modest One”,
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/387796/finally-gop-senate-agenda-albeit-modest-one-john-fund]
Republicans see Senate control within their grasp in November, but they have struggled to come up with a positive
agenda for what they would realistically do with it. President Obama has seized on that weakness, declaring in a
Labor Day speech in Milwaukee: “They oppose almost everything. Republicans in Congress love to say no.’’ Ohio
senator Rob Portman, the finance chair of the Republican Senate campaign committee, countered that argument at a
Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington this week. He specified four areas of agreement on which he
thought a GOP Senate could pass legislation, send it to the House, and then see it land on President Obama’s desk
with a reasonable chance there wouldn’t be a veto: 1. The Keystone XL pipeline. Last year, a total of 27 Democrats
joined every Republican to pass a non-binding measure supporting the pipeline. Since then, frustration with Obamaadministration foot dragging has grown, making it likely a veto-proof majority in favor of Keystone could pass both
houses. 2. Trade-promotion authority. President Obama says he wants more flexibility to negotiate international
trade agreements. But senate majority leader Harry Reid has done the bidding of labor unions and blocked a Senate
vote on the idea. GOP Senate control would break the logjam.
1NR – Uniqueness
GOP will retake the Senate now – our Kristol evidence indicates there’s 7 marquee states where a Republican
candidate has over 50% chance of replacing a democratic seat on top of guaranteeing seats in West VA, Montana
and SD which is 3 seats which means we only need to win that you flip three races
GOP will retake the Senate – new polls in CO, IA, LA, and AK have swung the political tide in their favor
Enten and Hickey 9/17/14 (Harry and Walt, Political Writers + Statisticians @ FiveThirtyEight, "Senate Update:
More Races Become More Competitive," http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-update-more-races-becomemore-competitive/)
After a streak of strong polling days for Democrats, Wednesday marked a turnaround of sorts for Republicans. Their
chance of taking back the Senate increased slightly, to about 54 percent. But here’s the bigger story: The picture
has been muddied. The latest data makes more states more competitive. The two best polls for Republicans released
Wednesday came in two purple states that had been trending Democratic: Colorado and Iowa. In Colorado,
Republican Cory Garnder led Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in a Suffolk University survey 43 percent to 42 percent.
It was Gardner’s first lead in a poll since July. In response, the left-leaning Project New America published a survey
conducted by Myers Research giving Udall a 48 to 46 percent edge. FiveThirtyEight has Udall as a 64 percent
favorite. In Iowa, Quinnipiac University put Republican Joni Ernst ahead of Democrat Bruce Braley 48 percent to
42 percent. That’s her biggest edge in a poll this cycle. Of the past six polls released in Iowa, Braley was ahead in
three, behind in two and tied in one. The race is tight: The FiveThirtyEight model gives Ernst a 53 percent chance of
winning. The good news for Democrats on Wednesday came in red states: Alaska and Louisiana. Alaska is a
notoriously difficult state to poll. Groups friendly to Democrats have recently released a number of polls showing
Democratic Sen. Mark Begich leading. On Wednesday, Hays Research released a survey sponsored by the AFLCIO that put Begich ahead of Republican Dan Sullivan 41 percent to 36 percent. Still, Alaska is conservative, and
our latest forecast has Sullivan with a 56 percent chance to win. In Louisiana, nonpartisan polls have been scarce.
But a Gravis Marketing survey published Wednesday showed Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu tied with Republican
Bill Cassidy at 45 percent. Given past polling data and the Republican lean of the state, we put Cassidy at a 63
percent chance of winning. All four of these states — Colorado, Iowa, Alaska and Louisiana — have moved closer
to being tossups in the past several days. In all four, each side’s candidate has at least a 35 percent chance of
winning. All of this portends an exciting final month and a half of campaign season.
Prefer FiveThirtyEight – their polling aggregation is historically the most accurate
Terdiman 12 (Daniel, Columnist @ CNET, "Among the top election quants, Nate Silver reigns supreme,"
http://www.cnet.com/news/among-the-top-election-quants-nate-silver-reigns-supreme/)
While there's already been whole swimming pools of ink devoted to the Election Day prediction performance of polling aggregators like
FiveThirtyEight blogger Nate Silver, CNET is ready to hand out one more round of kudos to the king of the quants . By
now, anyone following the presidential election knows that Silver successfully predicted the winner in the race between President
Barack Obama
and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in all 50 states. That performance was one for the ages ,
earning him worldwide admiration and validating a polling aggregation model that had drawn mockery and ire from many
pundits. This CNET chart shows that, among polling aggregators, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver was more accurate than anyone on
Election Day. But Silver wasn't the only one to do exceptionally well in the prediction department. In fact, each of the five aggregators that
CNET surveyed yesterday -- FiveThirtyEight, TPM PollTracker, HuffPost Pollster, the RealClearPolitics Average, and the Princeton Election
Consortium -- successfully called the election for Obama, and save for TPM PollTracker and RealClearPolitics handing Florida to Romney, the
aggregators were spot on across the board when it came to picking swing state victors. Still, even within the club of those who used
computational analysis of thousands of national and statewide polls to peg the outcome of the election, someone had
to be the most accurate. And a CNET examination of each aggregator's performance reveals a single winner -unsurprisingly, Silver. In addition to picking the winner in all 50 states -- besting his 49 out of 50 slate in 2008 -- Silver was also the closest
among the aggregators to picking the two candidates' popular vote percentages. All told, he missed Obama's total of 50.8 percent by just fourtenths of a percentage point (50.4) and Romney's 48 percent by just three-tenths of a point (48.3) for an average miss of just 0.35 percentage
points. HuffPo Pollster and RealClearPolitics tied for second with an average miss of 0.85 points. In preparing to make these comparisons, CNET
surveyed 11 swing states. In the end, Silver was closest to the final margins among the candidates in seven of them and also had the best overall
record, missing by an average of just 1.46 points in the 11 states. TPM PollTracker was second with the closest predicted margins in three states,
and the second-best average margin, 1.80 points.
Wash Post Election Lab isn't reliable - even they acknowledge they could be wrong
Adams 14 (T Becket, Washington Examiner, "Washington Post: So our election model is pretty accurate and it
predicts the GOP takes the Senate --- but what the hell do we know?," http://washingtonexaminer.com/washingtonpost-so-our-election-model-is-pretty-accurate-and-it-predicts-the-gop-takes-the-senate-but-what-the-hell-do-weknow/article/2550880)
The Washington Post covers the nation's most important elections with the help of Election Lab, a statistical model
built by three political scientists. And the model is pretty good, accurate even, according to politics writer Chris
Cillizza. This same election model currently predicts that the the Republican Party will retake the U.S. Senate after
the November midterm elections. In fact, Election Lab puts the GOP's chances of picking up six Senate seats at
around 86 percent. But this, according to Cillizza, could be wrong. Wait. Yes. The Washington Post's election
model, which is supposedly pretty accurate, gives the GOP an 86 percent edge going into the midterms, so now it's
up to Cillizza to explain the ever-so-fickle nature of … election models. “Models are, by their nature, data-driven.
(That's why models tend to get better the closer the election gets. There's just more raw material — poll numbers,
fundraising numbers etc. — to mine.) Because of that reality,” he writes, “models tend to favor elements of races
that can be easily quantified (presidential approval, GDP growth, fundraising) and diminish less easily quantifiable
factors like candidate quality and the sort of campaigns being run on the ground.” Tell me more about this black
magic. “How a candidate does on the stump, how they come across in TV ads, how smartly they are spending their
money, how cohesive their campaign team is, how on message they can be — all of these things matter to the final
outcome of races,” he writes. Oh. So maybe data-driven models, like the one Election Lab has put together, are not
that reliable. “They don't decide the final outcome but neither are they irrelevant in it,” Cillizza continued, noting
the oddity of Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and her 2012 campaign victory. Look, all Cillizza's trying to say is that
data models are good — but they're not everything. So even if Election Lab is pretty good, as we have been led to
believe, and it predicts a strong November for Republicans, just remember: It could be wrong. “Models need to be
understood for what they can tell us — and what they can't,” he writes. “What the Election Lab model tells us is that
the environment is very ripe for a Republican takeover of the Senate. What it doesn't is how the specifics of each
campaign and candidate can change that dynamic in small but ultimately potential important ways.” We're
convinced! We'll ignore Election Lab from now on and seek out other models that don't leave us wracked
with so much doubt. I mean, the Washington Post's model could be accurate, predicting large Republican gains,
but it could also be wrong. Who can really know?
IL
Pot legalization is a key election issue
Reinhard 4/7/14 (Beth, Wall St Journal, "Marijuana Debate Scrambles Political Spectrum as 2016 Looms,"
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303847804579481621960798080)
As politicians try to build national profiles ahead of the 2016 presidential race, they are navigating a force that barely existed in
prior national elections: the growing push to allow marijuana for medical and even recreational purposes. It is a debate that often
creates unusual political currents, scrambling the liberal-to-conservative spectrum.¶ GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, for example, says it is
wrong to jail pot smokers, and Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has said he is open to supervised medical use. Former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, widely considered the Democratic front-runner for 2016, hasn't spoken publicly on the issue in recent years.¶ Mr. O'Malley, a liberal in
most regards, at one point threatened to veto a medical-marijuana bill. He eventually signed a restrictive version that hasn't led yet to distribution
to patients. "I've seen what drug addiction has done to the people of our state," Mr. O'Malley told radio station WEAA in January. He could face
another decision: In an unexpected development, Maryland's House voted Saturday to decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot.¶ The
Democratic governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, opposed the ballot measure that made his state the first to legalize pot for personal use.
Now, he warns other states to be cautious in following Colorado's lead. ¶ To be sure, far more Democrats than Republicans favor liberalized
marijuana laws, and the two states that have legalized marijuana use, Colorado and Washington, have Democratic-controlled legislatures.¶ As the
2016 presidential field shapes up,
President George W. Bush. "All
pot is becoming "a sleeper issue ," said Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary for
of a sudden the ground is shifting, and it's uncomfortable and complicated. Marijuana has
become an issue that candidates have got to pay attention to."
Midterms are a referendum on Obama
Steinhauser 3/4/14 (Paul, CNN Political Editor, "Eight things to watch in the eight months till Election Day,"
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/politics/eight-months-till-election/)
7. The President -- poll numbers and fundraising: There's no denying that 2013 was a tough year for Obama. And with an approval rating
hovering in the low 40s in most national opinion polls, the question is: How will he impact Democrats in November?¶
Midterm elections are often a referendum on a sitting president , so expect to see Obama's approval ratings in
the spotlight right until the Election Day¶ While some Democrats facing tough re-elections in red or purple states are not inviting the
President to join them out on the campaign trail, they do need his help raising money. When it comes to fundraising, Obama remains the
Democratic party's top rainmaker, and he's picking up the pace this year in helping his party bring in the bucks, especially when
compared with his efforts in the 2010 midterms.
Link
Extend our Hudak evidence – Legalization ENSURES a Democratic victory in November. Legalization changes the
dynamic of the electorate by mobilizing younger voters and encouraging broader turn out from a majority of the
country that supports legalization
AND Alaska is key to Dem control
Davis 8/25/14 (Susan, USA Today, “Alaska key to GOP Senate takeover; Race unlike any other as Democrats
try to protect their majority,” pg. lexis)
Senate Democratic candidates are walking a political tightrope in the dozen races that will determine control of the
chamber next year and shape the final years of President Obama's second term. Nowhere is that more evident than in
Alaska, where Sen. Mark Begich is on the attack against the Republican vying to defeat him, even as he embraces other
Republican lawmakers and conservative policies in his bid for a second term here. It will be the costliest battle in Alaska history
and holds national consequences for Democrats, who are on defense to protect their 55-45 majority amid a
sour national mood toward the president and with many of the deciding races being fought on GOP ground.
Already, Republicans are poised to gain three of the six seats they need to take control of the chamber with victories
likely in the open seat races in Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia. There are nine additional races that will
determine the make-up of the Senate, and Democrats are defending seven seats to just two for Republicans.
Democrats are on offense in only two states -- Kentucky and Georgia -- and they are both states that Obama lost in
2008 and 2012. National Democrats are particularly bullish about a Begich victory, and they need to be. A
Begich defeat on Election Day would very likely coincide with a Republican takeover. That's why Begich is not the
only Democratic incumbent reaching out to independents and conservative voters to pull out a win. Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, Arkansas' Mark
Pryor and North Carolina's Kay Hagan are campaigning on their independence from Obama and willingness to buck the Democratic Party line as
they seek re-election in states that Mitt Romney won in 2012. The three states are at the top of the GOP's target list, and each incumbent is polling
within single digits of their GOP opponents. Victory in all three would deliver the six seats Republicans need, which has upped the pressure for
Democrats in Kentucky and Georgia to pick up one or both GOP-held seats. Democrats tapped Alison Lundergan Grimes in the David-Goliath
race against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. An open seat race is under way in Georgia, where Michelle Nunn, daughter
of former Democratic senator Sam Nunn, is facing businessman David Perdue. If Democrats are unable to pick up a seat in either state, their odds
of holding the Senate drop further. Democrats have also been put on the defense in Colorado, Iowa, and Michigan in races that were not thought
to be hotly contested at the onset of the election year. The retirements of Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Tom Harkin of Iowa
provided Republicans with opportunities that would not exist otherwise. Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley is running in Iowa, but the candidate's
missteps -- including a dismissive comment caught on tape about the state's popular GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley -- has helped make the race
against state Sen. Joni Ernst competitive. In Michigan, Republican Terri Lynn Land has also managed to narrow a race against Democratic
nominee Rep. Gary Peters in a state that has been held by Democrats since 1979. And GOP Rep. Cory Gardner's last-minute decision to jump
into the Colorado race against incumbent Sen. Mark Udall has made that race competitive as well.
The sum total of the races is a
map that could add up to a GOP takeover . Jennifer Duffy, a non-partisan elections analyst for The Cook Political Report, has put
the odds at 50:50: "It's a jump ball." Talk of national consequences ranks below local interests here in Alaska , where exuding
authenticity and mastering the state's unique political contours will be the key to winning this November.
Prefer empirics – when legalization initiatives were added in Washington and Colorado there was a 100% increase
in voter turn out
Hudak 8/21/14 (John, Political Analyst + Fellow in Governance Studies @ Brookings Institution, "Here's Why
Marijuana Legalization Just Might Keep the Senate Blue," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/marijuanalegalization-senate_n_5697958.html)
In 2012, Colorado and Washington had statewide referenda on the question of marijuana legalization. With those
initiatives on the ballot, the composition of each state’s electorate changed in significant ways. Using exit poll data to
compare changes in the characteristics of the electorate in each state between 2008 and 2012, we can make inferences about the
effects of legalization initiatives. brookings Marijuana legalization supporters, particularly passionate ones, tend to be
younger and either more liberal or more libertarian in nature—though recent polls suggest broader support in the electorate. In Washington
in 2008,
the 18-29 demographic composed 10% of the electorate. In 2012, with legalization on the ballot, that
number increased to 21% of the electorate—a more than 100% increase. The effect was even more pronounced for the
18-24 demographic, where electoral composition increased from 5% to 13%. In addition, in 2008, 27% of the electorate called themselves
“liberal.” In 2012, that number increased to 31%. brookings Similar trends existed in Colorado. In 2008, the 18-29 demographic
composed 14% of the electorate. In 2012, that group composed 20% of voters. In fact, in Colorado the 18-24 demographic increased from 5% to
12% of the electorate from 2008 to 2012. The ideological composition of turnout changed as well. In 2008, 17% of the electorate called itself
liberal. In 2012, that figure skyrocketed to 28%. In Washington and Colorado, the composition of those who turned out to vote changed
dramatically between 2008 and 2012—each a presidential year. Nationally, there was little change in the composition of the
electorate in terms of youth and liberalism. But in the states with marijuana legalization initiatives it did , dramatically.
brookings There is also evidence those electoral shifts helped Democrats .
Legalization key to election success – winning strategy for being on the side of
shifting public opinion
Kleiman 14 (Mark, Prof of Public Policy @ UCLA + US Drug Policy Expert, "Cannabis legalization and the
empirical-minded median voter," http://www.samefacts.com/2014/01/drug-policy/cannabis-legalization-and-theempirical-minded-median-voter/)
No big surprises from the cannabis questions in the latest CNN-ORC poll. It looks as if the Gallup numbers from earlier in the year (58 for
legalization, 39 against) were a bit of an outlier; the gap seems to be nearer 10 points than 20, which makes a difference. But the CNN-ORC
findings, along with those from the Pew survey, confirm the decisive shift in public opinion . Support for
legalization now has a clear majority . Most interesting finding, to my eyes: the new poll asked the question two ways: “Do you think
the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” “Do you think the sale of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” The answers were
virtually identical: 55/44 for legal use, 54/45 for legal sale . So for those of us who have wondering whether the “use” question was
inappropriately lumping supporters of decriminalization with supporters of full commercial availability, the answer is “No.”
A majority
really favors full legalization . On the other hand, when the question gets specific, the majority disappears: “As you may know,
Colorado now allows anyone over the age of 21 to purchase small quantities of marijuana for their own use from businesses that have been
licensed by the state government to sell marijuana. Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea, or do you want to see what happens in Colorado
and other states that legalize marijuana before you decide how you feel about this matter?” “Good idea” leads “bad idea” by a small plurality,
33/27, but the largest group (37%) wants to wait and see. Yes, of course phrasing the question that way encouraged the wait-and-see answer, but
it’s encouraging that so many voters are empirically-minded on this issue rather than fixed in one of two fact-proof
ideological camps. Even among those who oppose legal pot, most prefer to have users pay fines rather than going to jail. And support for
medical marijuana is overwhelming: 88/10. All of this suggests that those who oppose legalization have chosen a grossly
inappropriate strategy, if their objective is winning as opposed to mere fundraising and personal advancement. Moral
denunciation, opposition to medical research (with actual cannabis, not hypothetical individual molecules), and support for user
penalties are all losing moves . Instead of simply posing their own prejudices and certainties against those of the legalizers, they ought to
offer cautious experimentalism. The median voter might buy “Wait and see,” if it appeared sincere. But she’s way past “No, nay, never!”
Legalization overwhelmingly popular – boosts the fortunes of Congressional
incumbents
Vanden Heuvel 13 (Katrina, Editor and Publisher of The Nation, "Why It’s Always Been Time to Legalize
Marijuana," http://www.thenation.com/article/176904/why-its-always-been-time-legalize-marijuana#)
So why the full-throated support of legalization now? Because the country is ready. And other countries have shown
the way. Internationally, the movement to legalize pot is picking up steam. In Uruguay, the government of President
José “Pepe” Mujica is close to passing a bill that would legalize and tax marijuana cultivation and distribution. At
home, as Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance highlighted in our 2010 special issue, there has been rising
public support for legalizing marijuana use—from 12 percent in a 1969 Gallup poll, to 25 percent in 1995, to 36
percent by 2005 and hitting 48 percent—almost a majority—last year. The demographic shift on this issue has been
stunning, akin to the about-face on same-sex marriage. Nearly a year after Colorado and Washington passed historic
legalization measures, Gallup reported in October that 58 percent of Americans support legalization. If
Congress —with its dismal 8 percent approval rating— wants to enjoy a popularity as high as marijuana’s, it
might consider revisiting pot’s federal prohibition .
Rd 5 Neg vs Emory FH – Organs
1NC
1
The aff needs to specify the process through which they are able to sell organs – cx of the 1AC proves there’s no
regulation or regulatory mechanism for allowing for organ transactions – voter for negative ground because we can’t
predict what the market looks like post plan so they can spike out of negative ground to counterplan out of a
regulation or DAs to regulation removal
1
Democrats will win the Senate now – most recent polls
Cilizza 9-16 [Chris Cillizza writes “The Fix,” a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White
House. 9-16-2014 Chris Cillizza writes “The Fix,” a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White
House.]
Democrats are now (very slightly) favored to hold the Senate majority on Nov. 4, according to Election Lab, the Post's statistical model
of the 2014 midterm elections. Election Lab puts Democrats' chances of retaining their majority at 51 percent -- a huge change from even a few months ago
when the model predicted that Republicans had a better than 80 percent chance of winning the six seats they need to take control. (Worth noting: When the model
showed Republicans as overwhelming favorites, our model builders -- led by George Washington University's John Sides -- warned that the model could and would
change as more actual polling -- as opposed to historical projections -- played a larger and larger role in the calculations. And, in Republicans' defense, no one I talked
what exactly has changed to move the Election Lab projection? Three big things: *
Colorado: On August 27 -- the last time I wrote a big piece on the model -- Election Lab said Sen. Mark Udall (D) had a 64 percent chance of winning. Today
he has a 94 percent chance. * Iowa: Two weeks ago, the model gave state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) a 72 percent chance of winning. Today she has a 59
percent chance. * Kansas: Sen. Pat Roberts' (R) re-election race wasn't even on the radar on Aug. 27. Today, Election Lab predicts he has just a 68
percent chance of winning. In addition to that trio of moves in Democrats' direction, Louisiana has moved slightly in Democrats' favor (from a 57
percent chance of losing to a 53 percent chance) as has North Carolina (a 97 percent chance of winning now as opposed to a 92 percent chance on
to ever thought they had an 80 percent chance of winning the majority.) So,
Aug. 27). By contrast, Alaska has moved in Republicans' direction (Democratic Sen. Mark Begich's chances of winning are down from 66 percent to 53 percent) and
Georgia has become more of a sure-thing hold (a 91 percent GOP win versus an 84 percent hold). The movement toward Democrats in the Election Lab model isn't
unique. LEO, the
New York Times' Upshot model, gives Republicans a 51 percent chance of winning the Senate -- but that is down significantly
over the last few weeks. Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight model now has Republican chances of winning the Senate at 55 percent, down from 64
percent 12 days ago. "The two states with the largest shifts have been Colorado and North Carolina — in both cases, the movement has been in Democrats’
direction," writes Silver. "That accounts for most of the difference in the forecast."
Massive backlash to legal organ sales by the health care industry and the broader public - link alone turns case
Caplan 7 (Arthur, NYU bioethics division head and professor, Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from
Columbia, Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and head of the Division of Bioethics at New
York University Langone Medical Center in New York City, "Do No Harm: The Case Against Oran Sales from
Living Persons," Living Donor Transplantation, ed by Henkie Tan, p 432-434)
What little data exist show that health-care providers are opposed to markets (19). If they are not willing to support
markets out of moral reservations, then markets simply will not be effectively implemented. Even more important
than a patent lack of enthusiasm for markets among those who would be expected to serve them, major religions and
cultural views in the developed world will not countenance a market in living body parts (20-22), Various Popes,
for example, have made quite clear the Catholic Church's aversion to markets in organs. Anglo-American law, ever
since the days in which markets in body parts resulted in graveyards being stripped to supply medical schools with
teaching materials, has not recognized any property interest in the human body and its organs (22). Alienating
religions and cultures which do not view the body as property would have a devastating impact on the supply of
organs available. Indeed, some sub-populations in the United States, particularly African Americans, are as likely to
be turned off by the institution of a market in body parts because of their historical experiences with slavery and a
keen distrust of medicine, as they are to be motivated to become sellers to the rich (23-26). The argument that
increasing the supply of organs through sales will be efficient and cost- effective is not persuasive. It will take real
and expensive resources to try to regulate and police a market in organs. Since markets, even regulated ones, would
shift the supply of organs toward those who can afford to buy them, those who cannot might well withdraw from
participation in the deceased-donor organ system, thereby putting in peril any overall increase in the pool of organs
available to transplant. The case for kidney sales is not persuasive. Existing experience with markets has been
dismal. The notion that free choice supports the creation of markets in human body parts does not square with the
reality of what leads people to be likely to want to sell them. The devastating moral cost to medicine of engaging in
organ-brokering is far too great a price to pay for the meager benefit in supply that might be had by those in need of
transplants. The storm of opposition that markets will trigger in many individuals based on religious or
cultural objections may actually produce a decrease rather than an increase in the overall pool of transplantable
organs- an outcome that by itself would make calls for the creation of markets dubious.
Obama gets the blame - midterms are a referendum on his performance
Podhoretz 3/18/14 (John, editor of Commentary magazine, columnist for the New York Post, the author of several
books on politics, and a former presidential speechwriter, NY Post, "Obama’s failed foreign policy just another drag
on Democrats," http://nypost.com/2014/03/18/obamas-failed-foreign-policy-just-another-drag-on-democrats/)
He is the president. It’s his watch . Americans may be war-weary, but they still look to the man in the White House
to provide an overall sense of stability and safety.¶ Democrats need Americans to feel positively about the president
going into the 2014 elections. All election experts say the party’s showing nationally in November will correlate strongly
with how the country feels about the job the president is doing.
GOP-led Senate undercuts Obama-led environmental efforts, including tackling climate change
Harder 13 (Amy, Environmental Correspondent @ National Journal, "Care About Energy and Environment Policy?
Watch These Eight Races," http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CM3Nm1CJ4wJ:www.nationaljournal.com/energy/care-about-energy-and-environment-policy-watch-these-eight-races20131231+&cd=27&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
For environmentalists, the 2014 midterm elections are about settling for the lesser of two evils. Several conservative
Democrats up for reelection in red states are facing tough competition, and if enough of these members lose, the
Senate could flip to Republican control. That would be the worst outcome for environmentalists, who need a
Democrat-controlled Senate to defend against efforts to undo President Obama's climate-change agenda and other
tough environmental policies.
Obama’s climate agenda spurs global action – solves warming
Martinson 14 (Erica, Regulatory reporter @ Politico, "Obama's agenda: EPA leading the charge on climate
change," http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=3BE87317-0921-4B01-A3B5-C39AEF6CDDC3)
President Barack Obama’s environmental regulators will spend the rest of this year writing climate rules that would reshape
the nation’s electricity supply, throw a cloud over the future of coal power and take the biggest stride ever in throttling the nation’s
greenhouse gas pollution.¶ And that’s just the beginning.¶ While the EPA takes on carbon pollution from thousands of power plants, the
State Department is moving to carry out Obama’s orders to cut off funding for many coal projects overseas. The president’s agencies are also
financing giant solar farms in the Mojave desert, working on doubling the federal government’s own reliance on green electricity and coming up
with ways to help states gird their roads and bridges against severe storms and rising seas. ¶ This is hardly a secret agenda. Obama has spoken of it
proudly, most recently in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, when he said: “Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children
look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say
yes, we did.”¶ But some of the administration’s climate work is taking place under the radar, in ways few Americans would notice until the
impacts ripple through the economy. One example: Last year, the administration quietly rejiggered a wonky calculation known as the “social cost
of carbon” in a way that will make it easier to justify the economic burdens of a wide range of climate regulations. ¶ The regulators are
racing the calendar to get the rules in shape to take effect before Obama leaves office . That will be no easy feat, especially
with the opponents in industry and coal-friendly states already fighting in the courts and Congress to thwart the new regulations. ¶ But Obama
and his “green Cabinet” — the secretaries and administrators in charge of energy, the environment and public lands — also have their
eyes on 2015. That’s when the U.S. and other countries face a deadline to craft a legally binding agreement committing
reducing carbon dioxide emissions.¶ The president’s team is convinced that the U.S. must lead by example if it
hopes to get China, India and Russia to follow suit, but the only hope of doing that is through the executive
branch’s actions . By showing that his administration has taken concrete action, Obama can wipe out some of the
embarrassment the U.S. suffered in international climate circles after rejecting the 1997 Kyoto climate accords.¶ The president made
the world to
it plain in last year’s State of the Union that he wouldn’t wait for lawmakers to tackle climate change, proclaiming that “if Congress won’t act
soon to protect future generations, I will.” But in fact, the administration’s climate efforts have been in motion since the start of his first term.¶
The administration’s major climate effort is a pair of EPA regulations aimed at cutting carbon pollution from power
plants. The EPA proposed the first rule, aimed at future plants, in September and must finish writing it by January 2015. This June, it’s due to
release the draft of a rule for the nation’s thousands of existing power plants — the agency’s main target and the single largest source of
U.S. greenhouse gas pollution.
Warming is real, human caused, and causes extinction—acting now key
Mccoy 14 (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)
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 wellbeing. 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]
2
Organ selling becomes a global, private process of exploitation
Scheper-Hughes 6 -- Professor of Medical Anthropology. Director, Organs Watch, University of California,
Berkeley (Nancy, 2006, "Organs Trafficking: the Real, the Unreal and the Uncanny," Annals of Transplantation
11(3),
Is a Regulated Market the Solution? ”If a living donor can do without an organ, why shouldn’t the donor profit and medical science benefit? ” Janet Ratcliffe-
the exclusively market-oriented “supply and demand” perspective that is gaining ground among transplant specialists
buying and selling of kidneys is viewed as a potential solution to the global scarcity in organs
and as a “win–win” situation that benefits both parties. In so doing, however, the human and ethical dilemmas are reduced to a
simple problem in management. The problems with this rational solution are many. The arguments for “regulation” are out of touch with the social and
medical realities operating in many parts of the world, but especially in second and third world nations. The medical institutions created to
“monitor” organs harvesting and distribution are often dysfunctional, corrupt, or compromised by the power of
organs markets and the impunity of the organs brokers, and of outlaw surgeons willing to violate the first premise of classical medical bioethics: above all, do
Richards26 From
and bioethicists today, the
no harm. Philippine Secretary of Health, Manuel Dayrit, had two proposals on his desk at the time of my interview with him in February 2002. The first would create
a government-regulated kidney bank (to be called KIDNET) that would allow poor people to sell and deposit a kidney into a virtual “organs bank” that would
presumably make these available to all Philippine citizens who needed them. Dr. Dayrit was, however, reluctant to discuss just how the Ministry of Health might set a
“fair price” for a poor person’s kidney, preferring to leave this task to the free market. Dr. C., the director of a large private hospital in Manila, agreed: “Some of our
‘donors’ are so poor that a sack of rice is sufficient. Others want medical care for their children, and we are quite prepared to provide that for them.” The second
proposal is a governmentsponsored program to grant death row prisoners (most of them killers) a reprieve in exchange for donating a kidney. Their death sentence
would then be replaced by life imprisonment. Supporters of this program believe that the donor incentives program could end up convincing society that the death
penalty is a terrible waste of a healthy body. “Organ donation is a medical equivalent of Catholic Lenten rites of self-flagellation”, Professor Leonardo Castro, of the
University of the Philippines said in defense of the prisoner organ donation incentives program. For most bioethicists, the “slippery slope” in transplant medicine
the ethical slippery slope
occurs the first time one ailing human looks at another living human and realizes that inside that other body is
something capable of prolonging or enhancing his or her life. Dialysis and transplant patients are highly visible and their stories are
frequently reported by the media. Their pain and suffering are palpable. But while there is empathy – even a kind of surplus empathy – for transplant
patients, there is little empathy for the donors, living and brain dead. Their suffering is hidden from the general public. Few
begins with the emergence of an unregulated market in organs and tissue sales. But for the critical medical anthropologist,
organ recipients know anything about the impact of the transplant procedure on the donor’s body. If the medical and psychological risks, pressures, and constraints on
organ donors and their families were more generally known, transplant patients might want to consider opting out of procedures that demand so much of the other. In
the absence of any national or international registries of living donors or mandatory reporting laws concerning complications following living donation for the
donor/seller, there
is really no reliable data on the medical/psychological risks and complications suffered by living
organ donors anywhere in the world. In the U.S.A., two kidney donors have died during the past 18 months and another is in a persistent vegetative
state as a result of donation.27 The fact that any living donors have died immediately following the surgical procedure, or are themselves in dire need of a kidney
transplant at a later date, sounds a cautionary note about living donation and serves as a reminder that nephrectomy (kidney removal) is not a risk-free procedure.28
Bioethical arguments
supporting the right to sell an organ are based on Euro-American notions of contract and
individual “choice”. But the social and economic contexts make the “choice” to sell a kidney in an urban slum of
Calcutta, or in a Brazilian favela or Philippine shantytown, anything but a “free” and “autonomous” one. Consent is
problematic with “the executioner” – whether on death row or at the door of the slum resident – looking over one’s shoulder. Putting a market price on
body parts – even a fair one – exploits the desperation of the poor , turning suffering into an opportunity. Asking the law to
negotiate a fair price for a live human kidney goes against everything that contract theory stands for. When concepts such as individual agency and autonomy are
invoked in defending the “right” to sell an organ, anthropologists might suggest that certain “ living”
things are not alienable or proper
candidates for commodification. And the surgical removal of nonrenewable organs is an act in which medical practitioners, given their ethical standards,
should not be asked to participate. The problems multiply when the buyers and sellers are unrelated, because the sellers are likely to be extremely
poor and trapped in lifethreatening environments where the everyday risks to their survival are legion, including exposure
to urban violence, transportation- and workrelated accidents, and infectious disease that can compromise their kidney of last resort. And when that spare part fails,
kidney sellers often have no access to dialysis, let alone to organ transplant. While poor people in particular cannot “do without” their
“extra” organs, even affluent people need that “extra” organ as they age, and when one healthier kidney can compensate for a failing or weaker kidney. How can a
national government set a price on a healthy human being’s body part without compromising essential democratic and ethical principles that guarantee the equal value
of all human lives? Any
national regulatory system would have to compete with global black markets that establish the
value of human organs based on consumer-oriented prejudices, such that in today’s kidney market Asian kidneys are worth less than
Middle Eastern kidneys and American kidneys worth more than European ones. The circulation of kidneys transcends national borders, and
international markets will coexist and compete aggressively with any national, regulated systems. Putting a market price on
body parts – even a fair one – exploits the desperation of the poor, turning suffering into an opportunity. And the surgical removal of nonrenewable organs is an act in
which medical practitioners, given their ethical standards, should not be asked to participate. Surgeons whose primary responsibility is to provide care should not be
advocates of paid self-mutilation, even in the interest of saving lives. Market-oriented medical ethics creates the semblance of ethical choice (for example, the right to
buy a kidney) in an intrinsically unethical context. Bioethical arguments about the right to sell an organ or other body part are based on cherished notions of contract
and individual “choice”. But consent is problematic when a desperate seller has no other option left but to sell an organ. The
demand side of the organs scarcity problem also needs to be confronted, especially the expansions of waiting lists to include patients who would previously have been
rejected. Liver and kidney failure often originate in public health problems that could be treated more aggressively preventively. Ethical solutions to the chronic
scarcity of human organs are not always palatable to the public, but also need to be considered. Foremost among these are systems of educated, informed “presumed
consent”, in which all citizens are assumed to be organs donors at brain death unless they have officially stipulated their refusal beforehand. This practice, which is
widespread in parts of Europe, preserves the value of organ transplant as a social good in which no one is included or excluded on the basis of their ability to pay.
Conclusion – A Return to the Gift “The material needs of my neighbor are my spiritual needs. ” Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings We conclude this
ethnographic essay with a reminder of the radical premise entailed in organs sharing which envisioned the body as a gift, meaning also a gift to oneself. In the most
simple Kantian or Wittgensteinian formulatiom the body and its parts are not proper candidates for commodification and sale because
they are inalienable from the bodyself. The body provides the grounds of certainty for saying that one has a ‘self’ and an existence at all. Humans both are and have a
body. For those who view the body in more collectivist terms as a gift (whether following Judeo- Christian, Buddhist, or animistic religious traditions or following a
socialist ethic) the body cannot be sold, while it may be re-gifted and recirculated in humanist acts of generosity and caritas. From its origins, transplant surgery
presented itself as a complicated problem in gift relations and gift theory, a domain to which sociologists and anthropologists from Marcel Mauss to Levi-Strauss to
Pierre Bourdieu have contributed mightily. The spread of new medical technologies and the artificial needs, scarcities, and the new commodities that they demand
have produced new forms of social exchange that breach the conventional dichotomy between gifts and commodities and between kin and strangers. While many
the violence associated with many of these new
transactions gives reason to pause. Are we witnessing the development of bio-sociality or the growth of a widespread biosociopathy? The division of
individuals have benefited enormously from the ability to get the organs they need,
the world into organ buyers and organ sellers is a medical, social, and moral tragedy of immense and not yet fully recognized proportions.
Neoliberalism is epistemologically bankrupt – wrecks equality and the environment
Holleman 12 – assistant professor of sociology at Amherst, PhD in sociology from the University of Oregon
(Hannah, June, sociology dissertation, University of Oregon, “Energy justice and foundations for a sustainable
sociology of energy”,
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/12419/Holleman_oregon_0171A_10410.pdf?sequenc
e=1)
under this system, when there is an environmental catastrophe, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, or
companies make an enormous profit cleaning up, or at least professing to do so. GDP goes up. If someone is sick, if
they die a long, drawn-out death from cancer, there is profit to be made. There is no money to be made in human and ecological health and wellbeing. If communities grow their own food, the global food market significantly decreases; if people walk rather than drive, the oil and car companies don’t make money. If education is free,
who benefits? Maybe most people, and the society at large, maybe even the environment, but not necessarily the shareholders. Therefore, it is much more economically
efficient to let the market shape education. Today students take out larger and larger loans to buy more expensive books, to get less education engendered by fewer
teachers. This is capitalist efficiency. The surplus is efficiently transferred from one segment of the population to another, those at the top. The same goes for letting the
market shape energy policy. Those arguing today for market intervention in the climate crisis often fail to mention that it is
absolutely already the market shaping energy policy. This is precisely the problem. It is very efficient for the market to
extract oil at bargain prices from countries without militaries to stop them. It is very efficient , in terms of profit, to have the
most vulnerable in society pay the costs of energy production, and to keep polluting, all the while terrifying people that new energy
developments might be their only chance of economic survival. Nevermind where the real money goes and what happens with the
boom goes bust. The current version of capitalist ideology, which absorbs energy scholars (and even environmental socialists) often
unwittingly, was consciously shaped to co-opt the language of social movements seeking freedom from the yolk of capitalism
and imperialism. It is no surprise that the market would co-opt green rhetoric today. Economists having the greatest ideological influence on political debates and
social science today, the architects of neoliberal ideology, have sought to re-write the history of capitalist development as “the
constitution of liberty,” and the basis of free society (Hayek 1960; Friedman 1962; Van Horn, Mirowski, and Stapleford, eds. 2011). There can be no
acknowledgement of slavery, racism, sexism, or ecological destruction among other issues, because all of these undermine the
basic thesis neoliberal writers actively promote as political ideology. To make their argument, these writers must present capitalism as raising all boats, color-blind,
gender-neutral, and free of class coercion, the globalization of which results in a “flat,” happy world, even if it is hot (Friedman 2005, 2008). Unfortunately, these ideas dominate
the political sphere, and contemporary notions of organizational, community, and national development. In academia, many “theorists celebrate the alleged
leveling of social differences owing to globalization” (Pellow 2007, 41). The blinders imposed by this view continue to infect energy
studies despite the work of critical energy scholars. Spreading capitalism thus becomes the solution for poverty
associated with inequalities caused by oppression based on race, class, gender, and position in the world system, as well as the solution to environmental and energy
crises. This is the basic modernization thesis. The Ecological Modernization Reader (Mol, Sonnenfeld, and Spaargaren 2009) presents these systematized views regarding the environmental
crisis, which are increasingly influential in environmental sociology. York and Rosa (2003) and Foster (2012) have pointed out the empirical, theoretical, and
philosophical roots of, and problems associated with this perspective as a basis for understanding ecological and social
crises and solutions. But, we can expect this view to persist as long as social relations remain intact because the logic of modernization is
As Marilyn Waring noted twenty years ago,
the current BP oil spill in the Gulf,
seductive precisely because it is the logic of capitalism (Foster 1999b, 2002, 2009, 2012). The processes of capitalism, including its ideological developments, are the “background conditions” in
which those integrated into the market economy live, as fish swim in water, they are the “social gravity” we might naturally feel is right, but don’t necessarily see, as much a part of our lives as
critical theorists and activists have
sought to expose the mythological basis of neoliberalism and transcend the system. The work of environmental justice scholars, feminist
ecologists, and ecological rift theorists, marshaling the empirical evidence, represent powerful critiques of the modernization thesis . Taken together with the
insights in existing critical work on energy, they provide an alternative approach to energy that belies the notion that “there is
no alternative.” They share a common commitment, as social scientists and activists, to reality. Part of this reality is that “actual class and
racial inequalities around the global and between North and South have only worsened in the past half-century—the same period during
which the late modern state of capitalism took hold” (Pellow 2007, 41). Despite views that we live in a post-racial society, (or one where “men are finished and
women are taking over” [Sohn 2011]), in fact economic globalization has “seriously undermined the gains of the civil rights and labor
movement and the general antiracist struggle in the United States and undercut the global benefits of the anticolonial
the air we breathe (York and Clark 2006). In contrast to the modernization thesis, environmental justice scholars, among other
struggles occurring throughout the global South” (Pellow 2007, 43). Moreover, economic globalization and the intensified spread of
ecological destruction “are intimately linked because the TNCs [transnational corporations] themselves were the ones creating and
pushing both globalization and toxins on the world markets, facilitating greater control over nations, communities, human bodies, and
the natural world itself”(43). Today, neoliberal mythology has severely hindered the development of a wider
environmental justice consciousness in the broader public, and amongst activists and academics. In energy studies this view is
especially pronounced in the focus on technology, carbon markets, voluntary certification schemes, and alternative energies that
basically allow business to continue as usual (Foster 2002, 9-25; Rogers 2010; Holleman 2012). The critical literature emerging from what I call an
energy justice perspective in ecological rift theory, systems ecology, feminist and critical human ecology, and environmental justice scholarship has drawn out the social and
ecological crises of the current energy regime. This is in contrast to too many well-intentioned scholars and activists who buy into the main tenets of the
modernization thesis, and thus are reluctant to break with capitalism as a system, or worse, they promote it, ignoring or ignorant of the enormous costs. This has led to the view that our task as
For energy this
means carbon markets and trade in other forms of pollution and raising energy prices. While it is clear that as long as we have this
environmentalists is getting economics to “internalize the externalities,” to bring under the pricing system the work of natural systems and human services (labor).
system, goals should include wealth redistribution and businesses shouldering the costs of their polluting practices, long-term, internalizing more of the world in the market system is a total death
The logic of the market is clear. An energy justice movement, with the intention of healing the ecological rift
and transcending social injustice, on the other hand has as its base the goal of “externalizing the internalities.” This is an
ecological and social imperative. Understanding the nature of the current system, Daniel Yergin’s worse-than-nothing approach to energy is the logical response of
capital. Carbon markets and the new biotech boom also make sense. If the point is accumulation, sources of profit must be found at every turn
and crises represent especially ripe opportunities (Klein 2007). The problem today is not capitalism’s lack of response to the climate crisis, capital was never
developed as a system geared toward ecological reproduction or meeting human needs. It is a system geared toward profit at all cost and can have no
rational response. The problem is that capitalism organizes so many of our productive activities in the first place. The sooner this is
recognized, the sooner we can start thinking of real alternatives, and understand ourselves as subjects, not
merely objects of the system, as protagonists of our own future . We can move beyond playing the passive
consumers of the next product capitalism has on offer, green or otherwise, packaged as a solution to energy crises. Examples like the
carbon market schemes, or Daniel Yergin’s view of what constitutes energy revolution, make clear “that there’s no way we can just subcontract our
environmental conscience to the new breed of green marketers” (McKibben 2010). Energy and social inequality, the challenges of our generation The
social and ecological costs of our energy regime today are clear, though the ways these are both the result of and
exacerbate social inequality and oppression are often misunderstood or ignored. While the future is unwritten, projections, if business
continues as usual, indicate environmental and social catastrophe with much of the damage irreversible . Without
significant social change, we should prepare for, among other depredations, increased warfare to secure energy resources to
meet increased demand . The most recent British Ministry of Defence Strategic Trends report suggests that nations will increasingly use energy
security “to challenge conventional interpretations on the legality of the use of force ” (108). Environmentally and
socially destructive energy sectors are projected to grow the next thirty years , such as nuclear energy and biofuel, while expected fossil fuel
strategy.
demand also goes only one way, up: Global Energy use has approximately doubled over the last 30 years and, by 2040, demand is likely to grow by more than half again. Despite concerns over
demand is likely to remain positively correlated to economic growth with fossil fuels, meeting more than 80% of this increase.
our patterns of energy use
create geopolitical instability. The ways we use energy are disrupting the climate system and threaten terrifying
disruptions in decades to come” (Sandalow 2009). These realities only partially illustrate energy’s extensive contribution to what K. William Kapp (1950) referred to as
capitalism’s systemic “unpaid costs.” As Anderson (1976) put it: “the growth society operates as if it had tunnel vision and nearsightedness;
the accumulation of capital is pursued without regard for the side-effects or for longrange consequences , leaving to
nature and the larger community these uncalculated costs ” (140). Prefiguring contemporary discussions and movement framing, Anderson
referred to these accumulated unpaid costs, or externalities as “the ecological debt,” the result of the exploitation of both nature
and humans for the sake of economic growth at all costs (142-43), undermining the natural and social conditions of
production. As indicated previously, with energy demand expected only to increase as the economy expands, the “unpaid
costs” associated with its extraction and use will continue to accumulate, but on a scale heretofore unseen . The science
is clear that if we do not severely curtail energy use, we will cross critical thresholds in the biosphere’s ability to
recycle waste and regulate the earth’s temperature. The consequences of crossing such planetary boundaries will be
irreversible (Hansen 2009; Solomon, et al. 2009; Cullen 2010; Foster 2011). This is a new juncture in humanity’s relation to the rest of nature. However, the costs of climate
change, among other environmental crises generated by energy production and use, which is driven largely by economic growth, already are
visited upon communities and other social groups in a dramatically unequal way––this we may understand as a defining feature of energy injustice . This
social inequality, indeed, is a necessary feature of capitalism, making human exploitation and the assault on the
environment possible, and energy injustice inevitable in the current system: “Environmental deterioration will continue so
long as there is a class system, since the profits of environmental neglect accrue primarily to one class whereas the costs are borne primarily by another” (Anderson 1976,
139). Scholars studying the ecological and social rift of capitalism, including those working on environmental racism and feminist ecology, have
expanded the understanding of how these processes are gendered and racialized . Work on unequal ecological exchange amply has
demonstrated that inequality between nations and regions also increases the burdens of environmental injustice . Studies from all of
climate change,
Urban areas will be responsible for over 75% of total demand. (Strategic Trends, 106) Even a U.S. government official has recognized publicly that “
have drawn out inequalities embedded in our current patterns of energy decision-making, extraction, use, and waste disposal,
these perspectives
documenting energy injustice through various theoretical lenses.
Alternative – reject the aff’s neoliberal policy proposal – establishing pedagogies in this debate space is the only
way to reclaim critical education.
Giroux 12 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 19
June 2012, “Beyond the Politics of the Big Lie: The Education Deficit and the New Authoritarianism”, http://truthout.org/opinion/item/9865-beyond-the-politics-of-the-big-lie-the-education-deficit-and-the-new-authoritarianism)
The democratic deficit is not, as many commentators have argued, reducible to the growing (and unparalleled) inequality gap in the United States, the pervasiveness of lending fraud, favorable tax treatment for the wealthy, or the lack
The democratic
deficit is closely related, however, to an unprecedented deficit in critical education . The power of finance capital in
recent years has not only targeted the realm of official politics, but also directed its attention toward a range of
educational apparatuses - really, a vast and complex ideological ecosystem that reproduces itself through nuance, distraction, innuendo, myths,
lies and misrepresentations. This media ecosystem not only changes our sense of time, space and information; it also redefines the very meaning of the social
and this is far from a democratic process, especially as the architecture of the Internet and other media platforms are largely in the hands of private interests.(13) The educational pipelines for
corporate messages and ideology are everywhere and have for the last twenty-five years successfully drowned out any serious criticism and challenge to market fundamentalism. The current corrupt and
dysfunctional state of American politics is about a growing authoritarianism tied to economic, political and cultural formations that have hijacked
democracy and put structural and ideological forces in place that constitute a new regime of politics , not simply a series of bad policies. The
solution in this case does not lie in promoting piecemeal reforms, such as a greater redistribution of wealth and income, but in dismantling all the
institutional, ideological and social formations that make gratuitous inequality and other antidemocratic forces
possible at all. Even the concept of reform has been stripped of its democratic possibilities and has become a
euphemism to "cover up the harsh realities of draconian cutbacks in wages, salaries, pensions and public welfare and the sharp increases in regressive taxes."(14) Instead of reversing
progressive changes made by workers, women, young people, and others, the American public needs a new understanding of what it would mean to
advance the ideological and material relations of a real democracy, while removing American society from the grip of "an authoritarian political culture."(15) This
will require new conceptions of politics , social responsibility, power, civic courage, civil society and democracy itself. If we do not safeguard the
remaining public spaces that provide individuals and social movements with new ways to think about and participate
in politics, then authoritarianism will solidify its hold on the American public. In doing so, it will create a culture that criminalizes dissent, and those who suffer under
of adequate regulation of the financial sector. These are important issues, but they are more symptomatic than causal in relation to the democratic decline and rise of an uncivil culture in America.
antidemocratic ideologies and policies will be both blamed for the current economic crisis and punished by ruling elites. What is crucial to grasp at the current historical moment is that the fate of democracy is inextricably linked to a
As knowledge becomes
abstracted from the rigors of civic culture and is reduced to questions of style, ritual and image, it undermines the political,
ethical and governing conditions for individuals to construct those viable public spheres necessary for debate,
collective action and solving urgent social problems. As public spheres are privatized, commodified and turned over to the
crushing forces of turbo capitalism, the opportunities for openness, inclusiveness and dialogue that nurture the very
idea and possibility of a discourse about democracy cease to exist . The lesson to be learned in this instance is that political agency involves learning how to deliberate,
profound crisis of contemporary knowledge, characterized by its increasing commodification, fragmentation, privatization and a turn toward racist and jingoistic conceits.
make judgments and exercise choices, particularly as the latter are brought to bear on critical activities that offer the possibility of change. Civic education as it is experienced and produced throughout an ever-diminishing number of
it is precisely this notion
of civic agency and critical education that has been under aggressive assault within the new and harsh corporate order of casino capitalism. Anti-Public Intellectuals and the
Conservative Re-Education Machine The conservative takeover of public pedagogy with its elite codifiers of neoliberal ideology has a long
institutions provides individuals with opportunities to see themselves as capable of doing more than the existing configurations of power of any given society would wish to admit. And
history extending from the work of the "Chicago Boys" at the University of Chicago to the various conservative think tanks that emerged after the publication of the Powell memo in the early seventies.(16) The Republican Party
will more than likely win the next election and take full control over all aspects of policymaking in the U nited S tates. This is especially dangerous given that the
Republican Party is now controlled by extremists. If they win the 2012 election, they will not only extend the Bush/Obama legacy of militarism abroad, but likely intensify the war at home as well. Political scientist Frances Fox Piven
rightly argues that, "We've been at war for decades now - not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it's been a war [a]gainst the poor [and as] devastating as it has been, the war against the poor has gone
the war at home now includes more than attacks on the poor , as campaigns are increasingly waged
against the rights of women, students, workers, people of color and immigrants , especially Latino Americans. As the social state collapses, the punishing
largely unnoticed until now."(17) And
state expands its power and targets larger portions of the population. The war in Afghanistan is now mimicked in the war waged on peaceful student protesters at home. It is evident in the environmental racism that produces massive
health problems for African-Americans. The domestic war is even waged on elementary school children, who now live in fear of the police handcuffing them in their classrooms and incarcerating them as if they were adult
criminals.(18) It is waged on workers by taking away their pensions, bargaining rights and dignity. The spirit of militarism is also evident in the war waged on the welfare state and any form of social protection that benefits the poor,
disabled, sick, elderly, and other groups now considered disposable, including children. The soft side of authoritarianism in the United States does not need to put soldiers in the streets, though it certainly follows that script. As it
expands its control over the commanding institutions of government, the armed forces and civil society in general, it hires anti-public intellectuals and academics to provide ideological support for its gated communities, institutions
and modes of education. As Yasha Levine points out, it puts thousands of dollars in the hands of corporate shills such as Malcolm Gladwell, who has become a "one man branding and distribution pipeline for valuable corporate
messages, constructed on the public's gullibility in trusting his probity and intellectual honesty."(19) Gladwell (who is certainly not alone) functions as a bought-and-paid mouthpiece for "Big Tobacco Pharma and defend[s] Enronstyle financial fraud ... earning hundreds of thousands of dollars as a corporate speaker, sometimes from the same companies and industries that he covers as a journalist."(20) Corporate power uses these "pay to play" academics, antipublic intellectuals, the mainstream media, and other educational apparatuses to discredit the very people that it simultaneously oppresses, while waging an overarching war on all things public. As Charles Ferguson has noted, an
entire industry has been created that enables the "sale of academic expertise for the purpose of influencing government policy, the courts and public opinion [and] is now a multibillion-dollar business."(21) It gets worse, in that
"Academic, legal, regulatory and policy consulting in economics, finance and regulation is dominated by a half dozen consulting firms, several speakers' bureaus and various industry lobbying groups that maintain large networks of
academics for hire specifically for the purpose of advocating industry interests in policy and regulatory debates."(22) Such anti-public intellectuals create what William Black has called a "criminogenic environment" that spreads
disease and fraud in the interest of bolstering the interests, profits and values of the super wealthy.(23) There is more at work here than carpet bombing the culture with lies, deceptions and euphemisms. Language in this case does
more than obfuscate or promote propaganda. It creates framing mechanisms, cultural ecosystems and cultures of cruelty, while closing down the spaces for dialogue, critique and thoughtfulness. At its worst, it engages in the dual
processes of demonization and distraction. The rhetoric of demonization takes many forms: for example, calling firefighters, teachers, and other public servants greedy because they want to hold onto their paltry benefits. It labels
students as irresponsible because of the large debts they are forced to incur as states cut back funding to higher education (this, too, is part of a broader effort by conservatives to hollow out the social state). Poor people are insulted
and humiliated because they are forced to live on food stamps, lack decent health care and collect unemployment benefits because there are no decent jobs available. Poor minorities are now subject to overt racism in the right-wing
media and outright violence in the larger society. Anti-public intellectuals rail against public goods and public values; they undermine collective bonds and view social responsibility as a pathology, while touting the virtues of a
survival-of-the-fittest notion of individual responsibility. Fox News and its embarrassingly blowhard pundits tell the American people that Gov. Scott Walker's victory over Tom Barrett in the Wisconsin recall election was a fatal blow
against unions, while in reality "his win signals less a loss for the unions than a loss for our democracy in this post-Citizens United era, when elections can be bought with the help of a few billionaires."(24) How else to explain that
Tea Party favorite Walker raised over $30.5 million during the election - more than seven times Barrett's reported $3.9 million - largely from 13 out-of-state billionaires?(25) This was corporate money enlisted for use in a pedagogical
blitz designed to carpet bomb voters with the rhetoric of distraction and incivility. The same pundits who rail against the country's economic deficit fail to connect it to the generous tax cuts they espouse for corporations and the
financial institutions and services that take financial risks, which sometimes generate capital, but more often produce debts and instability that only serve to deepen the national economic crisis. Nor do they connect the US recession
and global economic crisis to the criminal activities enabled by an unregulated financial system marked by massive lending fraud, high risk speculation, a corrupt credit system and pervasive moral and economic dishonesty. The
spokespersons for the ultrarich publish books arguing that we need even more inequality because it benefits not only the wealthy, but everyone else.(26) This is a form of authoritarian delusion that appears to meet the clinical
threshold for being labeled psychopathic given its proponents' extreme investment in being "indifferent to others, incapable of guilt, exclusively devoted to their own interests."(27) Nothing is said in this pro-market narrative about the
massive human suffering caused by a growing inequality in which society's resources are squandered at the top, while salaries for the middle and working classes stagnate, consumption dries up, social costs are ignored, young people
are locked out of jobs and any possibility of social mobility and the state reconfigures its power to punish rather than protect the vast majority of its citizens. The moral coma that appears characteristic of the elite who inhabit the new
corporate ethic of casino capitalism has attracted the attention of scientists, whose studies recently reported that "members of the upper class are more likely to behave unethically, to lie during negotiations, to drive illegally and to
cheat when competing for a prize."(28) But there is more at stake here than the psychological state of those who inhabit the boardrooms of Wall Street. We must also consider the catastrophic effects produced by their values and
policies. In fact, Stiglitz has argued that, "Most Americans today are worse off than they were fifteen years ago. A full-time worker in the US is worse off today then he or she was 44 years ago. That is astounding - half a century of
stagnation. The economic system is not delivering. It does not matter whether a few people at the top benefitted tremendously - when the majority of citizens are not better off, the economic system is not working."(29) The economic
system may not be working, but the ideological rationales used to justify its current course appear immensely successful, managing as they do to portray a casino capitalism that transforms democracy into its opposite - a form of
authoritarianism with a soft edge - as utterly benign, if not also beneficial, to society at large. Democratic Decline and the Politics of Distraction Democracy withers, public spheres disappear and the forces of authoritarianism grow
when a family, such as the Waltons of Walmart fame, is allowed "to amass a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of US society."(30) Such enormous amounts of
wealth translate into equally vast amounts of power, as is evident in the current attempts of a few billionaires to literally buy local, state and federal elections. Moreover, a concentration of wealth deepens the economic divide among
classes, rendering more and more individuals incapable of the most basic opportunities to move out of poverty and despair. This is especially true in light of a recent survey indicating that, "Nearly half of all Americans lack economic
security, meaning they live above the federal poverty threshold but still do hot have enough money to cover housing, food, healthcare and other basic expenses.... 45 percent of US residents live in households that struggle to make
ends meet. That breaks down to 39 percent of all adults and 55 percent of all children."(31) The consequential impacts on civic engagement are more difficult to enumerate, but it does not require much imagination to think about how
democracy might flourish if access to health care, education, employment, and other public benefits was ensured equally throughout a society and not restricted to the rich and wealthy alone. And yet, as power and wealth accrue to the
upper 1 percent, the American public is constantly told that the poor, the unions, feminists, critical intellectuals and public servants are waging class warfare to the detriment of civility and democracy. The late Tony Judt stated that he
was less concerned about the slide of American democracy into something like authoritarianism than American society moving toward something he viewed as even more corrosive: "a loss of conviction, a loss of faith in the culture of
democracy, a sense of skepticism and withdrawal" that diminishes the capacity of a democratic formative culture to resist and transform those antidemocratic ideologies that benefit only the mega corporations, the ultrawealthy and
ideological fundamentalists.(32) Governance has turned into a legitimation for enriching the already wealthy elite, bankers, hedge fund managers, mega corporations and executive members of the financial service industries.
Americans now live in a society in which only the thinnest conception of democracy frames what it means to be a citizen - one which equates the obligations of citizenship with consumerism and democratic rights with alleged
consumer freedoms. Antidemocratic forms of power do not stand alone as a mode of force or the force of acting on others; they are also deeply aligned with cultural apparatuses of persuasion, extending their reach through social and
digital media, sophisticated technologies, the rise of corporate intellectuals and a university system that now produces and sanctions intellectuals aligned with private interests - all of which, as Randy Martin points out, can be
identified with a form of casino capitalism that is about "permanent vigilance, activity and intervention."(33) Indeed, many institutions that provide formal education in the United States have become co-conspirators with a savage
casino capitalism, whose strength lies in producing, circulating and legitimating market values that promote the narrow world of commodity worship, celebrity culture, bare-knuckle competition, a retreat from social responsibility and
a war-of-all-against-all mentality that destroys any viable notion of community, the common good and the interrelated notions of political, social and economic rights. University presidents now make huge salaries sitting on corporate
boards, while faculty sell their knowledge to the highest corporate bidder and, in doing so, turn universities into legitimation centers for casino capitalism.(34) Of course, such academics also move from the boardrooms of major
corporations to talk shows and op-ed pages of major newspapers, offering commentary in journals and other modes of print and screen culture. They are the new traveling intellectuals of casino capitalism, doing everything they can to
make the ruthless workings of power invisible, to shift the blame for society's failures onto the very people who are its victims and to expand the institutions and culture of anti-intellectualism and distraction into every aspect of
American life. Across all levels, politics in the United States now suffers from an education deficit that enables a pedagogy of distraction to dictate with little accountability how crucial social problems and issues are named, discussed
and acted upon. The conservative re-education machine appears shameless in its production of lies that include insane assertions such as: Obama's health care legislation would create death panels; liberals are waging a war on
Christmas; Obama is a socialist trying to nationalize industries; the founding fathers tried to end slavery; and Obama is a Muslim sympathizer and not a US citizen. Other misrepresentations and distortions include: the denial of global
warming; the government cannot create jobs; cuts in wages and benefits create jobs; Obama has created massive deficits; Obama wants to raise the taxes of working- and middle-class people; Obama is constantly "apologizing" for
America; and the assertion that Darwinian evolution is a myth.(35) Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney continues spinning this spider web of lies unapologetically, even when members of his own party point out the
inconsistencies in his claims. For instance, he has claimed that, "Obamacare increases the deficit,"(36) argued that Obama has "increased the national debt more than all other presidents combined" and insisted that Obama has lied
about "his record on gay rights." He has falsely claimed that, "Obama promised unemployment below eight percent,"(37) dodged the truth regarding "his position on climate change" and blatantly misrepresented the truth in stating
that, "he pays a 50% tax rate."(38) Diane Ravitch has recently pointed out that in making a case for vouchers, Romney has made false claims about the success of the DC voucher program.(39) The politics of distraction should not be
reduced merely to a rhetorical ploy used by the wealthy and influential to promote their own interests and power. It is a form of market-driven politics in which educational force of the broader culture is used to create ideologies,
Politics
and education have always mutually informed each other as pedagogical sites proliferate and circulate throughout
the cultural landscape.(40) But today, distraction is the primary element being used to suppress democratically purposeful education by pushing critical thought to the margins of society. As a register of power,
policies, individuals and social agents who lack the knowledge, critical skills and discriminatory judgments to question the rule of casino capitalism and the values, social practices and power formations it legitimates.
distraction becomes central to a pedagogical landscape inhabited by rich conservative foundations, an army of well-funded anti-public intellectuals from both major parties, a growing number of amply funded conservative campus
organizations, increasing numbers of academics who hock their services to corporations and the military-industrial complex, and others who promote the ideology of casino capitalism and the corporate right's agenda. Academics who
make a claim to producing knowledge and truth in the public interest are increasingly being replaced by academics for hire who move effortlessly among industry, government and academia. Extreme power is now showcased through
the mechanisms of ever-proliferating cultural/educational apparatuses and the anti-public intellectuals who support them and are in turn rewarded by the elites who finance such apparatuses. The war at home is made visible in the
show of force aimed at civilian populations, including students, workers, and others considered disposable or a threat to the new authoritarianism. Its most powerful allies appear to be the intellectuals, institutions, cultural apparatuses
While a change in consciousness does
not guarantee a change in either one's politics or society, it is a crucial precondition for connecting what it means to
think otherwise to conditions that make it possible to act otherwise . The education deficit must be seen as intertwined
with a political deficit, serving to make many oppressed individuals complicit with oppressive ideologies. As the late Cornelius Castoriadis made clear, democracy requires "critical
thinkers capable of putting existing institutions into question.... while simultaneously creating the conditions for individual and social autonomy."(41) Nothing
will change politically or economically until new and emerging social movements take seriously the need to develop a language of
radical reform and create new public spheres that support the knowledge, skills and critical thought that are necessary features of a democratic formative culture. Getting beyond the big lie as a precondition for
critical thought, civic engagement and a more realized democracy will mean more than correcting distortions, misrepresentations and falsehoods produced by politicians, media talking heads and anti-public intellectuals. It will
also require addressing how new sites of pedagogy have become central to any viable notion of agency , politics and democracy itself.
and new media technologies that constitute the sites of public pedagogy, which produce the formative culture necessary for authoritarianism to thrive.
This is not a matter of elevating cultural politics over material relations of power as much as it is a rethinking of how power deploys culture and how culture as a mode of education positions power. James Baldwin, the legendary
African-American writer and civil rights activist, argued that the big lie points to a crisis of American identity and politics and is symptomatic of "a backward society" that has descended into madness, "especially when one is forced
to lie about one's aspect of anybody's history, [because you then] must lie about it all."(42) He goes on to argue "that one of the paradoxes of education [is] that precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must
find yourself at war with your society. It is your responsibility to change society if you think of yourself as an educated person."(43) What Baldwin recognizes is that learning has the possibility to trigger a critical engagement with
oneself, others and the larger society - education becomes in this instance more than a method or tool for domination but a politics, a fulcrum for democratic social change. Tragically, in our current climate "learning" merely
contributes to a vast reserve of manipulation and self-inflicted ignorance. Our education deficit is neither reducible to the failure of particular types of teaching nor the decent into madness by the spokespersons for the new
it is about how matters of knowledge, values and ideology can be struggled over as issues of power
and politics . Surviving the current education deficit will depend on progressives using history, memory and
knowledge not only to reconnect intellectuals to the everyday needs of ordinary people, but also to jumpstart social movements by making education central to
organized politics and the quest for a radical democracy.
authoritarianism. Rather,
3
The plan undermines US global health leadership—directly contradicts international agreements and WHO
protocols
Francis and Francis, 10 – Professor of Philosophy and the Alfred C. Emery Professor of Law, Adjunct Professor of
Political Science at the University of Utah, and professor of political science at Utah (Leslie P. and John G,
“Stateless Crimes, Legitimacy, and International Criminal Law: The Case of Organ Trafficking.” Criminal Law and
Philosophy 4.3, 283-295. SpringerLink.)
International efforts to combat organ trafficking have been extensive, with the WHO in the lead . In 1991, the World Health
Assembly approved the WHO guiding principles on organ transplantation. Intended “to provide an orderly, ethical, and acceptable framework for regulating the
acquisition and transplantation of human organs for therapeutic purposes,” these principles emphasized protection of donors through informed consent, prohibition on
conflicts of interests by transplant physicians, and preferences for deceased or related donors. The guidelines explicitly prohibited the sale of organs and organ
the World Health Assembly enacted an amended version
urged member states to implement
effective oversight regimes and to cooperate in the harmonization of global practices . It also encouraged extending the use of
trafficking, but left methods of enforcement up to individual jurisdictions (WHO 1991). In 2004,
of the principles in light of global increases in organ transplantation and organ shortages. This resolution
living kidney donors where possible. It requested the Director-General of WHO to provide support for member states to prevent organ trafficking and to draw up
guidelines to protect vulnerable groups from the practice. Finally, it
urged member states to act against transplant tourism and
international organ trafficking (WHA 2004). The WHO has continued to monitor and support efforts to combat
trafficking. An illustration of these efforts was the consultation meeting held with national health authorities in the western Pacific region in 2005 in Manila, a
known center of trafficking (WHO 2006). The report from the meeting urged transparency about transplantation practices—including data about the country of origin
resoundingly condemning the commercial sale of
organs , the report permitted payment of expenses to donors, including health care and lost income, and “modest
nonmonetary assistance.” Any support, however, was to be transparent and according to host country regulation.
Recipients of organs were to be held responsible for knowing whether their organs came from legitimate sources—and their countries of origin were to take
measures to prevent exploitation of donors from other countries or breaches of other countries’ organ donation rules. In 2000, the United Nations
of donors and recipients—as necessary for “accountability and traceability.” Although
issued a protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons as a supplement to the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (United Nations
2000). The Protocol’s definition of trafficking in persons explicitly includes removal of organs and explicitly rejects consent of the victim to exploitation as irrelevant.
States parties are urged to protect victims of trafficking to the extent permissible under domestic law and are required to establish comprehensive policies to prevent
and combat trafficking. As of February 2010, there were 117 signatories to the protocol, including Egypt, India, Israel, the Philippines, and the United States, but
notably not either Iran or Pakistan. It is also worth noting that the United States explicitly reserved the right to assume obligations under the Protocol in a manner
consisted with federalist principles. International medical associations have been active as well in condemning organ trafficking. A 2008 summit convened by the
Transplantation Society and the International Society of Nephrology in Turkey (notably another location identified with trafficking) resulted in the Declaration of
Istanbul. The Declaration condemns organ trafficking and transplant tourism as violations of the principles of equity, justice, and respect for human dignity and
recommends that they be prohibited. In the judgment of the Declaration, practices that induce vulnerable individuals or groups (such as illiterate and impoverished
persons, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, and political or economic refugees) to become living donors are incompatible with the aim of combating organ
trafficking, transplant tourism, and transplant commercialism. Countries were urged to implement programs to reduce rates of organ failure and to increase legitimate
efforts—of the WHO, the United
Nations, and international societies—lack direct enforcement mechanisms. They remain hortatory at best. As we shall now see, they
methods of donation (Declaration of Istanbul 2008; Steering Committee of the Istanbul Summit 2008). These
have been met with limited implementation success at both domestic and international levels. Domestic Enforcement: Limited Implementation of Bans on Organ
Trafficking Within Europe, legal instruments such as the European Charter on Fundamental Rights (article 3), the 1997 Oviedo Treaty on Human Rights and
Biomedicine (article 21), and the 2005 Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings which entered into force in 2008 (Council of Europe 2005)
condemn organ trafficking (Europa 2009). Presumably, suit could be brought in the European Court of Human Rights alleging organ trafficking as a violation of the
Charter; there are no reported decisions to this effect, although in a case involving sex trafficking a 2010 judgment of the ECHR holds that such human trafficking
violates Article 4 (prohibition of slavery, servitude and forced labor) of the European Convention on Human Rights (Farrior 2010). A recent United Nations report
describes the “slow evolution” of Europe’s criminal justice response to the UN Trafficking Protocol. Although it analyzes patterns of sex and labor trafficking both to
and within Europe, and identifies Central Europe and the Balkans as origins for trafficking victims (Bulgaria and Romania are described as “hotspots”), the report
does not even consider the issue of organ trafficking (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2009). In March 2009, in light of these concerns that
Europe was lagging in enforcing the UN Trafficking Protocol, the European Commission issued a framework decision for combating trafficking generally, but without
mentioning organ trafficking specifically. At present, Europe faces severe organ shortages, wide variations in donation rates and in cultural views about donation, as
well as ongoing efforts to understand the application of the principle of free movement of goods and services within the EU. As a result, in 2007 the European
Commission recommended further action to the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, including development of a legal instrument for authorization of
transplantation centers, the establishment of conditions of procurement and systems of traceability, largely for safety reasons but indirectly as a method to combat
trafficking (Europa 2009). In April, 2008, the European Parliament adopted the resolution, which included efforts to improve the supply and distribution of organs.
The resolution also called on member states to “fight” against organ trafficking with measures such as punishment of health care providers who participate in
trafficking and “making every effort to discourage potential recipients from seeking trafficked organs and tissues.” With regard to the latter, the resolution “stresses
that that consideration should be given to making EU citizens criminally liable for purchasing organs inside or outside the EU.” Finally, the resolution expresses regret
“that Europol did not come up with a survey on organ selling and trafficking because it claims that there are no documented cases,” despite United Nations evidence
to the contrary (European Parliament 2008). In
the United States, the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, Pub. L. 98-507, forbids
any sale of organs that affects interstate commerce; the penalty is 5 years imprisonment and/or a $50,000 fine. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Pub. L.
106-386, first passed in 2000 and last reauthorized in 2008, applies to slavery, sex trading and forced labor; organ trafficking is not specifically included in this
definition (22 U.S.C. § 7102(8) (2010)). Instead, the Act’s primary focus is the illicit trade in sex and in illegal immigration. This gap
means that the
benefits extended in the United States to victims of severe forms of trafficking generally, including Medicaid, would
not be available to victims of organ trafficking in the United States (22 U.S.C. § 7105(b)(1)(A) (2010)). It also means that the measures
required of foreign governments who receive non-humanitarian foreign aid to eliminate severe forms of trafficking are not explicitly extended to trafficking in organs
(22 U.S.C. §7106 (2010)). Nor is the authorization for the President to use emergency powers to punish traffickers (22 U.S.C. § 7108 (2010)). Sex tourism abroad
with children is also explicitly criminalized for persons residing in the United States (18 U.S.C. § 2423(c) (2010)). A single arrest for an attempt to sell an organ in
the difference between domestic
enforcement regimes for sex trafficking against children and for labor trafficking of illegal immigrants, and the
enforcement regime for international organ trafficking remains noteworthy. Perhaps the explanation is that people who engage in
New York in the summer of 2009 drew considerable publicity in the United States (Halbfinger 2009). However,
illicit sex with children abroad and people who use coercion to bring illegal immigrants into the US are not themselves sympathetic victims. In comparison, people
who purchase organs abroad and who return to the US as transplant recipients may be viewed as desperate victims themselves, taking any steps they could to save
their own lives. In
some of the countries that have notoriously been centers of organ trafficking, recent bans have been
enacted. Egypt, for example, has recently prohibited the sale of organs, enacted punishment for trafficking, and established a procedure for organ donation.
According to WHO (2010), it is hoped that these measures will reduce incentives for trafficking in a jurisdiction that has been a hub.
Pakistan’s law banning organ sales was recently upheld in the Shariat Court, despite a challenge from transplantation professionals (Noel and Martin 2009). Japan has
investigated alleged tourism to China for organ transplantation (Jafar 2009). A ban on organ sales has also been enacted in the Philippines
(Noel and Martin 2009). Moves to increase organ donation in countries such as Israel that have been trafficking hubs have also been cited as strategies that may
reduce demand (Noel and Martin 2009).
Failure to lead in the global public health arena decks US hegemony and economic growth
Kassalow, 1 – Next Generation Fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, lecturer at Columbia University's
faculty of medicine, former technical adviser to the World Health Organization, doctor of optometry (Jordan S.,
May. “Why Health Is Important to U.S. Foreign Policy.”
http://www.milbank.org/uploads/documents/Foreignpolicy.html)
ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST: FIRST AMONG EQUALS A broader global health perspective accepts that sovereign states have a greater interest in absolute than in relative gains. As
Robert O'Keohane argues, states may be "situationally interdependent…where improvements in others' welfare improve their own, and vice versa, whatever the other actor does" (O'Keohane
world health improvements strengthen the global system, and this in turn benefits the United States as the
dominant power and main supporter of that system. Health and Social Capital Health affects relations within and among nations in several ways. First, there is a
1990). In this view,
strong interrelationship between health and social capital. In Russia, life expectancy began declining in the early 1960s, reaching a low of 64 years in 1995. Although this figure is now
improving, a male Russian born in 2000 can expect to enjoy just 56.1 years of healthy life, with similar rates in some other former Soviet territories, including Ukraine and Belarus (World Health
Organization 2000). The current survival rate of 16-year-old males to age 60 is just 58 percent. Major causes of this decline are cardiovascular disease, injuries, and violence—with alcohol a
consistent factor (Shkolnikov and Meslé 1996). Increasing pollution, a rapidly deteriorating health care system, and burgeoning epidemics of TB and AIDS compound the crisis. Bruce Kennedy,
Ichiro Kawachi, and Elizabeth Brainerd have shown that, across regions of Russia, poor health correlates strongly with distrust in local government, level of crime, and conflict at work—all
indicators of declining social cohesion. "Those who have access to social capital get ahead," they comment. "Those who do not get sick and die" (Kennedy, Kawachi, and Brainerd 1998). The
Russian poor explicitly associate this social breakdown with capitalism and are nostalgic for Communist certainties. "In former times, the majority lived well, now we live in misery" (Levinson et
low or declining average health status correlates over time with a decline in
state capacity, leading to instability and unrest (Price-Smith 1999). According to Andrew Price-Smith's research, high prevalence of disease in a state undercuts
al. 1999). Health and Political Stability Research shows that
national prosperity, generates inter-elite conflict, exacerbates societal income inequality, and significantly depletes human capital. A 1998 study commissioned by the CIA identifies the variables
that best predict state failure as level of infant mortality, openness to trade, and level of democracy (Esty, Goldstone, Gurr, et al. 1998). The inability of a government to deliver such basic needs
to its electorate erodes trust and may lead to repeated cycles of instability and failure. Furthermore, as the National Foreign Intelligence Board's report Global Trends 2015 states, "AIDS, other
diseases, and health problems will hurt prospects for transition to democratic regimes as they undermine civil society, hamper the evolution of sound political and economic institutions, and
intensify the struggle for power and resources" (National Foreign Intelligence Board 2000). This is of particular concern in volatile nuclear regions such as Russia and South Asia where the AIDS
crisis, if left unchecked, has the potential to undermine the overall health system. Ill health may also strike at the heart of a state's political system, impairing prospects for stable governance.
Early AIDS epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, disproportionately affected urban centers, the leadership elite, the educated, the mobile, and the influential. In 1997, a pregnant
Rwandan had a 9 percent chance of being HIV positive if her husband was a farmer, a 22 percent chance if he was in the army, and a 38 percent chance if he worked for the government (McNeil
1998). Loss of skilled government officials, highly trained military leaders, and members of the entrepreneurial class undermines political leaders' capacity to govern. The same patterns could
easily be repeated in countries where the United States has more profound security concerns—Russia, India, the Ukraine, or China—as their rising AIDS epidemics erupt. HIV/AIDS holds
another concern for the future: by 2010, the disease is expected to have created over 42 million orphans worldwide. Few of these children will receive adequate care from family or community.
Those who do not receive such care face limited opportunities for education and employment; rather than becoming productive members of society, they are likely to turn to crime, join militias,
and fuel political instability in other ways. Health and the Economy There are strong, well-documented links between health and economic growth and stability. Health is now clearly seen as
both an economic input and an output. An illustrative finding by Robert Fogel suggests that improvements in health and nutrition accounted for at least 20 percent of Britain's income growth in
the period between 1780 and 1979 (Fogel 1997). Health helps create wealth in several ways. Longer life expectancy changes people's decision-making time frame and encourages smaller
families, greater investment in education, more female workforce participation, and higher rates of domestic investment as people save for retirement. Declining fertility lags behind declining
mortality, and so such a demographic transition is characterized by an enlarged cohort of children. Such a "baby boom" generation can make a significant economic impact as it reaches working
age. In East Asia, for example, the working-age population grew much faster than the dependent population from 1965 to 1990, resulting in a "demographic dividend" that accounted for as much
as one-third of the region's "economic miracle" (Bloom and Canning 2000; Bloom, Canning, and Malaney 2000; Bloom and Williamson 1998). By contrast, poor health combined with an
Empirical evidence at the
microeconomic level also demonstrates that improved health status is associated with economic growth . The most direct
mechanism that explains this effect is the fact that improved health increases productivity and reduces worker absenteeism. Most notable, research suggests that the
economically unfavorable age structure helps to explain sub-Saharan Africa's dismal economic performance (Bloom and Sachs 1998).
effects of improved health are probably greatest for the most vulnerable—the poorest and the least educated. This can be explained by their dependence on work that requires manual labor.
poor health reduces economic productivity by creating labor shortages and heightening absenteeism
Conversely,
, redirecting
resources from education and infrastructure toward increased spending on health care, and reducing individual resources by diminishing savings and imposing higher health care costs, thus
leading to isolation from the global economy where connectivity is the key to prosperity. For example, illness is the leading reason why families in China fall below the poverty line (Rosenthal
2001). Of course, there are also strong effects of wealth on health—achieving good health costs money—alongside well-documented interactions of health with education and social policy. In the
right circumstances, therefore, "virtuous spirals" can develop, leading to rising opportunity, prosperity, and security. Ill health, however, leads to vicious spirals, aggravating insecurity and
decreasing the return on all forms of investment in the future. In sub-Saharan Africa and Russia with their poor life expectancies, economic and political stasis (or decline) seems almost
inevitable for as much as a generation. The Global Trends 2015 report states that projections for sub-Saharan Africa are even more dire than those in Global Trends 2010, largely because of the
spread of AIDS. In South Africa, for example, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is predicted to depress gross national product by 17 percent over the next decade, a dangerous burden for a fragile
democracy. In Russia, HIV/AIDS is spreading faster than anywhere else in the world. Health and War A fourth way in which health affects the international system is through the direct links
between health and war. The link from war to health is clearer: wars kill and injure soldiers and civilians, but they also destroy infrastructure and social structures, in both cases with adverse
effects on the population's general health. In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, war and ill health are tightly entwined. Of 1.7 million excess deaths between August 1998
and May 2000, only 200,000 were attributable to acts of violence, and wherever the war worsened, infectious disease and malnutrition followed (International Rescue Committee 2000). Medical
facilities are often singled out for attack in "new wars" because they provide valuable loot, easy victims, and a way to demoralize civilian populations. War also causes exceptional mobility, and
armies, peacekeepers, and refugees act as vectors for the transmission of disease. In fact, the spread of HIV/AIDS by UN peacekeepers has become a contentious issue in the debate over
peacekeeping. Therefore, the UN has proposed Resolution 1308, which urges member states to screen their soldiers voluntarily. The resolution asks the secretary general to take steps to provide
predeployment orientation and ongoing training for peacekeeping personnel on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. Some countries resist this testing and training on the grounds that it marks their
peacekeepers with the social stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. Moreover, nations that contribute peacekeepers fear that testing will reduce their ability to field a full unit of troops. This is
particularly problematic in view of the finding that, in some African regions, the higher one's rank, the greater the likelihood he is HIV-positive. There is also evidence of the reverse effect, that
of health on war. Combatants in new wars are often the socially excluded, even if they only act as proxies for more socially advantaged groups. Poor health shortens people's time horizons,
making them more likely to engage in risky behavior; conversely, strong democracies with broad support from healthy populations are less likely to engage in conflict, at least with each other
(Doyle 1983). Analyzing U.S. Risks Viewing world health through the wider lens of economics and politics enables the United States to analyze the extent of indirect risks (and opportunities) it
faces relative to global health. First, there is the potential for entanglement in areas where plummeting social indicators and endemic conflicts have removed the legitimacy of the state. As Robert
Cooper notes, these "zones of chaos" may not have law and order, but they still have airports. "Where the state is too weak to be dangerous," he observes, "non-state actors may become too
strong." In this case, a form of "defensive imperialism" may be necessary when the United States is forced to respond to (often linked) threats from drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates (Cooper
1996). Active news media and a sporadically concerned public increase pressure on rich countries to intervene. Experience shows how hard it is to meet military and political objectives
there is the potential for the emergence of nondemocratic regimes hostile to the
United States, especially in the former Soviet Union. In Russia, declining state capacity in the coming decades could
threaten control of nuclear weapons and major security arrangements in Europe. The popular association there between
the arrival of democracy and increasing economic deprivation is fertile ground for populist politics, nationalist
sentiment, and anti-American feeling. Third, in an increasingly interdependent global economy, there is the potential
for damage or stagnation to U.S. economic interests where ill health and other falling social indicators condemn a country or
region to the "poverty trap" of high fertility and high mortality. Lack of attention to the burden of disease in
developing countries—which receive 42 percent of U.S. exports—could depress demand for U.S. goods and services and thus threaten
the jobs of Americans, even though U.S. economic links are strongest with prosperous, healthy countries. Healthy populations are a prerequisite for healthy economies, and healthy
economies make for stronger trading partners in search of U.S. goods and services. It is in our long-term economic interest to foster the health and
prosperity of future trading partners. Moreover, this policy of economic integration may ultimately create a more stable
global society. GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT: THE GOOD LEADER The broadest perspective on global health problems posits that the United States, as a rich and dominant nation,
successfully in these complex emergencies. Second,
bears some responsibility for problems faced by those beyond its borders, just as it does for those of disadvantaged populations at home. This appeal to "moral solidarity" results from what the
philosopher Mary Midgley describes as "the immense enlargement of our moral scene—partly by the sheer increase in the number of humans, partly by the wide diffusion of information about
global health issues have a range of
implications for U.S. foreign policy. First, there is a unique opportunity to lead in the area of cooperative international
engagement by placing health on the agenda of global public goods. It is not beyond the reach of political will to tip the scales toward a healthier world. The history of the Marshall Plan,
a clear example of how a balance of motives can underlie U.S. foreign policy, illustrates that political leadership is necessary to raise the salience of
international issues and to galvanize public support for cooperative engagement. One essential ingredient of such an
initiative is leadership to match our unprecedented technical capacity and to allow us to apply this capacity to its logical
extent. That means providing health care as a global public good: one that benefits everyone, but that no single country yet has the incentive to provide.
them, and partly by the dramatic increase of our own technological power" (Midgley 1999). U.S. Leadership Thus viewed,
U.S. credibility solves disease, terrorism and global conflict
Reiss 8 (Mitchell B., Vice Provost of International Affairs – College of William & Mary, “Restoring America's
Image: What the Next President Can Do”, Survival, October, 50(5))
why should Americans care if the U
S
is liked or not?
But first, there is another question to be answered:
nited tates
After all, foreign policy is not a popularity
contest. Policies that are controversial today may look better in a few years. Perhaps America's unpopularity is just the price that must be paid for being the world's most powerful country. Yet
Americans do care, and their desire to be respected by the world has been reflected in the campaign rhetoric of both McCain and Obama. This desire extends beyond the normal, near-universal
human wish to be liked, or at least not misunderstood or hated. Americans still believe in John Winthrop's description of America as a 'shining city on the hill' and want others to view the United
there is another, larger reason for caring about the rise of anti- Americanism, one that is related to the U nited
S tates' status as the world's only superpower. No one country can defeat today's transnational threats on its own. Terrorism,
infectious disease, environmental pollution, w eapons of m ass d estruction, narcotics and human trafficking - all these can only
be solved by states acting together. If others mistrust the U nited S tates or actively work against it, building effective coalitions and
promoting a liberal international order that benefits both Americans and hundreds of millions of other people around the world will be far more challenging. Ultimately, if
the U nited S tates has to go it alone or bear most of the costs while others are seen as free riders, the American people are unlikely to sustain
engagement with the world with the same intensity, or even at all. The history of the last century demonstrates that when the U nited S tates retreats from the
world, bad things happen. The United States rejected the League of Nations and turned inwards in the 19 20s and 1930s, contributing to the Great
Depression and the onset of the Second World War. After the Vietnam War, a weakened and inward-looking America prompted some Asian
countries to start their own nuclear-weapons programmes, emboldened Islamic fundamentalists to attack American interests, and
States that way as well. But
encouraged the Soviet Union to occupy Afghanistan. While there are some who say this couldn't happen today, that America couldn't pull up the drawbridge and retreat behind the parapets,
It is hard to imagine any scenario in which
an isolated, disengaged U nited S tates would be a better friend and ally to other countries, better promote global prosperity, more forcefully
endorse democracy, social justice and human dignity, or do more to enhance peace and security.
recent opinion polls in the United States reveal a preference for isolationism not seen since the end of the Vietnam War.
4
CP TEXT: The United States should implement a uniform, federal, refundable tax credit, regardless of income, for
the donation of human organs.
Solves the case – studies prove
Petersen et al 11 [Thomas Søbirk Petersen,1 Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Department of Philosophy, University of
Roskilde, Roskilde, Denmark 2 Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; “Ethics,
organ donation and tax: a proposal”; J Med Ethics (2011). doi:10.1136/medethics-2011-100163;
http://rucforsk.ruc.dk/ws/files/35102892/medethics_2011_100163.full.pdf]
Provided the alternative is an opt-in scheme with no reward or compensation for donation, several arguments support the suggestion
that people who donate their organs should receive a tax credit. These arguments appeal to a wide range of ethical principles,
some of which may be in conflict with one another. For the present purposes, though, any potential argumentative disharmony is not a problem.
Our aim is to show that strong reasons favour our proposal whichever of a broad range of ethical principles you subscribe to. We are not
endorsing the arguments sketched in this section collectively. The most obvious argument is welfare based : it is that a tax credit scheme
would increase the size of the pool of organs available for transplantation. Although economic incentives do not always work
as intended,
studies show that they often work.13 Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that people actually donate
more to charity the more of the donations they are able to deduct from their taxes.17 If incentives work in the same way in
the case of organ transplantation, a lot of lives would probably be saved. In any case, the best way to find out how incentives affect the number of
donors is by actually implementing the scheme and seeing what happens. If there are no, or only weak, objections to the scheme, a small
probability of increasing the number of available organs may suffice to justify the introduction of the scheme as a temporary measure whose
continuation depends on a subsequent positive evalua tion. We take it for granted that nearly all participants in the debatedconsequentialists and
most deontologistsdwill regard the fact that it will save lives as a strong reason to adopt our proposal, even if they are doubtful about the
mechanism itself. Furthermore, if everything else is equal, increasing the number of organs available for transplantation
could shorten (or eliminate) waiting lists, shorten waiting times, and thereby improve wellbeing for many people . If one
sees ‘transplant tourism’ (or organ theft) as a morally bad thing, an increase in the number of organs for transplantation in rich countries, brought
about by a tax credit for willingness to donate, will minimise, or eliminate altogether, such tourism (or theft). Second, a tax credit might
nudge people to do what they really want to do. Several studies conducted in various countries indicate that approximately 80% of the
population wants to donate organs,18 19 but in countries with an opting-in system many people fail to do what, apparently, they really want to do.
The reasons for this include complacency, lack of knowledge about the options or the procedure , and the simple fact that
most of us find it unpleasant to be confronted with our own death.
A tax credit could be the ideal nudge that changes
behaviour in a direction that most people welcome ; it might help us to act in the way we think, reflectively, we should. So in this
sense a tax credit would actually support most people’s autonomy. Admittedly, such studies may to some extent misrepresent people’s attitudes.
After all, when faced with a moral question some people feel the need to give a so-called ‘correct moral’ answer that may not correspond with
what they truly want to do. Yet, such surveys are not without value. First, presumably not all anonymous respondents who would not donate their
organs are reluctant to give true but ‘morally incorrect’ answers. Second, given that up to 80% respond that they want to donate organs, the
misrepresentation would have to be massive for the conclusion that a majority of the popu lation wants to become organ donors when dead to be
false. Third, considerations of fairness appear to support a tax credit scheme in two ways at least. Compensating people who do something
gooddfor example, creating tax incentives to encourage people to donate money to charity is a well-known practice and is
considered by many people to be both legally and morally desirable because it increases the total amount of money donated.17 Why not use tax
credits to save the lives of people who need an organ then? People who endorse tax benefits for donations to charity should at least explain why
people who are willing to donate their organs after death should not receive a tax credit when those who donate money to charity receive
beneficial treatment from the taxman. After all, the former, unlike the latter, seems to involve psychological costs. Further more, on top of the
unfairness in the differential treatment of organ donors relative to other donors it also seems unfair that everybody other than the donor receives
something when organs are transplanted.12 13 The medical staff and the medical firms all receive financial compensation for their work, and for
the medicine required to make the organ transplant a success; they are not expected to offer their services for free. The recipient of the organ, or
donee, will have his or her life prolonged, and relatives will benefit by not losing a loved one. Fourth, considerations of distributive
justice will favour a tax credit scheme, when the extra organs made available are used mostly to help disadvantaged
patients. We offer two illustra tions. To begin with, assume justice has a ‘sufficientarian’ component; in other words, that people have a right to
a mini mally flourishing life.20 While this notion may be somewhat vague, it is clear that, if it has any bite all, a young person in immediate,
unmet need of a new organ does not yet have his or her right to a minimally flourishing life satisfied. If, alternatively, we think of justice in terms
of equal opportunities for welfare, it would seem similarly reasonable to suppose that making organs available to people who need themdmany of
whom will be young, and will have lived for many years with a reduced quality of life as a result, say, of their kidney problemsdwill reduce
inequality of opportunity for welfare.20 Finally, of course some people reject the idea of distributive justice, in part because they
think it involves asserting that some people own others, in their persons and their labour, and that this conflicts with the idea that people own
themselves, ie, the self-ownership thesis.21 22 However, even self-ownership is compatible with our proposal. According to the
self-ownership thesis people own their own bodies and are free to dispose of them in whatever way they see fit (provided they do not use them in
ways violating the rights of others). Confiscating people’s organs, certainly, would violate their self-ownership rights. (The
need to obtain the patient’s consent in the context of surgical interventions is often explained in terms of the patient’s self-ownership of his or her
body.) However, offering them a sum of money to consent to the use of their organs after their death does not . Indeed,
preventing them from so consenting would violate their self-ownership. This concludes our presentation of five arguments for the view that
voluntary organ donation should be recognised in tax credits. We
believe it is pretty indisputable: (1) that there is a strong case in
favour of a tax credit scheme of the sort we have described; (2) that this case is robust across a wide range of ethical principles;
and (3) that the real issue is thus whether there are any powerful objections to such a scheme . In what follows we therefore
present and evaluate eight objections. Broadly speaking, two types of objection can be made: one alleges that the tax credit mechanism goes too
far, the other that it does not go far enough (eg, because the organs of the deceased should be considered a common resource capable of being
confiscated by the state without consent or compensation).23 We will ignore the latter. The objections of the first type that we consider do not
exhaust the possibilities, but we think these are the ones that will be (and most often are) employed against tax incentives or other kinds of
economic inducement to donate organs.
Avoids politics
Holland 14 [Leslie Holland of Louisville is director of marketing and business development for Stoll Keenon
Ogden PLLC; “Tax credits an acceptable incentive to donate organs”; 1/23/2014; http://www.courierjournal.com/story/opinion/2014/01/23/leslie-holland-tax-credits-an-acceptable-incentive-to-donateorgans/4803259/]
Esteemed economists Gary S. Becker and Julio J. Elias penned an opinion piece in the Jan. 18 edition of The Wall Street Journal, in which they
urge a seismic shift in public policy regarding living kidney donations. These gentlemen clearly know a great deal about economics (Mr. Becker
has a Nobel Prize to his credit), and I applaud their effort in putting forth a case for bold change for an antiquated system. However, their
proposal that we move to a “cash for kidneys” program shoots for the moon in a socio-political environment
dominated by strife. There is a simpler solution: State and federal tax credits. First, the facts: Among 300 million
Americans live 95,000 friends and neighbors who need a new kidney. But only 11,000 cadaver donors and 5,600 living donors were accepted for
transplant in 2012. The result? Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) can expect to wait more than four years for a transplant, often on
dialysis that costs upward of $80,000 annually. Typical patients can survive no longer than eight years with this treatment. Many will die
before they get a kidney (the fate of 4,500 in 2012). Those who live undertake an incredibly difficult life that
compromises their families and livelihoods because they require so much care and are often unable to work.
Transplant surgery averages $150,000, far less than the $350,000-$800,000 required to keep an ESRD patient alive for four to eight years. It is
currently illegal in the U.S. and most other countries to sell human organs. Donors live as long — or longer — than the national average. They’re
a healthy population subset, having voluntarily submitted to invasive and rigorous mental, emotional and physical health exams as standard
protocol before being approved for transplant. Knowing all that, you might think “cash for kidneys” is a great option. Offer a set fee ($15,000 is
the number advocated by Becker and Elias) to create a plentiful kidney supply by priming the pump with money. After all, they argue, we have
precedent: The going legal compensation for surrogate mothers is $20,000. That’s precisely where the economists lose the argument. Americans
love babies and families, but we have never demonstrated an interest in meeting the need to save lives, while we have embraced the emotional
“want” of procreation. My instinct is that any attempt to enact the proposition espoused by Becker and Elias will
undoubtedly be met by hue and cry from the left that we’re creating a model that preys upon the poo r, willing to sell an
organ to fill an empty coffer or settle a debt. The right, in turn, will call it an ethical death spiral and clothe it as yet another
unfunded Obamacare mandate. I’m not saying Becker and Elias have their hearts in the wrong place; My contention is that Americans
will never buy what they’re selling. Truthfully, we are in such a polarized socio-political morass we can barely get non-
controversial legislation passed. But what America and our legislators might pass is tax credits. Conservatives love tax credits !
They appeal to their base, and that’s fine. Progressives will at first argue that this again sets up a situation that marginalizes the
working poor. But if we allowed low-income donors (e.g. those who qualify for the Earned Income Credit) an
incentive in the form of an equivalent refund, there are very few who could argue effectively against this as good
public policy.
And key to prevent global nuclear war
Freidberg 8 (Aaron, Professor of Politics and International Relations – Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson
School, “The Dangers of a Diminished America”, Wall Street Journal, 10-21,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
With the global financial system in serious trouble, is America's geostrategic dominance likely to diminish? If so,
what would that mean? One immediate implication of the crisis that began on Wall Street and spread across the
world is that the primary instruments of U.S. foreign policy will be crimped . The next president will face an entirely new and
adverse fiscal position. Estimates of this year's federal budget deficit already show that it has jumped $237 billion from last year, to $407 billion.
With families and businesses hurting, there will be calls for various and expensive domestic relief programs. In the face of this onrushing river of
red ink, both Barack Obama and John McCain have been reluctant to lay out what portions of their programmatic wish list they might defer or
delete. Only Joe Biden has suggested a possible reduction -- foreign aid. This would be one of the few popular cuts, but in budgetary terms it is a
mere grain of sand. Still, Sen. Biden's comment hints at where we may be headed: toward a major reduction in America's world
role, and perhaps even a new era of financially-induced isolationism. Pressures to cut defense spending, and to
dodge the cost of waging two wars, already intense before this crisis, are likely to mount. Despite the success of the
surge, the war in Iraq remains deeply unpopular. Precipitous withdrawal -- attractive to a sizable swath of the
electorate before the financial implosion -- might well become even more popular with annual war bills running in
the hundreds of billions. Protectionist sentiments are sure to grow stronger as jobs disappear in the coming
slowdown. Even before our current woes, calls to save jobs by restricting imports had begun to gather support
among many Democrats and some Republicans. In a prolonged recession, gale-force winds of protectionism will
blow. Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For
decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of
the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as
we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be
possible in the future? Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda
and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose
paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and
China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull back from the world stage,
it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment
to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be
placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a
halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose
up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to
become ever more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of
the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us.
The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil
prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign
investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country
where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these
countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external adventures. As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when
many European nations are struggling to deal with decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite
its past dynamism, Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power.
What does this all mean? There is no substitute for America on the world stage. The choice we have before us is between
the potentially disastrous effects of disengagement and the stiff price tag of continued American leadership.
Case
Extinction first
Kateb 92 – Professor of Politics at Princeton University (George, The Inner Ocean, pg. 141)
To sum up the lines of thought that Nietzsche starts, I suggest first that it is epistemologically impossible for humanity to arrive at an estimation
of the worth of itself or of the rest of nature: it cannot pretend to see itself from the outside or to see the rest, as it were, from the inside.
Second, after allowance is made for this quandary, which is occasioned by the death of God and the birth of truth, humanity, placed in a position in
which it is able to extinguish human life and natural life on earth, must simply affirm existence as such. Existence must go on but not
because of any particular feature or group of features. The affirmation of existence refuses to say what worth existence has, even from
just a human perspective, from any human perspective whatever. It cannot say, because existence is indefinite; it is beyond evaluating ; being
undesigned it is unencompassable by a defined and definite judgment. (The philosopher Frederick A. Olafson speaks of "the stubbornly unconceptualizable fact of
existence.") The
worth of the existence passed on to the unborn is not measurable but indefinite. The judgment is minimal: no human purpose or
value within existence is worth more than existence and can ever be used to justify the risk of extinction . Third, from the
moral point of view, existence seems unjustifiable because of the pain and ugliness in it, and therefore the moral point of view must
be chastened if it is not to block attachment to existence as such. The other minimal judgment is that whatever existence is, it is better
than nothing . For the first time, in the nuclear age, humanity can fully perceive existence from the perspective of nothing, which in
part is the perspective of extinction.
Low probability scenarios still important
Mahnken and Junio 13 – (2013, Thomas, PhD, Jerome E. Levy Chair of Economic Geography and National
Security at the U.S. Naval War College and a Visiting Scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at
The Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and Timothy, Predoctoral
Fellow, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, PhD in Political Science expected
2013, “Conceiving of Future War: The Promise of Scenario Analysis for International Relations,” International
Studies Review Volume 15, Issue 3, pages 374–395, September 2013)
This article introduces political scientists to scenarios—future counterfactuals—and demonstrates their value in tandem with
other methodologies and across a wide range of research questions. The authors describe best practices regarding the scenario
method and argue that scenarios contribute to theory building and development, identifying new hypotheses, analyzing
data-poor research topics, articulating “world views,” setting new research agendas, avoiding cognitive biases, and
teaching. The article also establishes the low rate at which scenarios are used in the international relations subfield and situates scenarios in the
broader context of political science methods. The conclusion offers two detailed examples of the effective use of scenarios. In his classic work on
scenario analysis, The Art of the Long View, Peter Schwartz commented that “social scientists often have a hard time
[building scenarios]; they have been trained to stay away from ‘what if?’ questions and concentrate on ‘what was?’”
(Schwartz 1996:31). While Schwartz's comments were impressionistic based on his years of conducting and teaching scenario analysis, his claim
withstands empirical scrutiny. Scenarios—counterfactual narratives about the future—are woefully underutilized
among political scientists. The method is almost never taught on graduate student syllabi, and a survey of leading international
relations (IR) journals indicates that scenarios were used in only 302 of 18,764 sampled articles. The low rate at which political
scientists use scenarios—less than 2% of the time—is surprising; the method is popular in fields as disparate as business,
demographics, ecology, pharmacology, public health, economics, and epidemiology (Venable, Li, Ginter, and Duncan 1993;
Leufkens, Haaijer-Ruskamp, Bakker, and Dukes 1994; Baker, Hulse, Gregory, White, Van Sickle, Berger, Dole, and Schumaker 2004;
Sanderson, Scherbov, O'Neill, and Lutz 2004). Scenarios also are a common tool employed by the policymakers whom
political scientists study. This article seeks to elevate the status of scenarios in political science by demonstrating their
usefulness for theory building and pedagogy . Rather than constitute mere speculation regarding an unpredictable
future, as critics might suggest, scenarios assist scholars with developing testable hypotheses, gathering data, and
identifying a theory's upper and lower bounds. Additionally, scenarios are an effective way to teach students to apply
theory to policy . In the pages below, a “best practices” guide is offered to advise scholars, practitioners, and students, and an argument is
developed in favor of the use of scenarios. The article concludes with two examples of how political scientists have invoked the scenario method
to improve the specifications of their theories, propose falsifiable hypotheses, and design new empirical research programs. Scenarios in the
Discipline What do counterfactual narratives about the future look like? Scenarios may range in length from a few
sentences to many pages. One of the most common uses of the scenario method, which will be referenced throughout this article, is to
study the conditions under which high-consequence, low-probability events may occur. Perhaps the best example
of this is nuclear warfare , a circumstance that has never resulted, but has captivated generations of political scientists. For an introductory
illustration, let us consider a very simple scenario regarding how a first use of a nuclear weapon might occur : During the year
2023, the US military is ordered to launch air and sea patrols of the Taiwan Strait to aid in a crisis. These highly visible patrols disrupt trade off
China's coast, and result in skyrocketing insurance rates for shipping companies. Several days into the contingency, which involves over ten
thousand US military personnel, an intelligence estimate concludes that a Chinese conventional strike against US air patrols and naval assets is
imminent. The United States conducts a preemptive strike against anti-air and anti-sea systems on the Chinese mainland. The US strike is far
more successful than Chinese military leaders thought possible; a new source of intelligence to the United States—unknown to Chinese
leadership—allowed the US military to severely degrade Chinese targeting and situational awareness capabilities. Many of the weapons that
China relied on to dissuade escalatory US military action are now reduced to single-digit-percentage readiness. Estimates for repairs and
replenishments are stated in terms of weeks, and China's confidence in readily available, but “dumber,” weapons is low due to the dispersion and
mobility of US forces. Word of the successful US strike spreads among the Chinese and Taiwanese publics. The Chinese Government concludes
that for the sake of preserving its domestic strength, and to signal resolve to the US and Taiwanese Governments while minimizing further
economic disruption, it should escalate dramatically with the use of an extremely small-yield nuclear device against a stationary US military asset
in the Pacific region. This short story reflects a future event that, while unlikely to occur and far too vague to be used for
military planning, contains many dimensions of political science theory. These include the following: what leaders
perceive as “limited,” “proportional,” or “escalatory” uses of force; the importance of private information about capabilities and
commitment; audience costs in international politics; the relationship between military expediency and political objectives
during war; and the role of compressed timelines for decision making , among others. The purpose of this article is to explain to
scholars how such
stories , and more rigorously developed narratives that specify variables of interest and draw on extant data, may
improve the study of IR . An important starting point is to explain how future counterfactuals fit into the methodological canon of the
discipline.
The aff solves nothing – has a negative effect on overall organ transplants – comparative evidence
Segev and Gentry, 10 – associate professor of surgery and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine; and research associate in the department of surgery at Johns Hopkins/associate professor of mathematics
at the U.S. Naval Academy (D.L. and S.E., “Kidneys for Sale: Whose Attitudes Matter?” American Journal of
Transplantation 10: 1-2.
http://www.ucema.edu.ar/u/je49/mercados/SegevGentryKidneySalesEditorial.AJT.2010.pdf)
First, nothing else is relevant until physicians support or- gan sales. And, right now, they don’t. In a recent sur- vey
of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, only 20% of transplant surgeons—those actually doing the
transplants—supported cash payments for deceased or live donation (2). Similar lack of support was found among
physicians from other societies as well (3). Clearly an organ market will not be much of a market with so few
willing to perform the transplants or refer the patients. And a rift in the transplant community resulting from a
marginally sup- ported organ market will likely be much more detrimental to organ transplantation in the United
States than any pu- tative increase in donation from establishing financial in- centives (4). As such, those seeking to
better understand the viability of organ markets should focus first on the physicians.
Illegal organs abroad will still be cheaper
Suddath and Altman, 9 – reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek with a degree from Columbia University’s
Graduate School of Journalism, and Washington correspondent for TIME (Claire and Alex, 7/27. “How Does
Kidney-Trafficking Work?” http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1912880,00.html)
The organ market is largely made up of impoverished and desperate sellers, wealthy, ailing customers and predatory
middlemen. Most sales take place in developing countries, where a kidney can often be purchased for the price of a
high-end TV. In Iran — the only country in the world where organ sales are legal — a healthy kidney retails for
about $6,000. The going rate is less than half that amount in India, which has an abundance of doctors capable of
performing the procedure and destitute masses often unable to raise cash any other way. In January 2008, police
busted an organ racket outside New Delhi that allegedly conned or forced poor laborers to relinquish their kidneys to
wealthy clients. Investigators say the ring operated for years and included a doctor, Amit Kumar, who would use
scouts to spot potential marks. Another kidney ring flourished in South Africa from 2001 to 2003, and black markets
thrive in nations like China, Pakistan and the Philippines.
Legalization solves none of the problems with status quo organ market
Biller-Adorno and Alpinar, 13 – Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics, University of Zurich, Switzerland;
and PhD student in the Network Human Dignity, University of Zurich (Nikola and Zumrut, August. “Organ
Trafficking and Transplant Tourism.” Handbook of Global Bioethics, pp. 771-783.
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-2512-6_122)
The empirical studies in both unregulated and regulated settings reveal several mistaken assumptions of the organ
market proponents: The assessment of risks and benefits unjustifiably extrapolated results from ideal conditions in
rich countries. Under less than ideal conditions, risks – in terms of health, psychological effects, and socioeconomic
status – are significant and benefits questionable. Second, the idea that financial gain would not take over regarding
the motivation for organ selling has not been corroborated. There is no indication that an altruistic motiva- tion is
maintained, and the payment seen as an additional nice-to-have. It might not be possible to have it both ways – the
motivation will be either mainly altruistic (if no payment is offered) or driven by the financial reward. Finally, the
idea that all social strata would act as vendors and recipients has not materialized, at least not in the societies that
were studied. Rather, it is the poor who sell, forced by circum- stances or in the hope to improve their situation, and
they are usually worse off afterward. The problems that have appeared in a regulated system are very similar to
those in an unregulated one; regulation thus cannot be considered a quick fix for the problems emerging with paying
for organs.
Market won’t increase supply – experts agree
Knox, 8 – NPR [Richard Knox, Should We Legalize the Market for Human Organs?, May 21, 200812:01 PM ET,
http://www.npr.org/2008/05/21/90632108/should-we-legalize-the-market-for-human-organs]
James Childress, professor of ethics at the University of Virginia and chairman of the Institute of Medicine
committee that produced the 2006 report "Organ Donation: Opportunities for Action," says: "There are strong
reasons to believe that compensation for cadaveric organs won't increase the supply. Imagine a futures market in
organs where individuals contract to provide their organs after their deaths, and in return receive a payment now, or
designate the payment to be provided after their deaths to their families or to a charity. ... Well, consider that many
people don't sign donor cards now because of distrust or mistrust. They worry about being declared dead prematurely, or even
having their deaths hastened, if they have signed a donor card. Well, they would certainly be reluctant to enter a futures
market, to sign a futures contract, when the only barrier to the delivery of their organs is the fact that they're not dead yet." Francis
Delmonico, professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and adviser to the World Health Organization on transplantation, says:
"What we do here has a profound influence on the rest of the world . Now, I say that because I've been to Manila. And ... it's not a
matter of balanced thought when a 14-year-old has to sell a kidney to an American that comes there. It's not a matter of balanced thought in
Pakistan, or in Egypt. ... About 20 patients a month go from Israel to Manila because of cheap prices. If there's a market legalized in
the
United States, in the global context of medical tourism, do you think that the 72-year-old patient on the list would
wait for a kidney here, versus going to buy a 20-year-old kidney in Manila?" David Rothman, professor of social
medicine at Columbia University and director of the Center on Medicine as a Profession, says: "What this is really about is the
sale of organs from living donors. ... There are very, very good reasons — many drawn from behavioral economics, some
drawn from past experience — that suggest that, in fact, to create a market might diminish the supply, not increase it. In
the first instance, if I can buy it why should I give it?... In England, where the sale of blood was not allowed, rates of donation
were considerably higher than the U.S., where the sale of blood was allowed ."
2NC – Case, K
Case
Extra Case
Squo solves – 3D bioprinting
Gilpin, 14 – staff writer for TechRepublic, citing Dr. Jay Hoying, the Division Chief of Cardiovascular Therapeutics
at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute at Louisville (Lyndsey, 8/1. "New 3D bioprinter to reproduce human
organs, change the face of healthcare." http://www.techrepublic.com/article/new-3d-bioprinter-to-reproduce-humanorgans)
New 3D bioprinter to reproduce human organs, change the face of healthcare Researchers are only steps away from
bioprinting tissues and organs to solve a myriad of injuries and illnesses. TechRepublic has the inside story of the new product accelerating the process. If
you want to understand how close the medical community is to a quantum leap forward in 3D bioprinting, then you need
to look at the work that one intern is doing this summer at the University of Louisville. A team of doctors, researchers, technicians, and students at the
Cardiovascular Innovation Institute (CII) on Muhammad Ali Boulevard in Louisville, Kentucky swarm around the BioAssembly Tool (BAT), a square black machine
that's solid on the bottom and encased in glass on three sides on the top. There's a large stuffed animal bat sitting on the machine and a computer monitor on the side,
showing magnified images of the biomaterial that the machine is printing. This team stands at the forefront of research in 3D bioprinting, as they methodically take
steps toward printing a working human heart. As part of this work, the
team is also pioneering breakthroughs in printing human stem
cells -- a move that could remove the raging ethical dilemmas associated with stem cells and potentially take
regenerative medicine to new heights. The combination of these stem cells and 3D bioprinting is going to help repair or replace damaged human organs and
tissues, improve surgeries, and ultimately give patients far better outcomes in dealing with a wide range of illnesses and injuries. But, there are problems with BAT -as advanced as it is from its surprising background as a military project. It's way too slow and printing anything with it is a tortuously manual process. The printhead
runs on a three-axis robot that doesn't handle curves very well. No one at the lab knows the limitations and challenges of BAT better than a summer intern named
Katie, an undergrad from Georgetown University. She's in Louisville as part of a summer program for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that exposes students to
cutting edge research and lets them participate in groundbreaking work. Katie's not sure what she wants to do when she finishes her bachelor's degree in mathematics
but she has thrown herself into her work at the CII with full intensity this summer. A big part of what Katie does is build intricate scripts to tell BAT what to print. It's
similar to a computer programmer writing in assembly language to give a computer system an exact set of instructions. It's an incredibly laborious process and it
involves Katie going back and forth with Dr. Jay Hoying, the Division Chief of Cardiovascular Therapeutics at CII and one of the leaders of the 3D bioprinting
project. "What's interesting is Katie's background in mathematics," said Hoying, "which is really essential here because it's basically a geometry problem." But Hoying
and his team are about to get a new 3D bioprinting solution that will accelerate their work so significantly that what has taken Katie
half the summer will soon take half a day, according to Hoying. This new solution's hardware, BioAssemblyBot (BAB), runs as a six-axis robot that is far more
precise than BAT. The real difference, however, is in the software: Tissue Structure Information Modeling (TSIM), which is basically a CAD program for biology. It
takes the manual coding out of the process and replaces it with something that resembles desktop image editing software. It allows the medical researchers to scan and
manipulate 3D models of organs and tissues and then use those to make decisions in diagnosing patients. And then, use those same scans to model tissues (and
eventually organs) to print using the BAB. "It's a big step forward in the capability and technology of bioprinting," said Hoying, "but
what someone like me is really excited about is now it enables me to do so much more." Hoying went back to the example of his highly-capable intern, Katie. "Katie
has spent half the summer just understanding and scripting up and doing this," he said. "Now if Katie can do that in half a day, I can do more biology, I can do more
experiments. I can explore new cell combinations.... In that same half a summer I could have explored different structures, different cell-[to]-cell combinations,
experiment here growing them up, etc. Where she's taking half the summer to understand the geometry, script it out, test it... with the BAB and the TSIM, I would
have finished a handful of experiments." Bioprinting's new robot BAB and TSIM are an integrated package built by Advanced Solutions, a private biotech company
located in suburban Louisville. The new solution officially launches today -- Friday, August 1, 2014 -- and Hoying's CII is not the only lab ready to jump on it. In fact,
Hoying is concerned that demand could be so strong that it could interfere with his facility getting one as soon as he would hope, although that seems unlikely
considering Hoying was an important collaborator and consultant for Advanced Solutions in creating the product. While the lab where Katie and Dr. Hoying run their
experiments is downtown next to the hospitals and cutting edge medical facilities, the Advanced Solutions office is about 20 miles east, tucked away in a suburban
office park that's also home to a tree care service, a construction company, a dental association, a US Postal Service branch, and a handful of small healthcare
companies. The building that houses Advanced Solutions sits just down a hill off Nelson Miller Parkway, and less than 1000 feet from the I-265 interstate highway.
From the outside, there's little indication that the single story brick structure houses a team of 65 people who are working on a hardware and software solution that
could revolutionize modern medicine. Advanced Solutions has been around since 1987. During most of the time since then, it has been a software provider building
solutions on top of Autodesk for specific industries. But, in October 2010, Advanced Solutions CEO Michael Golway took an alumni tour of the CII -- since Golway
is a University of Louisville alum and the university is a key partner of the facility. Golway told TechRepublic, "At the end of the presentation, Dr. Stu Williams
passionately summarized the CII business model and I was not only impressed by the CII innovation, team of researchers and focus on cardiovascular solutions but
intrigued by the possibilities that Advanced Solutions engineering know-how could contribute in a positive and profound way to helping his team. I followed back up
with Dr. Williams one-on-one and we became fast friends." That began the journey that would lead to the integrated solution that Golway and his team devised to
meet the needs of Williams, Hoying, and researchers and hospitals throughout the world. "Over the course of 2.5 years we would periodically meet and I learned about
some of the technological workflow challenges that slowed his team from advancing the biology research to achieve the Total Bioficial Heart," Golway said. "Dr.
Williams and eventually Dr. Hoying also invested time in learning more about the Advanced Solutions team and our capabilities. After 2.5 years of building a terrific
working relationship, listening, learning and collaborating I brought forward an engineering design concept for Dr. Williams and Dr. Hoying to consider that was
intended to solve the tissue design technology problem." Hoying and Williams, who is the division chief of the bioficial heart program at the CII, are both widely
respected cell biologists who came to Louisville from Arizona to work together. They were obviously impressed that Golway's solution could get them closer to their
goal of creating that "Total Bioficial Heart." Golway continued, "In March 2013, Advanced Solutions Life Sciences, LLC was formed as a wholly owned subsidiary
of Advanced Solutions, Inc. to engineer, fabricate and commercialize the technology in support of that initial concept design. Today the BioAssemblyBot and [the]
TSIM software integrated solution are the work product from that endeavor." Beyond the launch of his company's product, Golway views this work as part of a larger
trend of digitizing the medical and biological space, which is destined to unleash other new advances as well. "What's been really interesting to me is that we're on a
trajectory here where we're really treating biology as more of an information technology," Golway said. "That's incredibly exciting to us because IT grows
exponentially -- instead of just the hardcore traditional discovery that biology has been tracking on, if we can translate that into IT we can take that experimentation
and rapidly start looking at optimization. How to combine cell types in a way to create cell types and structures.
The exponential curve is already there
but this technology allows you to take the next step."
There’s no critical shortage – your stats are flawed
Segev and Gentry, 10 – associate professor of surgery and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine; and research associate in the department of surgery at Johns Hopkins/associate professor of mathematics
at the U.S. Naval Academy (D.L. and S.E., October. “Terminology Influences Many Aspects of the
Market/Incentives Debate.” American Journal of Transplantation, Volume 10, issue 10, page 2375.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-6143.2010.03221.x/full)
In seeking more precise terminology, we wish to clarify two other terms critical to this debate. Carefully examining the kidney waiting list reveals
that the ‘tremendous organ shortage’ is widely distorted , with totals on the waiting list inflated by inactive
candidates who are not eligible for a transplant (approximately one-third of the list). For example, between 2002 and 2007,
McCullough and colleagues showed that the active kidney waiting list grew by only 10%, indicating a near steady-state of new eligible registrants
and transplants for them, while the inactive kidney waiting list grew by 282% (2). Furthermore, live donation rates are often said to have
‘stalled’ since 2004. However, living donation rates tripled in the preceding 15 years (3). The level donation rates
since 2004 suggest sustainability of these historic highs in donation. Some areas of living donation have seen
exponential growth in the last few years. Nondirected donation grew from 2 in 1998 to 56 in 2002 to 137 in 2009 (4,5). Paired donation grew
from 3 in 2000 to 39 in 2004 to 419 in 2009 (5,6). These donors do not comprise a large proportion of the living donor pool at this early stage and
so do not contribute to a visible overall rise in kidney donation. As they continue to increase, however, these sources of donors will likely
play a more obvious role in the future. In fact, the rise in living donation between 2008 and 2009 is partly attributable to these novel
modalities.
1NC/2NC Regulations Fail
“Regulated market” is an oxymoron – Iran proves
Danovitch, 11 – Medical Director, Kidney Transplant Program, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of
California Los Angeles (Gabriel, July. “Would regulated reimbursements discourage organ trafficking?” CQ
Researcher. http://www.sagepub.com/ritzerintro/study/materials/cqresearcher/77708_11.2cq.pdf)
Commercialization of organ (typically kidney) donation has been shown to undermine the very fabric of the organ
trans- plant endeavor, which is based on mutual benefit and trust — both in the diagnosis of death and in the welfare
of living donors and their recipients. The outcome for kidney sellers is worse than for altruistic donors — from both
a medical view- point and a psychosocial one. Recipients are also put at greater risk as the mutual caring that
underlies successful living donor transplantation is displaced by financial considerations. Furthermore, a “regulated
organ market” is an oxymoron. In Iran, where such a system has been in place since 1970, “under the table”
payments to “supplement” the regulated gov- ernment payment are near universal. The transplant communi- ty has
documented the inferior outcomes for vulnerable donors and is struggling to unburden itself from a system that has
hampered the development of related living donation and voluntary deceased donation. Moreover, it is facile to
think that commercial organ dona- tion would somehow “solve” the organ donor shortage. Expe- rience has shown
that paid donation comes at the expense of and not in addition to voluntary donation.
Regulation doesn’t solve – loopholes and syndicates – Philippines experience proves
Mendoza, 10 – actuary and professor of business economics, whose teaching and research interests are in the areas
of healthcare and pension economics and risk management (Roger Lee, March. “Kidney black markets and legal
transplants: Are they opposite sides of the same coin?” Health Policy Volume 94, Issue 3, pp. 255-265.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016885100900267X)
While regulatory measures may prohibit kidney selling, self-contradictory provisions and policy loopholes create
reverse incentives (to trade illicitly). Both National Policy and Revised National Policy allow “gratuities,” which could stimulate kidney
selling. A foreigners’ cap or ban, as the Secretary of Health acknowledged, may not suppress organized kidney crimes
and could have the opposite effect, as syndicates are forced to go deeper in their covert operations [10]. Crafting
legislation or public policy cannot be restricted to textual provision but need to address opportunities (demonstration effects) that may arise to
subvert its own intent. 4.5. Relative insulation of commodity brokerage A prevailing issue concerns the legal burden
disproportionately placed on poor and vulnerable donors in their role as kidney vendors . Conversely, brokers who
stand to profit the most are relatively shielded from a law-enforcement standpoint in the absence of broker-specific
penalties. Without brokers, it is doubtful if most LNRDs will find kidney buyers, as our survey has indicated. Without incentives (e.g.,
cash rewards) to report these brokers and their vast patron–client network, and swift government action, the
underground kidney trade will continue to flourish, entrench market injustices based on ability-to-pay and dent
reform efforts. 4.6. Sociological aspects of trade Unlike most developed countries, the Philippines permits kidney donations to emotionally
related as well as unspecified recipients out of consideration for socio-cultural values (e.g., extended family, altruism). How to distinguish
genuine emotional ties from those that are brokered overnight (e.g., short-term marriages to obtain a Filipino spouse's kidney have reportedly
increased since the foreign recipients total ban took effect [51] and [52]), or how to address genuine but paid kidney donations to
related recipients, underline grey areas in legal compliance that may require a case-by-case approach. They arise in many
developing countries where reward-based, patron–client ties can be cemented within a short period of time and are crucial to individual goal
achievement. 4.7. Minimal transaction costs in brokerage trading Low transaction costs to kidney buyers and sellers owe to the
ease of information exchange (e.g., extended family ties, word of mouth), speed of (brokered) transplant arrangements, broker price-fixing,
nephrectomy in top-quality private and state-run hospitals, and direct involvement by politicians and law-enforcers. Despite government
pronouncements to the contrary, they help make the Philippines a favored destination for medical/transplant
tourism [53]. Compliance monitoring is insufficient and costly without the benefit of effective law-enforcement.
That, in turn, demands creative policing and prosecution (e.g., with adequate and objective media coverage) to cope with ever-changing trade
environments (e.g., online and sham marriages) and rules (e.g., contracting by scouts).
XT – Status Quo Solves
Organ cloning solves
Aronson, 13 – founder of the Organ Transplant Initiative (Bob, 2/10. "Artificial and Bioengineered Organs Can
End the Shortage.” https://bobsnewheart.wordpress.com/category/ending-the-organ-shortage-solutions)
In June 2011, an Eritrean man entered an operating theater with a cancer-ridden windpipe, People had received
windpipe transplants before, but this one was different. His was the first organ of its kind to be completely grown in
a lab using the patient’s own cells. The windpipe is one of the latest successes in the ongoing quest to grow artificial
organs in a lab. The goal is deceptively simple: build bespoke organs for individual patients by sculpting them from
living flesh on demand. No-one will have to wait on lengthy transplant lists for donor organs and no-one will have
to take powerful and debilitating drugs to prevent their immune systems from rejecting new body parts. Scaffolds
for Tissue Repair energy pulsar Researchers are making use of advances in knowledge of stem cells, basic cells that
can be transformed into types that are specific to tissues like liver or lung. They are learning more about what they
call scaffolds, compounds that act like mortar to hold cells in their proper place and that also play a major role in
how cells are recruited for tissue repair. Tissue engineers caution that the work they are doing is experimental and
costly, and that the creation of complex organs is still a long way off. But they are increasingly optimistic about the
possibilities. Bioartificial Liver Boston company HepaLife is working on a “bioartificial” liver using a proprietary
line of liver stem cells. Once the patient’s blood is separated into plasma and blood cells, a external bioreactor unit
with those stem cells inside can reduce levels of toxic ammonia by 75% in less than a day. Bioartificial Hand
Smarenergy coming from a handtHand is a bioadaptive hand that can actually feel. Its 40 sensors communicate back
and forth directly with the brain using nerve endings in the arm. The hand sends its sensory input to the brain, and
the brain sends instructions for movement to the hand. The result? It can pick up a plastic water bottle without
crushing it, or pour a drink without spills. BioLung MC3 BioLung is a soda-can-shaped implantable device that uses
the heart’s pumping power to move blood through its filters. It’s designed to work alongside a natural lung,
exchanging oxygen from the air with carbon dioxide from the bloodstream. So far, it’s been tried on sheep, where
six of the eight animals on the BioLung machine survived for five days. Human trials are expected within the next
couple of years. 3D Organ Printing Organ printing, or the process of engineering tissue via 3D printing, possesses
revolutionary potential for organ transplants. The creation process of artificial tissue is a complex and expensive
process. In order to build 3D structures such as a kidney or lung, a printer is used to assemble cells into whichever
shape is wanted. For this to happen, the printer creates a sheet of bio-paper which is cell-friendly. Afterwards, it
prints out the living cell clusters onto the paper. After the clusters are placed close to one another, the cells naturally
self-organize and morph into more complex tissue structures. The whole process is then repeated to add multiple
layers with each layer separated by a thin piece of bio-paper. Eventually, the bio-paper dissolves and all of the layers
become one. Using the patient’s own cells as a catalyst, artificial organs may soon become mainstream practice
among treatment centers worldwide. As the health of the nation delves down to record negatives, organ printing
may be the establishment’s answer to a number of preventable conditions. The above alternatives to human organs
are but the tip of the iceberg. Medical science and technology are on the verge of incredible breakhroughs that will
extend life and, at some point, end the need for human organ donation, anti-rejection drugs and maybe even invasive
surgery.
Xenotransplantation coming now – that also solves
Cooper, 12 – MD, PhD, University of Pittsburgh professor of surgery (David, January. "A brief history of crossspecies organ transplantation," Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent). 25(1): 49–57.,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3246856)
Nevertheless, there is clear evidence that xenotransplantation will become successful in the relatively near future .
There is a Native American proverb, “Timing has a lot to do with the success of a rain dance.” With the increasing
variety of genetically engineered pigs now becoming available, it is likely that the remaining problems will be
resolved and the timing for xenotransplantation will be right. For example, in Pittsburgh, we have available to us
(through our colleagues at Revivicor Inc., of Blacksburg, VA) pigs with no fewer than nine different genetic
manipulations, of which at least five have been combined in a single pig (Table (Table22). With interbreeding
between these various pigs—and with new genetic modifications being introduced—it is likely that the problems of
rejection and coagulation dysfunction (which is the present major barrier [67]) will soon be overcome . Although
there are relatively few hard data at present, the current evidence is that the function of pig organs and cells in
humans may be adequate (68).
K
2NC Framework
-- Right forum – this location is the central place for this struggle to take place – we need to express linkages of
solidarity as university students within the debate space – best activates agency.
Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux, Global TV Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 21
November 2011, “Occupy Colleges Now: Students as the New Public Intellectuals”, http://www.truthout.org/occupy-colleges-now-students-new-public-intellectuals/1321891418)
Finding our way to a more humane future demands a new politics, a new set of values, and a renewed sense of the
fragile nature of democracy. this means educating a new generation of intellectuals who
frame their own agency as intellectuals willing to connect their research, teaching, knowledge, and service with
broader democratic concerns
it is time to remind ourselves
that academe may be one of the few public spheres available that can provide the educational conditions for students
and community members to embrace pedagogy as a space of dialogue and unmitigated questioning
imagine different futures
In part,
not only defend higher education as a democratic public sphere,
but also
over equality, justice, and an alternative vision of what the university might be and what society could become. Under the present circumstances,
,
faculty, administrators,
,
, become border-crossers, and embrace a language of critique and possibility that makes visible the urgency of a politics necessary to address important social issues and contribute to the quality of public life and the common
good. To see other articles by Henry A. Giroux visit The Public Intellectual Project. As people move or are pushed by authorities out of their makeshift tent cities in Zuccotti Park and other public spaces in cities across the United States, the harsh registers and interests of the punishing state
corporate state cannot fight any longer with ideas because their visions, ideologies and survival of the
fittest ethic are bankrupt, fast losing any semblance of legitimacy Students
are changing the language of
politics while reclaiming pedagogy as central to any viable notion of agency, resistance and collective struggle.
they have become the new public intellectuals, using
any other viable educational tool to raise
new questions point to new possibilities, and register their criticisms
become more visible. The
.
all over the country
In short,
their bodies, social media, new digital technologies, and
,
of the various antidemocratic elements of casino capitalism and the emerging punishing state. Increasingly, the Occupy
Wall Street protesters are occupying colleges and universities, setting up tents, and using the power of ideas to engage other students, faculty, and anyone else who will listen to them. The call is going out from the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, Florida State
University, Duke University, Rhode Island College, and over 120 other universities that the time has come to connect knowledge not just to power, but to the very meaning of what it means to be an engaged intellectual responsive to the possibilities of individual and collective resistance and
change. This poses a new challenge not only for the brave students mobilizing these protests on college campuses, but also to faculty who often relegate themselves to the secure and comfortable claim that scholarship should be disinterested, objective and removed from politics.
There is a great dea
l these
students and young people can learn
from this turn away from the so-called professionalism of disinterested knowledge and the disinterested intellectual by reading the works of
about what it means to assume the role of a
public intellectual as both a matter of social responsibility and political urgency
Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Jacques Derrida, Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Elaine Scarry, Pierre Bourdieu and others who offer a treasure trove of theoretical and political insights
. As the world rises up against economic injustice, Truthout brings you the latest news and
analysis, free of corporate influence. Help support this work with a tax-deductible donation today. In response to the political indifference and moral coma that embraced many universities and scholars since the 1980s, the late Said argued for intellectuals to move beyond the narrow interests
of professionalism and specialization as well as the cheap seductions of celebrity culture being offered to a new breed of publicity and anti-public intellectuals. Said wanted to defend the necessity - indeed, keep open the possibility - of the intellectual who does not consolidate power, but
questions it, connects his or her work to the alleviation of human suffering, enters the public sphere in order to deflate the claims of triumphalism and recalls from exile those dangerous memories that are often repressed or ignored. Of course, such a position is at odds with those intellectuals
who have retreated into arcane discourses that offer the cloistered protection of the professional recluse. Making few connections with audiences outside of the academy or to the myriad issues that bear down on everyday lives, many academics became increasingly irrelevant, while
humanistic inquiry suffers the aftershocks of flagging public support. The Occupy Wall Street protesters have refused this notion of the deracinated, if not increasingly irrelevant, notion of academics and students as disinterested intellectuals. They are not alone. Refusing the rewards of
intellectuals need to ask themselves some very "uncomfortable
questions about our values and traditions, our vision for the future, our responsibilities as citizens, the legitimacy of
our 'democratic institutions
The university without
its professed essence should remain an ultimate place of critical
resistance
apolitical professionalism or obscure specialization so rampant on university campuses, Roy has pointed out that
,' the role of the state, the police, the army, the judiciary, and the intellectual community."[1] Similarly, Scarry points to the difficulty of seeing an injury and injustice, the sense of futility of one's own small efforts, and the
special difficulty of lifting complex ideas into the public sphere.[2] Derrida has raised important questions about the relationship between critique and the very nature of the university and the humanities, as when he writes:
does not, in fact, exist, as we know only too well. Nevertheless, in principle and in conformity with its declared vocation,
condition
, it
- and more than critical - to all the power of dogmatic and unjust appropriation.[3] Chomsky and the late Zinn have spoken about and demonstrated for over 40 years what it means to think rigorously and act courageously in the face of human suffering and
manufactured hardships. All of these theorists are concerned with what it means for intellectuals both within and outside of higher education to embrace the university as a productive site of dialogue and contestation, to imagine it as a site that offers students the promise of a democracy to
there is more at stake than arguing for a more
engaged public role for academics and students
There is also the challenge of connecting the university with visions that have some hold on the
present, defending education as more than an investment opportunity
students as more than customers, and
faculty as more than technicians or a subaltern army of casualized labor
we need a chorus of new voices
and the university
should
play a central role in keeping critical thought alive while fighting back all attempts to foreclose and pre-empt the
further unraveling of human possibilities
come, to help them understand that there is no genuine democracy without genuine opposing critical power and the social movements that can make it happen. But
here
, for demanding the urgent need to reconnect humanistic inquiry to important social issues, or for insisting on the necessity for academics to reclaim a notion of ethical
advocacy and connective relationships.
or job credential,
. At a time when higher education is increasingly being dominated by a reductive corporate logic and
technocratic rationality unable to differentiate training from a critical education,
to emphasize that the humanities, in particular,
, in general,
, prodding human society to go on questioning itself and prevent that questioning from ever stalling or being declared finished. Corporations and the warfare state should not dictate the needs
of public and higher education, or, for that matter, any other democratic public sphere. As the Occupy student protesters have pointed out over the last few months, one of the great dangers facing the 21st century is not the risk of illusory hopes, but those undemocratic forces that promote and
protect state terrorism, massive inequality, render some populations utterly disposable, imagine the future only in terms of immediate financial gains, and promote forms of self-serving historical reinvention in which power is measured by the degree to which it evades any sense of actual truth
Students
are once again arguing that higher education
still holds the promise
of being able to offer them the complex knowledge and interdisciplinary related skills that enable existing and
future generations to break the continuity of common sense, come to terms with their own power as critical agents
and assume the responsibility of not only being governed but learning how to
govern
Students are starting to
recognize that it is crucial to struggle for the university as a democratic public sphere
and moral responsibility.
, like their youthful counterparts in the 1960s,
, even in its imperfect state,
, if
not the reality,
, be
critical of the authority that speaks to them, translate private considerations into public issues,
. Inhabiting the role of public intellectuals, students can take on the difficult but urgent task of reclaiming the ideal and the practice of what it means to reclaim higher education in general and the humanities, more specifically, as a site of possibility that embraces the idea of
democracy not merely as a mode of governance but, most importantly- as journalist Bill Moyers points out - as a means of dignifying people so they can become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.
and the need to use that sphere to educate a generation of new students,
faculty and others about the history of race, racism, politics, identity, power, the state and the struggle for justice. They are increasingly willing to argue in theoretically insightful and profound ways about what it means to defend the university as a site that opens up and sustains public
connections through which people's fragmented, uncertain, incomplete narratives of agency are valued, preserved, and made available for exchange while being related analytically to wider contexts of politics and power. They are moving to reclaim, once again, the humanities as a sphere that
is crucial for grounding ethics, justice and morality across existing disciplinary terrains, while raising both a sense of urgency and a set of relevant questions about what kind of education would be suited to the 21st-century university and its global arrangements as part of a larger project of
addressing the most urgent issues that face the social and political world. The punishing state can use violence with impunity to eject young people from parks and other public sites, but it is far more difficult to eject them from sites that are designed for their intellectual growth and well-
Students can be forced out of parks and other public spaces but it is much
more difficult to force them out of those sites designed to educate them
being, make a claim to educate them, and register society's investment and commitment to their future.
,
- places that are identified with young people and register the larger society's obligation to their future and
well-being. The police violence that has taken place at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Davis does more than border on pure thuggery; it also reveals a display of force that is as unnecessary as it is brutal, and it is impossible to justify. These young people are being
It is crucial not to allow casino capitalism to
transform higher education into another extension of the corporate and warfare state If higher education loses its
beaten on their campuses for simply displaying the courage to protest a system that has robbed them of both a quality education and a viable future. But there is more.
also
.
civic purpose and becomes simply an adjunct of corporate
power, there will be practically no spaces left for
dissent
and critical engagement
Knowledge
is also a weapon of change The language of a radical politics
needs
institutional spaces to produce ideas, values, and social relations capable of fighting off those ideological and
material forces of casino capitalism that are intent in sabotaging any viable notion of human interaction, community,
solidarity, friendship, and justice
and military
, dialogue, civic courage, and a spirit of thoughtfulness
is about more than the truth; it
. This is all the more reason to occupy colleges and use them as a launching pad to both educate and to expand the very meaning of the public sphere.
.
needs more than hope and outrage; it
. Space is not the ultimate prize here.[4] Politics and ideology are the essence of what this movement should be about. But space becomes invaluable when it its democratic functions and uses are restored. In an
age when the media have become a means of mass distraction and entertainment, the university offers a site of informed engagement, a place where theory and action inform each other, and a space that refuses to divorce intellectual activities from matters of politics, social responsibility and
As students and faculty increasingly use the space of the university as a megaphone for a new kind of critical
education and politics, it will hopefully reclaim the democratic function of higher education and demonstrate what it
means for students
to assume the role of public intellectuals dedicated to creating a formative culture that
can provide citizens and others with the knowledge and skills necessary for a radical democracy.
social justice.
, faculty, and others
Rather than reducing learning to a measurable
quantity in the service of a narrow instrumental rationality, learning can take on a new role, becoming central to developing and expanding the capacity for critical modes of agency, new forms of solidarity, and an education in the service of the public good, an expa nded imagination,
democratic values, and social change. The student intellectual as a public figure merges rigor with civic courage, meaning with the struggle for eliminating injustice wherever it occurs and hope with a realistic notion of social change.
2NC AT Perm
-- You limit the discussion to market logic – only the alt’ focuses on the broader structures
Adaman and Madra 12 – *economic professor at Bogazici University in Istanbul, **PhD from UMass-Amherst,
economics professor (Fikret and Yahya, Bogazici University, “Understanding Neoliberalism as Economization: The
Case of the Ecology”, http://www.econ.boun.edu.tr/content/wp/EC2012_04.pdf)
The reduction of ecological valuation through a market mechanism (or various techniques) to a mere aggregation of individual
subjective valuations—which is the main premise of neoliberal ideology—may be inappropriate for complex and
uncertain phenomena ridden with incommensurabilities and inter- and intra-generational distributional conflicts, such
as global warming, where individual valuations will have clear implications for all living beings. Indeed, in making decisions with substantial consequences
pertaining to our current life as well as our future (such as the overall growth rate, distributional trajectories, technological path, consumption habits, risk attitude [say,
vis-à-vis nuclear energy]), the
market response or the aggregation of individuals’ valuation through a set of available techniques (e.g., the contingent
substantially differ from what could be derived through collective deliberation and negotiation of various
stakeholders including the scientific community (see, e.g., Özkaynak, Adaman and Devine, 2012). This criticism applies not only to neoliberal
valuation) may
positions that favor the current unequal distribution of power but also to the Post-Walrasian one which although concerned with distributional issues keeps relying on
there is a growing theoretical and applied literature arguing that in
multicriteria methodology would seem better placed, as it will be possible to involve not only economic but also political,
moral, scientific and cultural inputs from a variety of stakeholders (see, e.g., Martinez-Alier, Munda and O’Neil, 1999; Munda, 2008). The key promise
of the multicriteria decision-making tool and other similar participatory and deliberatory dispositifs is that rather than finding a “solution” to a
conflictual decision, they shed light on the multifaceted dimensions of the problem at hand and thus facilitate the
consensus-building process from below (see, e.g., Adaman, 2012). In this regard, they constitute a formidable path to be explored as
an alternative to the surreptitiously normative neoliberal governmental dispositifs , designed by experts from above, under the
assumption that all actors are calculative and calculable. The current indiscriminate application of neoliberal policies
over the entire scope of the social field has brought about such political, economic, cultural and ecological devastation that any
type of reform suggestion along the line to halt this process is met with much welcoming by many of us—even if some of them are still
individualist ontologies of calculative and calculable agency. Indeed,
incommensurable cases, where all relevant aspects cannot be captured in a single dimension (such as those derived from monetary cost-benefit analyses), a
acting as if economic incentives are the only viable policy tool in town. Consider the case of carbon markets, for example, where the cap is decided either through a
scientific body or through aggregating individuals’ preferences. The fact of the matter is that, far from addressing the inefficiencies that emanate from opportunistic
and manipulative activities, these
mechanisms are vulnerable precisely because they end up soliciting manipulative,
predatory, and rent-seeking behavior (because they are designed to function under such behavioral assumptions in the first place). In other words, these
solutions subject a commons such as global climate into the economic logic of markets and “performatively” turn it into
an object of strategic-calculative logic (MacKenzie, Muniesa and Siu, 2007; Çalışkan and Callon, 2009; MacKenzie, 2009; Çalışkan and Callon,
2010; see also Spash, 2011). Consider, furthermore, the case of price-per-bag policies. Laboratory experiments and anthropological evidence both suggest that
charging a price for some activity that should in fact be treated as a duty or a commitment may well create perverse results (see, e.g., Campbell, 1998; Bowles and
Hwang, 2008). Monetizing the pollution-generating activity instead of limiting the use of plastic bags (along with an awareness program) may well result in an
increase of the unwanted activity. Similarly, while nationalization is the trend in areas of natural resource extraction and energy production, many continue to argue
for privatization and private-public partnerships instead. Nevertheless, the
problem with the private versus public dichotomy, given our reading
precisely that both forms, to the extent that they are informed by the different
variants of neoliberal reason, serve to isolate these critical areas from the deliberations and political demands of various stakeholders
and the general public, limiting the only channels for communication available to them to the price (or price-like)
mechanisms. However, perhaps most importantly, neither can be immune towards all sorts of rent-seeking activities that occur behind the close doors of
the technocracy that operates in the area where state shades into market in the various forms of dispositifs. Needless to say,
of the contemporary state as an agent of economization, is
economic activities that generate pollution and consume energy are not recent phenomena that are exclusive to what is now increasingly being called the neoliberal
era. If anything, postwar Keynesian developmentalism was possible precisely because of the availability of cheap oil, and is responsible for an enormous amount of
environmental pollution and ecological degradation (Mitchell, 2011). In this sense, it would be wrong to present neoliberal as being the only responsible mode of
the neoliberal reason (in its freepushing its agenda in an era where both of these crises are reaching catastrophic levels ,
and it is highly questionable whether neoliberal methods of handling the environmental pollution and the extraction crisis will
be capable of addressing long-term concerns.
governmentality for the dual crises of climate change and natural resource depletion. Yet, this does not change the fact that
market and mechanism-design variations) is
2NC Organs
Results in worldwide inequality – Organ ‘markets’ are rooted in exploitive structures that are a tool of domination
over the poor
Delmonico et al 3 [Francis L. Delmonico and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Francis L. Delmonico is Director of the
Renal Transplantation Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Director of Organs Watch
and Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley; “WHY WE SHOULD NOT
PAY FOR HUMAN ORGANS”; [Zygon, vol. 38, no. 3 (September 2003)]
Arguments against organ sales from live donors are difficult to defend in a ¶ secular and free-market-dominated society
such as ours, because they can not be referenced by a traditional Christian morality that holds as first ¶ premises the
integrity, value, "goodness"—indeed sacredness—of the body and the dignity of all human beings. Nonetheless, there are established ¶
societal norms that restrict the entry of the market into certain protected ¶ spheres of human life. For example, our society does not endorse
the selling of a person into slavery or the buying of children through black-market networks in international adoption, even if these are
defended in terms ¶ of rescue and life saving, as they often are. ¶ Even the high premium placed in U.S. society on personal autonomy is ¶ not
allowed to be the final arbiter of behavior if it can be shown that the ¶ social fabric of society would be threatened or weakened. A civil-rights ¶
law that restricts the rights of property owners to discriminate against races ¶ and classes of individuals seeking to rent or purchase a home is an
obvious ¶ case in point. Furthermore, our society still subscribes to a fundamental ¶ principle that all humans are created equal and that each
individual life has ¶ an intrinsic value, so that the person cannot be sold or physically dismantled ¶ or bartered away. ¶ Although class
distinctions are an almost naturalized part of social life ¶ in all complex societies, in this particular instance the
exploitation of organ sellers veers dangerously close to human slavery, as argued by Giovanni ¶ Berlinguer (Berlinguer and
pressures put by organ brokers¶ upon the desperation of the worlds dislocated, refugee, and poorest
¶ populations to provide the scarce commodities reveals the limits of arguments based solely on individual
autonomy. Yes, even the poorest people ¶ of the world "make choices," but they do not make these freely or under ¶ social or
economic conditions of their own making. Further, the pressure ¶ of organ brokers upon the poor makes their decision to sell an
organ any¶ thing but a free and autonomous choice . These secular arguments reach a ¶ conclusion similar to one derived from
Christian morality—that the sale ¶ of human organs is unethical. ¶ The most disturbing issue of organ sales to both Christian and secular
¶ ethicists is the formation of an economic underclass of organ donors ¶ throughout the world to serve the wealthy. This
is not to suggest that ¶ proponents of organ sales are in favor of exploiting the poor but, rather, ¶ that they are indifferent to the social and
individual pathologies that markets in kidneys and other body parts produce , such as the documented ¶ evidence of postsurgery
Garrafa 1996). The
medical complications, chronic pain, psychological problems, unemployment, decreased earning power, social ostracism, ¶ and social stigma
faced by kidney sellers in many parts of the world (see ¶ Zargooshi 2002; Jimenez and Scheper-Hughes 2002a; Ram 2002).¶ Proponents of
organ sales suggest that a distribution system regulated ¶ with government oversight would prevent these widely
known abuses from ¶ occurring, at least in the United States. However, the debate then moves ¶ to another arena for public policy makers
to consider. Would a system ¶ regulated by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) ¶ accomplish its objectives and become the
only route of organs for payment? This is doubtful in view of the futility of regulated control of donor ¶ payments
suggested by current practice elsewhere. The global market sets ¶ the value based on social, economic, and consumeroriented prejudices, ¶ such that in todays kidney market an Indian kidney fetches as little as ¶ $ 1,000, a Filipino kidney $ 1,300, a Moldovan
or Romanian kidney $2,700, ¶ while a Turkish seller can command up to $10,000 and an urban Peruvian ¶ as much as $30,000 (Scheper-Hughes
2002a, 73; 2002b). ¶ Brokering in the United States would likely be no different. If the current policy of prohibition
of organ sales was rescinded, there would be ¶ little justification, legally or ethically, to prevent donors from
circumventing the DHHS system and using the Internet to solicit a better price. A ¶ regulated system would either have to outlaw Internet
bidding and set a ¶ controlled price or would have to continuously modify the price to outbid ¶ Internet brokers and to keep up with emerging
kidney markets elsewhere.
Legalized organ sales is just the next step of neoliberal exploitation of the poor’s resources---the result is statesanctioned necropolitical violence
Ayan Kassim 13, University of Toronto, Terrains of Terror and Modern Apparatuses of Destruction:
Transplantation, Markets, and the Commoditized Kidney,
digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=auchs&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fq%3D%2522organ%2Bsale%2522%2Bcapi
talism%26btnG%3D%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%252C14#search=%22organ%20sale%20capitalism%22
In this particular formulation, coercion operates covertly. Although vendors seemingly go to the market by
‘choice’, dire economic constrains is the most important factor in why massive populations were now willing to
alienate a portion of them self to survive; this is what makes this particular market destructive. Resource extraction
from the Global South is not novel but an integral characteristic in industrial capitalism. If we are to put resource
depletion in historical context, one cannot forget the resounding legacies of environmental and human
depletion and exploitation through colonization and imperialism. 36 What marks the shift that materialized with the emergence of the black
the ‘surplus’ kidney, through an increasingly global system that facilitates this trade. Extracted is another
resource from the poor, mostly racialized, and destitute populations of the world . Though in order to execute the consumption of
market was the changing nature of resources extracted,
the kidney, there needed to be fixed structures in place to make trade possible.
New Trajectories: The Strange Career of the Illegal Kidney With legal strictures enacted in more and more countries to stifle the trade of kidneys for profit, its movement was limited. Yet
voracious demand and new incentives for sellers that were unleashed could not be suppressed. Driven by the complexities of transplantation and the clandestine fashion in which black markets
operate, a concomitant medical phenomena emerged to facilitate the movement of the kidney as a commodity transnationally. Transplant tourism, defined as “the purchase of a transplant organ
abroad that includes access to an organ while bypassing laws, rules, or processes of any or all countries involved”, 37 became the typical means of organ traffic. With transplantation now
operating in a transnational space, this appended market in the commercial traffic of living donors and their kidneys saw a tertiary element emerge that mediated exchange between sellers and
recipients: the body broker. 38 It suffices to say that a ‘broker’ need not be limited to just individuals: organized crime, doctors, medical technicians, border control, and even complicit state
bodies can all be considered brokers. Though here I focus on the individual, non-state or medical, broker. Characteristic of the vigor within the black market is how brokers, recipients, and sellers
can all find places to trade goods. Intermediaries need to coerce both sellers and buyers, in addition to cultivating vast networks with actors at both the national and international level to traverse
and usurp geopolitical and territorial boundaries of nation states,39 a phenomena very similar to the brokers that precipitate the traffic of whole persons (sex workers, migrant labourers) in
modern forms of slavery.40 If successful, the impunity in which these intermediaries operate with is unprecedented. This is part in parcel due to their detailed understanding of how the market
works, exploiting the high the stakes of survival for both sellers and buyers, and capitalizing on the lucrative nature of the trade; in some places body brokers can sell a kidney for up to 15-20
times what they pay, without the buyer and seller really knowing how much profit was up for grabs.41 In the context of the illegal kidney trade there is an important relationship between power
and sight; actors conferred with optimal visibility wield unprecedented power.42 The body broker is granted this power of ‘sight’ in their mediation of these high stake transactions.
spatial distance
between
seller and
recipient is
salient in precipitating the trade
Furthermore,
and division
a would-be
a would-be
just as
. In the
space of a five-star transplant hospital/hotel where all three ‘actors’ converge, the donor and recipient never meet.43 Kidney traffic hinges on division of both the body and of the space in which
No longer a ‘gift’, the commercialized kidney renders social relationships through exchange
irrelevant. With the division of space which renders donors anonymous, there can be mindful distance of the
recipient taking one’s kidney for their own use; this mindful distance is bolstered by the act of monetary
compensation to the seller as well as keeps the broker relevant.
the body is fragmented.
New Policy: The Iranian Model and the Dangers of Precedent As the growing realities of the black market surfaced, medical experts and scholars began arguing that a legal, regulated market in
Transparency, by eliminating shadowy brokers, and the hope of alleviating the ‘shortage’ of kidneys
realities of the black market. But was that the case? Iran, the only
country in the world that has implemented a state regulated legal trade in kidneys is then an important site of
investigation.
kidneys would provide the strictures needed to properly facilitate an equitable trade.
by allowing the choice of would-be sellers to sell legally, seemed a better option than the current
The Islamic Republic of Iran sanctioned its legal trade in kidneys as a response to the high rates of renal disease, scarce and expensive materials for dialysis, and growing income disparity
amongst classes; its first organs bank appeared in 1998.44 In this system, kidneys are procured from three sources: living related donors (LRD), living unrelated donors (LUD), and cadaveric
donors (CD), yet the consistent kind of donor is the LUD.45 Compensation for living related and unrelated donors is critical in precipitating this procurement system yet kidneys from cadaveric
donors (i.e, families of the loved one) are not compensated by the government.46 This poses a problem. With compensation only being offered to living donor populations, cadaveric donation
systems are undermined. In addition, although financial incentives are offered for those family members who decide to give their kidney to a loved one, why put a loved one at risk of invasive
surgery if you can simply receive a kidney from a donor in which you have no social ties to? This state implemented organ procurement strategy legitimates the hierarchization and fetishization
of the LUD kidney.
Further, Iran merits special international attention as it was recently said that their waiting list for kidneys has been eliminated. Widely read media outlets like The Economist published stories in
2006 on the country’s innovation and logical system to procure kidneys,47 citing Dr. Ahad J. Ghods 2002 study in which he claimed Iran elimination of their waiting lists through a government
facilitated trade should be applied in the US.48 Although praised by many as being in the vanguard of eliminating the suffering of those in the throes of renal disease, while ‘adequately’
new scholarship detailed that this idyllic situation may not the reality on the ground. Anne Griffin
recently detailed the dubious parameters in the criteria used to define the waiting list as ‘eliminated’ in Ghods’s study.
Griffin described that poor patients, who largely have to wait for cadaveric donation, since they cannot afford to
compensate LRD or LUD’s, were still waiting on kidney transplants; the wait was only over for those with fiscal
means.49 In addition, the market solution to the growing problem of income disparity between classes in Iran is troubling. If the waiting list is indeed eliminated, it is indicative of the
desperation in which people are willing to sell their kidneys for compensation. In Iran, supply far outpaces demand in which has spurred fierce
competition amongst would-be donors, with sellers willing to drive down the price of their kidney to seem more
marketable to would-be recipients, has become remarkably common.50
Employing Mbembe’s concept of necropower , the means in which the sovereign employs the destruction of certain populations
51, suffices immensely in this context ; here state sanctioned violence against its largely impoverished subjects is
legitimated through state policy. Although the intentions of facilitating this trade was meant to help both donor
and recipients, studies of kidney vendors in Iran demonstrated that vendors typically never see their profits make
any real impact on their lives. 52 This state authorized destruction, by integrating and ultimately justifying this
systematic violence and fragmentation of bodies via kidney transplantation, is extremely problematic and irresponsible, particularly
compensating donors,
since there remains a lack of longitudinal studies of the psychological and social impacts of nephrectomy on sellers. Further, the precedent that the Iranian model set internationally has
subsequently given traction to those echoing the need of a legal market for kidneys, and organs more generally, to keep up with the ‘shortages’.
New Debate The shifting paradigms within the life sciences that markedly informed new modes of seeing and understandings of the body directly impacted discourse surrounding the
legal/illegal, regulated/ unregulated market in kidneys in both the scholarly and public realm.53 The sale of humans is largely considered morally abhorrent and illegal, but the notion of
legalizing the sale of organs quickly gained momentum in medical communities. As Scheper-Hughes details, publications in prominent medical journals like The Lancet and the Journal of the
American Medical Association saw more experts arguing for a market in kidneys over the years.54 Why? Again, transplantations ability to literally fragment the body, transforming its old
meanings and ascribing it new ones, has made this exchange palatable and less morally repugnant to more and more people in realms such as economics, bioethics, and the transplant community.
Further, as Moniruzzaman articulates, “with vested interests, the neoliberal market economy turns many medical specialists into a “three-in-one man” (a businessman, politician, and doctor).”55
Mostly, proponents argue that incentives for kidney procurement are needed in order to solicit more kidneys. It is argued that this form of sale should no longer be perceived as repugnant. The
repugnance has now shifted to the “sad reality of patients dying and suffering while waiting for a kidney” which is considered unnecessary.56 Most interestingly in this debate was the reluctant
surrender of Robert Veatch, a medical ethicist, former anti-market stance to procure kidneys. In arguing that liberals should now become proponents of the market solution to renal failure,
Veatch’s details that his perspective shifted as the growing failures of social policy in the US drastically increased stratification of economic classes.57 Because of this failure, Veatch believes the
opportunity to sell one’s kidney to become a visible economic actor should no longer be illegal, since social policy will never be equitable.
Disturbing is this advocacy of prominent experts who have clout in (re)formulating policy. Especially in the wake of publicat ions from medical and ethnographic studies of kidney
vendors in India 58, Bangladesh 59, Iran 60, and Moldova, 61 variations of the same story were told: selling a kidney never
made any significant impact on donor’s economic lives, despite what many economists, bioethicists, and medical
professionals claim. What vendors did experience were lost wages, from the post-operative pain and sickness many
vendors felt, feelings of deep regret, and societal expulsion in some grave cases.62 Thus, to promote the dismemberment of the
economic underclass as a means of being economically ‘visible’ is both ethically and morally irresponsible. Moreover,
These
gaps perpetuate idyllic understandings of the grim realities of post-transplantation success. Realities of the long term
impact and costs of anti-rejection medication and bleak survival rates from when the kidney is purchased and
transplanted is remarkably understated .64
rarely mentioned in literature advocating legalized markets (regulated and unregulated) are the risks of nephrectomy to donors or strategies focused on prevention of renal disease.63
Structural violence outweighs – kills more people
Gilligan 96 (James, Faculty – Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes, p. 191196)
You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcibly
and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterize their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families
and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by
without realizing that trying to understand them and their virulent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any
theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the
criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence of our
society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of
violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence of this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we
define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a
numerical or public health, or human, standpoint By “structural violence” I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who
occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess
deaths (or at least a demonstratably large portion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s
collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting
“structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of
individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural
violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously rather than
sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. Structural violence
operates more or less independently of individual acs; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose
decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may appear to have had other
(natural or violent) causes. Neither the existence, the scope and extent, nor the lethal power of structural violence can be discerned until we shift
our focus from a clinical or psychological perspective, which looks at one individual at a time, to the epidemiological perspective of public health
and preventative medicine. Examples are all around us. [Continues – Page 195] The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence
compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency
of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including
those caused by genocide---or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000 deaths), the
Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it
was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other words, every
fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that
caused 232 deaths, and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi
genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating,
thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetuated on the week and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural
violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide
to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or behavioral—is more important,
dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.
The system kills agency and value to life
Giroux 11 (Henry A. Giroux English and Cultural Studies Department, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada,
2011 "Neoliberalism and the death of the social state: remembering Walter Benjamin's Angel of History," Social
Identities, Vol. 17, No. 4, July 2011, 587-601)
As history is erased and economics becomes the driving force for all aspects of political, cultural, and social life, those
institutional and political forces that hold the reins of power now become the purveyors of social death , comfortably
ensconced in a political imaginary that wreaks human misery on the planet as the rich and powerful reap huge
financial gains for themselves. The principal players of casino capitalism live in the highly circumscribed time of short-term investments and
financial gains and are more than willing to close their eyes to the carnage and suffering all around them while they are sucked into the black hole
of the future. As the social state is eviscerated by an all-embracing market fundamentalism, society increasingly
becomes a machine for destroying the power of civic culture and civic life, proliferating the ideologies and technologies of
what is increasingly and unequivocally becoming a punishing state. And, quoting Achille Mbembe (2003), politics
social death in which 'the future is collapsed into the present' (p. 37).
becomes a form of
2NC Alt’
-- Prior question – our role as students in this debate room can provide a locus to challenge systems of neoliberalism
– each instance of resistance is key break apart neoliberal pedagogy and revitalize the global public sphere.
Giroux 5 (Henry A. – Global Television Network Chair, Professor at McMaster University, “The Terror of
Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics”, Winter 2005, JSTOR)
Just as the world has seen a more virulent and brutal form of market capitalism, generally referred to as neoliberalism,
develop over the last thir ty years, it has also seen "a new wave of political activism [which] has coalesced around the
simple idea that capitalism has gone too far" (Harding 2001, para.28). Wedded to the belief that the market should be the organiz ing
principle for all political, social, and economic decisions, neoliberalism wages an incessant attack on democracy, public goods,
and non-commodified values. Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit. Public lands are looted by
logging companies and corporate ranch ers; politicians willingly hand the public's airwaves over to powerful broad casters and
large corporate interests without a dime going into the public trust; Halliburton gives war profiteering a new meaning as it is granted cor
porate contracts without any competitive bidding and then bills the U.S. government for millions; the environment is polluted and
despoiled in the name of profit-making just as the government passes legislation to make it easier for corporations to do so; public
services are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major corporations ; schools more closely resemble either malls or jails, and
teachers, forced to get revenue for their school by adopting mar ket values, increasingly function as circus barkers hawking everything from
hamburgers to pizza parties?that is, when they are not reduced to prepping students to take standardized tests. As markets are touted as the
driving force of everyday life, big government is disparaged as either incompetent or threatening to individual freedom, suggesting that power
should reside in markets and corporations rather than in governments (except for their sup port for corporate interests and national security) and
citizens. Citizenship has increasingly become a function of consumerism and politics has been restructured as
"corporations have been increasingly freed from social control through deregulation, privatization, and other neoliberal measures"
(Tabb 2003, 153). Corporations more and more design not only the economic sphere but also shape legislation and policy affecting all levels of
government, and with limited opposition. As corporate power lays siege to the political process, the benefits flow to the rich and the powerful.
Included in such benefits are reform policies that shift the burden of taxes from the rich to the middle class, the working poor, and state
governments as can be seen in the shift from taxes on wealth (capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes) to a tax on work, principally in the form
of a regressive payroll tax (Collins, Hartman, Kraut, and Mota 2004). During the 2002-2004 fiscal years, tax cuts delivered $197.3 billion in tax
breaks to the wealthiest 1% of Americans (i.e., house Thisholds making more than $337,000 a year) while state governments increased taxes to
fill a $200 billion budget deficit (Gonsalves 2004). Equally alarm ing, a recent Congressional study revealed that 63% of all corporations in 2000
paid no taxes while "[s]ix in ten corporations reported no tax liabili ty for the five years from 1996 through 2000, even though corporate prof its
were growing at record-breaking levels during that period" (Woodard 2004, para. 11). Fortunately, the corporate capitalist fairytale of
neoliberalism has been challenged all over the globe by students , labor organizers, intellectuals, com munity
activists , and a host of individuals and groups unwilling to allow democracy to be bought and sold by multinational
corporations, corporate swindlers, international political institutions, and those government politicians who willingly align themselves with
multinational, corporate interests and rapacious profits. From Seattle to Genoa, people engaged in popular resistance are collectively
taking up the challenge of neoliberalism and reviving both the meaning of resistance and the sites where it takes
place . Political culture is now global and resistance is amorphous, connecting students with workers,
schoolteachers with parents, and intellectuals with artists. Groups protesting the attack on farmers in India whose land is being
destroyed by the government in order to build dams now find themselves in alliance with young people resisting sweatshop labor in New York
City. Environmental activists are joining up with key sections of organized labor as well as groups protesting Third World debt. The collapse
of the neoliberal showcase, Argentina, along with numerous corporate bankruptcies and scandals (notably including Enron), reveals
the cracks in neoliberal hegemony and domination . In addition, the multiple forms of resistance against neoliberal
capitalism are not limited by a version of identity politics focused exclusively on particularized rights and interests.
On the contrary, identity politics is affirmed within a broader crisis of political culture and democracy that connects
the militarization of public life with the collapse of the welfare state and the attack on civil liberties. Central to these
new movements is the notion that neoliberalism has to be understood within a larger crisis of vision, meaning, education, and political agency.
Democracy in this view is not limited to the struggle over economic resources and power; indeed, it also includes the
creation of public spheres where individuals can be educated as political agents equipped with the skills,
capacities, and knowledge they need to perform as autonomous political agents . I want to expand the reaches of this debate
by arguing that any struggle against neoliberalism must address the discourse of political agency, civic education, and
cultural politics(the ongoing struggle for a substantive and inclusive democracy) and the global public sphere . We live at a time when
the conflation of private interests, empire build ing, and evangelical fundamentalism brings into question the very nature, if not
the existence, of the democratic process. Under the reign of neoliberalism, capital and wealth have been largely
distributed upwards, while civic virtue has been undermined by a slavish celebration of the free market as the model for organizing all facets of everyday
life (Henwood 2003). Political culture has been increasingly depoliticized as collective life is organized around the modalities of privatization, deregulation, and commercialization. When the
alleged champions of neoliberalism invoke politics, they substitute "ideological certainty for reasonable doubt," and deplete "the national reserves of political intelligence" just as they endorse
"the illusion that the future can be bought instead of earned" (Lapham 2004a, 9,11). Under attack is the social contract with its emphasis on enlarging the public good and expanding social
provisions?such as access to adequate health care, housing, employment, public transportation, and education? which provided both a safety net and a set of conditions upon which democracy
could be experi enced and critical citizenship engaged. Politics has been further depoliticized by a policy of anti-terrorism practiced by the Bush administration that mim ics the very terrorism it
wishes to eliminate. Not only does a policy of all embracing anti-terrorism exhausts itself in a discourse of moral absolutes and public acts of denunciation that remove politics from the realm of
state power, it also strips community of democratic values by defining it almost exclusively through attempts to stamp out what Michael Leeden, a former counter-terror expert in the Reagan
administration, calls "corrupt habits of mind that are still lingering around, somewhere"(qtd. in Valentine 2001, para.33). The appeal to moral absolutes and the constant mobilization of
emergency time coded as a culture of fear configures politics in religious terms, hiding its entanglement with particular ideologies and diverse rela tions of power. Politics becomes empt y as it is
reduced to following orders, shaming those who make power accountable, and shutting down legitimate modes of dissent (Giroux 2004).
1NR – Case, DA
K
Prior question – our role as students in this debate room can provide a locus to challenge systems of neoliberalism –
each instance of resistance is key break apart neoliberal pedagogy and revitalize the global public sphere.
Giroux 5 (Henry A. – Global Television Network Chair, Professor at McMaster University, “The Terror of
Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics”, Winter 2005, JSTOR)
Just as the world has seen a more virulent and brutal form of market capitalism, generally referred to as neoliberalism,
develop over the last thir ty years, it has also seen "a new wave of political activism [which] has coalesced around the
simple idea that capitalism has gone too far" (Harding 2001, para.28). Wedded to the belief that the market should be the organiz ing
principle for all political, social, and economic decisions, neoliberalism wages an incessant attack on democracy, public goods,
and non-commodified values. Under neoliberalism everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit. Public lands are looted by
logging companies and corporate ranch ers; politicians willingly hand the public's airwaves over to powerful broad casters and
large corporate interests without a dime going into the public trust; Halliburton gives war profiteering a new meaning as it is granted cor
porate contracts without any competitive bidding and then bills the U.S. government for millions; the environment is polluted and
despoiled in the name of profit-making just as the government passes legislation to make it easier for corporations to do so; public
services are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major corporations ; schools more closely resemble either malls or jails, and
teachers, forced to get revenue for their school by adopting mar ket values, increasingly function as circus barkers hawking everything from
hamburgers to pizza parties?that is, when they are not reduced to prepping students to take standardized tests. As markets are touted as the
driving force of everyday life, big government is disparaged as either incompetent or threatening to individual freedom, suggesting that power
should reside in markets and corporations rather than in governments (except for their sup port for corporate interests and national security) and
citizens. Citizenship has increasingly become a function of consumerism and politics has been restructured as
"corporations have been increasingly freed from social control through deregulation, privatization, and other neoliberal measures"
(Tabb 2003, 153). Corporations more and more design not only the economic sphere but also shape legislation and policy affecting all levels of
government, and with limited opposition. As corporate power lays siege to the political process, the benefits flow to the rich and the powerful.
Included in such benefits are reform policies that shift the burden of taxes from the rich to the middle class, the working poor, and state
governments as can be seen in the shift from taxes on wealth (capital gains, dividends, and estate taxes) to a tax on work, principally in the form
of a regressive payroll tax (Collins, Hartman, Kraut, and Mota 2004). During the 2002-2004 fiscal years, tax cuts delivered $197.3 billion in tax
breaks to the wealthiest 1% of Americans (i.e., house Thisholds making more than $337,000 a year) while state governments increased taxes to
fill a $200 billion budget deficit (Gonsalves 2004). Equally alarm ing, a recent Congressional study revealed that 63% of all corporations in 2000
paid no taxes while "[s]ix in ten corporations reported no tax liabili ty for the five years from 1996 through 2000, even though corporate prof its
were growing at record-breaking levels during that period" (Woodard 2004, para. 11). Fortunately, the corporate capitalist fairytale of
neoliberalism has been challenged all over the globe by students , labor organizers, intellectuals, com munity
activists , and a host of individuals and groups unwilling to allow democracy to be bought and sold by multinational
corporations, corporate swindlers, international political institutions, and those government politicians who willingly align themselves with
multinational, corporate interests and rapacious profits. From Seattle to Genoa, people engaged in popular resistance are collectively
taking up the challenge of neoliberalism and reviving both the meaning of resistance and the sites where it takes
place . Political culture is now global and resistance is amorphous, connecting students with workers,
schoolteachers with parents, and intellectuals with artists. Groups protesting the attack on farmers in India whose land is being
destroyed by the government in order to build dams now find themselves in alliance with young people resisting sweatshop labor in New York
City. Environmental activists are joining up with key sections of organized labor as well as groups protesting Third World debt. The collapse
of the neoliberal showcase, Argentina, along with numerous corporate bankruptcies and scandals (notably including Enron), reveals
the cracks in neoliberal hegemony and domination . In addition, the multiple forms of resistance against neoliberal
capitalism are not limited by a version of identity politics focused exclusively on particularized rights and interests.
On the contrary, identity politics is affirmed within a broader crisis of political culture and democracy that connects
the militarization of public life with the collapse of the welfare state and the attack on civil liberties. Central to these
new movements is the notion that neoliberalism has to be understood within a larger crisis of vision, meaning, education, and political agency.
Democracy in this view is not limited to the struggle over economic resources and power; indeed, it also includes the
creation of public spheres where individuals can be educated as political agents equipped with the skills,
capacities, and knowledge they need to perform as autonomous political agents . I want to expand the reaches of this debate
by arguing that any struggle against neoliberalism must address the discourse of political agency, civic education, and
cultural politics(the ongoing struggle for a substantive and inclusive democracy) and the global public sphere . We live at a time when
the conflation of private interests, empire build ing, and evangelical fundamentalism brings into question the very nature, if not
the existence, of the democratic process. Under the reign of neoliberalism, capital and wealth have been largely
distributed upwards, while civic virtue has been undermined by a slavish celebration of the free market as the model for organizing all facets of everyday
life (Henwood 2003). Political culture has been increasingly depoliticized as collective life is organized around the modalities of privatization, deregulation, and commercialization. When the
alleged champions of neoliberalism invoke politics, they substitute "ideological certainty for reasonable doubt," and deplete "the national reserves of political intelligence" just as they endorse
"the illusion that the future can be bought instead of earned" (Lapham 2004a, 9,11). Under attack is the social contract with its emphasis on enlarging the public good and expanding social
provisions?such as access to adequate health care, housing, employment, public transportation, and education? which provided both a safety net and a set of conditions upon which democracy
could be experi enced and critical citizenship engaged. Politics has been further depoliticized by a policy of anti-terrorism practiced by the Bush administration that mim ics the very terrorism it
wishes to eliminate. Not only does a policy of all embracing anti-terrorism exhausts itself in a discourse of moral absolutes and public acts of denunciation that remove politics from the realm of
state power, it also strips community of democratic values by defining it almost exclusively through attempts to stamp out what Michael Leeden, a former counter-terror expert in the Reagan
administration, calls "corrupt habits of mind that are still lingering around, somewhere"(qtd. in Valentine 2001, para.33). The appeal to moral absolutes and the constant mobilization of
emergency time coded as a culture of fear configures politics in religious terms, hiding its entanglement with particular ideologies and diverse rela tions of power. Politics becomes empty as it is
reduced to following orders, shaming those who make power accountable, and shutting down legitimate modes of dissent (Giroux 2004).
AT Probability First
Low probability scenarios still important
Mahnken and Junio 13 – (2013, Thomas, PhD, Jerome E. Levy Chair of Economic Geography and National
Security at the U.S. Naval War College and a Visiting Scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at
The Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and Timothy, Predoctoral
Fellow, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, PhD in Political Science expected
2013, “Conceiving of Future War: The Promise of Scenario Analysis for International Relations,” International
Studies Review Volume 15, Issue 3, pages 374–395, September 2013)
This article introduces political scientists to scenarios—future counterfactuals—and demonstrates their value in tandem with
other methodologies and across a wide range of research questions. The authors describe best practices regarding the scenario
method and argue that scenarios contribute to theory building and development, identifying new hypotheses, analyzing
data-poor research topics, articulating “world views,” setting new research agendas, avoiding cognitive biases, and
teaching. The article also establishes the low rate at which scenarios are used in the international relations subfield and situates scenarios in the
broader context of political science methods. The conclusion offers two detailed examples of the effective use of scenarios. In his classic work on
scenario analysis, The Art of the Long View, Peter Schwartz commented that “social scientists often have a hard time
[building scenarios]; they have been trained to stay away from ‘what if?’ questions and concentrate on ‘what was?’”
(Schwartz 1996:31). While Schwartz's comments were impressionistic based on his years of conducting and teaching scenario analysis, his claim
withstands empirical scrutiny. Scenarios—counterfactual narratives about the future—are woefully underutilized
among political scientists. The method is almost never taught on graduate student syllabi, and a survey of leading international
relations (IR) journals indicates that scenarios were used in only 302 of 18,764 sampled articles. The low rate at which political
scientists use scenarios—less than 2% of the time—is surprising; the method is popular in fields as disparate as business,
demographics, ecology, pharmacology, public health, economics, and epidemiology (Venable, Li, Ginter, and Duncan 1993;
Leufkens, Haaijer-Ruskamp, Bakker, and Dukes 1994; Baker, Hulse, Gregory, White, Van Sickle, Berger, Dole, and Schumaker 2004;
Sanderson, Scherbov, O'Neill, and Lutz 2004). Scenarios also are a common tool employed by the policymakers whom
political scientists study. This article seeks to elevate the status of scenarios in political science by demonstrating their
usefulness for theory building and pedagogy . Rather than constitute mere speculation regarding an unpredictable
future, as critics might suggest, scenarios assist scholars with developing testable hypotheses, gathering data, and
identifying a theory's upper and lower bounds. Additionally, scenarios are an effective way to teach students to apply
theory to policy . In the pages below, a “best practices” guide is offered to advise scholars, practitioners, and students, and an argument is
developed in favor of the use of scenarios. The article concludes with two examples of how political scientists have invoked the scenario method
to improve the specifications of their theories, propose falsifiable hypotheses, and design new empirical research programs. Scenarios in the
Discipline What do counterfactual narratives about the future look like? Scenarios may range in length from a few
sentences to many pages. One of the most common uses of the scenario method, which will be referenced throughout this article, is to
study the conditions under which high-consequence, low-probability events may occur. Perhaps the best example
of this is nuclear warfare , a circumstance that has never resulted, but has captivated generations of political scientists. For an introductory
illustration, let us consider a very simple scenario regarding how a first use of a nuclear weapon might occur: During the year
2023, the US military is ordered to launch air and sea patrols of the Taiwan Strait to aid in a crisis. These highly visible patrols disrupt trade off
China's coast, and result in skyrocketing insurance rates for shipping companies. Several days into the contingency, which involves over ten
thousand US military personnel, an intelligence estimate concludes that a Chinese conventional strike against US air patrols and naval assets is
imminent. The United States conducts a preemptive strike against anti-air and anti-sea systems on the Chinese mainland. The US strike is far
more successful than Chinese military leaders thought possible; a new source of intelligence to the United States—unknown to Chinese
leadership—allowed the US military to severely degrade Chinese targeting and situational awareness capabilities. Many of the weapons that
China relied on to dissuade escalatory US military action are now reduced to single-digit-percentage readiness. Estimates for repairs and
replenishments are stated in terms of weeks, and China's confidence in readily available, but “dumber,” weapons is low due to the dispersion and
mobility of US forces. Word of the successful US strike spreads among the Chinese and Taiwanese publics. The Chinese Government concludes
that for the sake of preserving its domestic strength, and to signal resolve to the US and Taiwanese Governments while minimizing further
economic disruption, it should escalate dramatically with the use of an extremely small-yield nuclear device against a stationary US military asset
in the Pacific region. This short story reflects a future event that, while unlikely to occur and far too vague to be used for
military planning, contains many dimensions of political science theory. These include the following: what leaders
perceive as “limited,” “proportional,” or “escalatory” uses of force; the importance of private information about capabilities and
commitment; audience costs in international politics; the relationship between military expediency and political objectives
during war; and the role of compressed timelines for decision making , among others. The purpose of this article is to explain to
scholars how such
stories , and more rigorously developed narratives that specify variables of interest and draw on extant data, may
improve the study of IR . An important starting point is to explain how future counterfactuals fit into the methodological canon of the
discipline.
Magnitude first---normal statistical estimates of probability break down for catastrophic risks because we can’t
afford to be wrong even once---arguments about uncertain probability just prove that a precautionary approach is
key
Mark Jablonowski 10, Lecturer in Economics at the University of Hartford, “Implications of Fuzziness for the
Practical Management of High-Stakes Risks,” International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems, Vol.3,
No. 1 (April, 2010), 1-7,
“Danger” is an inherently fuzzy concept. Considerable knowledge imperfections surround both the probability of
high-stakes exposures, and the assessment of their acceptability. This is due to the complex and dynamic nature of risk in the
modern world. ¶ Fuzzy thresholds for danger are most effectively established based on natural risk standards. This
means that risk levels are acceptable only to the degree they blend with natural background levels . This concept reflects an
evolutionary process that has supported life on this planet for thousands of years. By adhering to these levels, we can help assure ourselves of
thousands more. While the level of such risks is yet to be determined, observation suggest that the degree of human-
made risk we routinely subject ourselves to is several orders of magnitude higher. ¶ Due to the fuzzy nature of
risk, we can not rely on statistical techniques. The fundamental problem with catastrophe remains, in the long
run, there may be no long run . That is, we can not rely on results “averaging out” over time. With such risks, only
precautionary avoidance (based on the minimax’ing of the largest possible loss ) makes sense. Combined with
reasonable natural thresholds, this view allows a very workable approach to achieving safe progress.
1NR – DA
DA Outweighs and turns the case – US failure to lead in global public health area destroys US credibility in the
international forum because we would directly contradict international agreements and WTO protocols – our Reiss
and Friedburg evidence indicates that leadership is key
why should Americans care if the U
S
is liked or not?
But first, there is another question to be answered:
nited tates
After all, foreign policy is not a popularity
contest. Policies that are controversial today may look better in a few years. Perhaps America's unpopularity is just the price that must be paid for being the world's most powerful country. Yet
Americans do care, and their desire to be respected by the world has been reflected in the campaign rhetoric of both McCain and Obama. This desire extends beyond the normal, near-universal
human wish to be liked, or at least not misunderstood or hated. Americans still believe in John Winthrop's description of America as a 'shining city on the hill' and want others to view the United
there is another, larger reason for caring about the rise of anti- Americanism, one that is related to the U nited
S tates' status as the world's only superpower. No one country can defeat today's transnational threats on its own. Terrorism,
infectious disease, environmental pollution, w eapons of m ass d estruction, narcotics and human trafficking - all these can only
be solved by states acting together. If others mistrust the U nited S tates or actively work against it, building effective coalitions and
promoting a liberal international order that benefits both Americans and hundreds of millions of other people around the world will be far more challenging. Ultimately, if
the U nited S tates has to go it alone or bear most of the costs while others are seen as free riders, the American people are unlikely to sustain
engagement with the world with the same intensity, or even at all. The history of the last century demonstrates that when the U nited S tates retreats from the
world, bad things happen. The United States rejected the League of Nations and turned inwards in the 19 20s and 1930s, contributing to the Great
Depression and the onset of the Second World War. After the Vietnam War, a weakened and inward-looking America prompted some Asian
countries to start their own nuclear-weapons programmes, emboldened Islamic fundamentalists to attack American interests, and
States that way as well. But
encouraged the Soviet Union to occupy Afghanistan. While there are some who say this couldn't happen today, that America couldn't pull up the drawbridge and retreat behind the parapets,
It is hard to imagine any scenario in which
an isolated, disengaged U nited S tates would be a better friend and ally to other countries, better promote global prosperity, more forcefully
endorse democracy, social justice and human dignity, or do more to enhance peace and security.
recent opinion polls in the United States reveal a preference for isolationism not seen since the end of the Vietnam War.
Extinction inevitable without strong multilateral cooperation
Dyer 4 (Gwynne, Ph.D. in War Studies – University of London and Board of Governors – Canada’s Royal Military
College, “The End of War”, Toronto Star, 12-30, Lexis)
War is deeply embedded in our history and our culture, probably since before we were even fully human, but
weaning ourselves away from it should not be a bigger mountain to climb than some of the other changes we have
already made in the way we live, given the right incentives. And we have certainly been given the right incentives:
The holiday from history that we have enjoyed since the early '90s may be drawing to an end, and another greatpower war, fought next time with nuclear weapons, may be lurking in our future.. The "firebreak" against nuclear
weapons use that we began building after Hiroshima and Nagasaki has held for well over half a century now. But
the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new powers is a major challenge to the stability of the system. So are
the coming crises, mostly environmental in origin, which will hit some countries much harder than others, and
may drive some to desperation. Add in the huge impending shifts in the great-power system as China and India
grow to rival the United States in GDP over the next 30 or 40 years and it will be hard to keep things from
spinning out of control. With good luck and good management, we may be able to ride out the next half-century
without the first-magnitude catastrophe of a global nuclear war, but the potential certainly exists for a major
die-back of human population. We cannot command the good luck, but good management is something we can
choose to provide. It depends, above all, on preserving and extending the multilateral system that we have been
building since the end of World War II. The rising powers must be absorbed into a system that emphasizes cooperation and makes room for them, rather than one that deals in confrontation and raw military power. If they
are obliged to play the traditional great-power game of winners and losers, then history will repeat itself and
everybody loses. Our hopes for mitigating the severity of the coming environmental crises also depend on early
and concerted global action of a sort that can only happen in a basically co-operative international system.
When the great powers are locked into a military confrontation, there is simply not enough spare attention, let
alone enough trust, to make deals on those issues, so the highest priority at the moment is to keep the
multilateral approach alive and avoid a drift back into alliance systems and arms races. And there is no point in
dreaming that we can leap straight into some never-land of universal brotherhood; we will have to confront these
challenges and solve the problem of war within the context of the existing state system.
2NC Link Wall
The aff flouts international consensus against organ sales – that’s 1NC Francis and Francis – makes it look like
we’re softening our stance against trafficking
resoundingly condemning the commercial sale of organs
In the United States, the National Organ Transplant Act
forbids any sale of organs
In some of the countries that have notoriously been centers of organ trafficking, recent bans have been enacted. Egypt
Pakistan’s
Japan
China
Philippines
The aff picks a massive global fight
Berr, 11 – award-winning business journalist (Jonathan, 4/12. “Buying A $100,000 Kidney: A Story of Supply and
Demand.” http://247wallst.com/healthcare-economy/2011/04/12/buying-a-100000-kidney-a-story-of-supply-anddemand/#ixzz3DKNVUtMD)
According to a joint 2009 report from the United Nations and the European Union, 5 to 10% of kidney transplants of
the 65,000 or so kidney transplants are trafficked. Demand for the organ far outstrips supply throughout the world.
The sale of organs is prohibited in most countries including the United States. One notable exception is Iran. Arthur
Caplan, a leading bioethicist, tells 24/7 Wall St. that paying for organs should remain illegal for a host of legal and
ethical reasons. First of all, the U.S. would lose the moral high ground and pick a fight with the world’s major
religions which all oppose the practice. “If you create market here you are going to have a black market flourish
around the world,” says Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, in an
interview. “In America, people aren’t going to sell their organs for small amounts of money…….You are really
going to take advantage of the poorest of the poor.”
The aff flies in the face of every international agreement and declaration on organ transplants
Biller-Adorno and Alpinar, 13 – Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics, University of Zurich, Switzerland;
and PhD student in the Network Human Dignity, University of Zurich (Nikola and Zumrut, August. “Organ
Trafficking and Transplant Tourism.” Handbook of Global Bioethics, pp. 771-783.
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-2512-6_122)
The policy issued by international bodies has always taken a prohibitive stance on organ selling. The prohibition
was frequently formulated as a brief, matter-of-fact statement, without any further qualification. The Council of
Europe Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (1997), for instance, in Chapter VII, Art. 21 stated: “The
human body and its parts shall not, as such, give rise to financial gain.” In more recent times, however, this
prevailing consensus on the obvious moral wrongness of organ selling was challenged from two sides. One form of
criticism came from those who did not question the prohibition of organ selling as prudent policy but were unhappy
with its justification. A categorical prohibition of organ selling based on Kantian arguments, it was argued, could not
claim to be universally accepted, particularly not in a pluralist global context. Others considered the policy in itself
flawed and lobbied for liberalization, allowing the possibility of regulated markets. In reaction to these charges,
policies were revisited, leading in some cases to a more refined justification, yet the prohibition of organ selling
remained untouched. In the following, an overview of current international policy will be provided. Current
International Policy In May 2010, the 63rd World Health Assembly endorsed the WHO Guiding Principles on
Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation. At the same time, it urged Member States “to promote the
development of systems for the altruistic voluntary non-remunerated donation of cells, tissues and organs” and “to
oppose the seeking of financial gain or comparable advantage in transactions involving human body parts, organ
trafficking and transplant tourism” (WHO, 63rd World Health Assembly WHA63.22, 2010). The Guiding Principles
address a number of ethical issues of transplantation, among them consent requirements, donation from minors and
legally incompetent persons, and the allocation of organs, cells, and tissues. Guiding Principle 5 deals with organ
selling: “Cells, tissues and organs should only be donated freely, without any monetary payment or other reward of
monetary value. Purchasing, or offering to purchase, cells, tissues or organs for transplantation, or their sale by
living persons or by the next of kin for deceased persons, should be banned.” Further, it specifies: “The prohibition
on sale or purchase of cells, tissues and organs does not preclude reimbursing reasonable and verifiable expenses
incurred by the donor, including loss of income, or paying the costs of recovering, processing, preserving and
supplying human cells, tissues or organs for transplantation.” (WHO, 2010, Guiding Principle 5). The Commentary
on Guiding Principle 5 explains the rationale for the prohibition: “Payment for cells, tissues and organs is likely to
take unfair advantage of the poorest and most vulnerable groups, undermines altruistic donation, and leads to
profiteering and human trafficking. Such payment conveys the idea that some persons lack dignity, that they are
mere objects to be used by others.” The justification thus moves away from categorical claims but refers to the
(likely) possibility of exploitation that payment schemes would undeniably bring with them. It also questions the
coexistence of altruistic and paid donation and points to the mutual recognition as individuals of equal moral status
as a basis of modern societies, which might be put at risk if organ selling was a widely accepted legal option. In a
similar vein, the Medical Association Statement on Human Organ Donation and Transplantation (WMA, 2000,
2006) states: “Financial incentives for providing or obtaining organs for transplantation can be coercive and should
be prohibited.” Again, there is no claim that payment for organs has to be coercive under all circumstances, but the
probability of this occurring, especially in a globalized world, suffices to justify a cautious policy. Implementation
Although clear international guidance provides valuable orientation on normative issues, implementation is
frequently a challenge. Like the World Health Organization, UNESCO encourages states in its Declaration on
Bioethics and Human Rights to “take appropriate measures, both at the national and international levels, to combat
(…) illicit traffic in organs” (UNESCO, 2005, Art 21(5)). Beyond the commitment of states, professional societies
play a crucial role in the promulgation and implementation of the prohibition of organ trafficking. The Declaration
of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism plays a particularly important role in this regard. Initiated
by the Transplantation Society and the International Society of Nephrology, more than 150 representatives of
scientific and medical bodies from 78 countries around the world, including government officials, social scientists,
and ethicists, gathered in 2008 in Istanbul to jointly draft the document. Explicitly referring to the WHO Guiding
Principles, the Declaration states: Organ trafficking and transplant tourism violate the principles of equity, justice
and respect for human dignity and should be prohibited. Because transplant commercialism targets impoverished
and otherwise vulnerable donors, it leads inexorably to inequity and injustice and should be prohibited. (Principle 6,
The Transplantation Society/International Society of Nephrology 2008). Beyond principles, the Declaration contains
concrete proposals and recommendations to deal with the scarcity of organs while combating transplant
commercialism. They call for legal and professional frameworks on organ transplantation as well as regulatory
oversight systems in every country. Professional societies are encouraged to exclude members who violate the
Declaration, and funding sources are required to affirm the Declaration when involved in research or clinical
activities in transplantation (Delmonico, 2009). Furthermore, a custodian group has been established that
continuously promotes the aims of the Declaration. With their forward-looking approach, those initiating and
promoting the Declaration of Istanbul have set up an exemplary collaboration of professionals, international
organizations, and governments that can have a significant impact on transplantation practices worldwide.
The aff violates a global consensus against commercialization
Danovitch, 11 – Medical Director, Kidney Transplant Program, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of
California Los Angeles (Gabriel, July. “Would regulated reimbursements discourage organ trafficking?” CQ
Researcher. http://www.sagepub.com/ritzerintro/study/materials/cqresearcher/77708_11.2cq.pdf)
The 2008 Declaration of Istanbul on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism (www.declarationofistanbul.org)
and the Guiding Pnrinciples endorsed by the World Health Organi- zation (WHO) have helped to reduce the venal
exploitation of vulnerable organ donors intrinsic to organ trafficking. The wide- spread endorsement of these
pronouncements represents an un- precedented consensus against all forms of organ commercialism. Though
organ trafficking still occurs, distinct and measured progress has been made in countries previously designated as
“hotspots” by the WHO. Plus, several countries that traditionally have “exported” transplant tourists have taken
measures to reduce the trade. For example, Japan passed brain-death laws that enable it to start addressing its
citizens’ transplant needs, and Israel prohibited insurance reimbursements for citizens who travel abroad for
transplants. Commercialization of organ (typically kidney) donation has been shown to undermine the very fabric of
the organ trans- plant endeavor, which is based on mutual benefit and trust — both in the diagnosis of death and in
the welfare of living donors and their recipients. The outcome for kidney sellers is worse than for altruistic donors
— from both a medical view- point and a psychosocial one. Recipients are also put at greater risk as the mutual
caring that underlies successful living donor transplantation is displaced by financial considerations.
Plan tanks anti-trafficking cred
Caplan, 14 – NYU bioethics division head and professor (Arthur, with Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly.
“Reply to Cherry.” Contemporary Debates in Bioethics, google books, 70-71.)
Even worse, many Annas will live in other nations who will emulate our decision to permit markets. Those Annas
will have even less potential for choice and will simply be coerced, bullied, threatened, or forced into kidney sales.
When a market opens in the United States, it also opens in far less lawful and far more impoverished parts of the
globe. Since our ability to combat trafficking for organs, sex, baby sales, and indentured slave labor depends on
the moral position that incentives in these domains are wrong, it is a bitter price to pay to allow a few Annas in
the US to sell what will be forced from many, many more in other parts of the world.
The WHO hates the plan
Ritter, 8 – writer for TIME (Peter, 8/19. “Legalizing the Organ Trade?”
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1833858,00.html)
But, to many in medical circles, the ethical line between actively encouraging organ donation and legalizing
legalizing commerce in body parts is clear — particularly in Asia, which has both wealthy patients desperately in
need of organs and desperately poor people who might be induced to part with them for money. The World Health
Organization (WHO) opposes any commercial sale of organs, according to Luc Noel, a WHO coordinator for
essential health technologies in Geneva. "It's been debated everywhere," Noel says. "Rich people have no reason to
sell a kidney. That is the flaw that is unacceptable in any scheme involving purchasing a kidney: it's exploitative."
Anxiety about such exploitation by rich foreigners is already acute throughout Asia. In April, the Philippines banned
kidney transplants for patients from overseas. In February, police in India broke up what they said was a blackmarket organ ring that may have taken as many as 500 kidneys from poor laborers and sold them to foreigners from
the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere. Even China, long a source of spare parts for foreigners willing to pay, has
formally banned the practice and criminalized the sale of human organs for profit, according to Noel. Singapore, like
Thailand and Malaysia, is already heavily invested in medical tourism. In 2003, Singapore's government set up an
agency specifically tasked with attracting foreigners to the city's state of the art hospitals. They've succeeded:
according to a January report by Credit Suisse, Singapore hospitals treated around 200,000 foreigners in 2002. Last
year, they treated more than half a million. At some of Singapore's best private hospitals, foreigners account for a
third of total patients — and up to 40 percent of revenue. Given that influx of wealth foreign patients seeking
treatment, critics worry that legalizing the payment of organ donors could open a market for transplant tourism.
"That sounds like a nightmare," says WHO's Noel. "I seriously do not think Singapore would like to create this
image. They don't want to be the place where you can obtain the parts of another person."
IL
US leadership is vital to make global public health initiatives successful
Fidler, 10 – James Louis Calamaras Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law (James, May. “The
Challenges of Global Health Governance.” http://www.cfr.org/global-governance/challenges-global-healthgovernance/p22202)
This Working Paper, sponsored by CFR's International Institutions and Global Governance program, examines the complicated landscape of global health governance,
assesses the capabilities of existing institutions, and recommends more effective strategies for policy implementation. Although the United States will not have the
that U.S. leadership will be critical to
future success in global health governance. Introduction Three crises in 2009 revealed the inadequacy of global health governance. The
outbreak of pandemic influenza A (H1N1) found countries scrambling for access to vaccines, an unseemly process that led
the World Health Organization to call for a new "global framework" on equitable influenza vaccine access. The global economic crisis
resources to contribute to global health at the same level as it did over the past two decades, the paper argues
damaged efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, most of which involve health problems or address policy areas affecting health. The year ended with
the fractious Copenhagen negotiations on global climate change, a problem with fearsome portents for global health. Unfortunately, concerns about global health
governance are not limited to these epidemiological, economic, and environmental crises. Experts also warned about issues: the failure to prevent HIV/AIDS,
antimicrobial resistance, counterfeit drugs, the global prevalence of noncommunicable diseases related to tobacco consumption and obesity, the migration of health
workers from developing to developed countries, and the deterioration in the social determinants of health. Efforts
to address these and other global
health problems often acknowledge that existing institutions, rules, and processes are insufficient to support
collective action. Ironically, these questions about governance effectiveness have been raised in the wake of a revolution in global health governance over the
past ten to fifteen years. This revolution encompassed the creation of radically new regimes, an unprecedented growth in funding for global health, and the growing
influence of policymakers, activists, and philanthropists who viewed global health as a foreign policy issue of first-order importance. As a result, global health has
become an essential part in the equation of international relations. In
addition to the use of long-standing institutions and wellestablished international legal regimes relevant to global health, new programs and initiatives emerged, opening the
door to both competition and cooperation among states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and nonstate actors. Global
health governance innovations include new legal frameworks, public-private partnerships, national programs, innovative financing mechanisms, and greater
engagement by nongovernmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, and multinational corporations. These transformations
have produced a
complicated governance landscape, composed of overlapping and sometimes competing regime clusters that involve
multiple players addressing different health problems through diverse processes and principles. Together, these regime
clusters form a global health governance regime complex in which states, intergovernmental organizations, and nonstate actors apply old and new institutions, rules,
and processes to strengthen collective action against health threats. Although unprecedented in international cooperation on health, the current regime complex for
global health governance suffers from defects that many experts believe are
responsible for suboptimal outcomes for individual and
population health. These defects include failures to prevent health problems from becoming global dangers, to produce effective responses to global health
threats, to implement important treaties on global health, to develop stronger health systems in developing countries, and to stimulate sufficient progress on social
determinants of health. Many proposals for addressing these defects assume that global health's importance in world affairs will continue at the same level or increase,
The United States will influence
how cooperation on health unfolds in the twenty-first century. It provided leadership in the global health governance
revolution through expanded foreign assistance, bilateral engagements, regional initiatives, and participation in multilateral organizations. However, without
more effective strategies and better policy implementation, the U.S. role in the next phase of global health
governance will diminish under the pressures of competing priorities and shrinking financial resources. To provide leadership over the
course of the next decade, the United States should take the following steps to improve global health governance : – Craft a
but the potential for far-reaching reforms in global health governance in the next decade are minimal for many reasons.
comprehensive global health strategy for the U.S. government; – Focus on priority areas of global health governance, namely the International Health Regulations
2005 (IHR 2005), global tobacco control, the Millennium Development Goals, and strengthening national health systems in developing countries; – Embed global
health as a priority for the Group of 20 (G20) by creating demand for global health issues on its agenda; – Strengthen health cooperation within regional organizations;
and – Integrate health inputs into debates about global governance problems outside the health realm, such as economic governance, trade, and climate change.
US public health cred vital to coop on global disease outbreaks
Lee, 14 – covers U.S. immigration and Latin America for International Business Times; formerly worked as a writer
and editor at the Council on Foreign Relations and as a staff writer for the PBS news program "Need to Know
(Brianna, 8/5. “How USAID Cuba Revelations May Threaten Global Health Programs.”
http://www.ibtimes.com/how-usaid-cuba-revelations-may-threaten-global-health-programs-1649592)
But apart from USAID’s ability to fund health initiatives in other countries, Kenny says that undermining the
credibility of U.S. programs could also threaten Washington’s ability to cooperate with other governments in
managing global outbreaks. “The problem is that, especially it comes to public health, even with countries we don’t
particularly like, we probably want to be able to cooperate,” he said. “Take the Ebola outbreak. It crosses borders
very rapidly. Even if the places where it happens aren’t places we want to touch, in public health emergencies, we
want to help stop [outbreaks] from becoming bigger.”
Rd 7 Neg vs Michigan BC – Weed
1NC
1
Aff needs to specify HOW they plan to legalize marijuana - specification MATTERS in the context of marijuana
legalization – the terms themselves are too ambiguous
Kleiman 13 (Mark, Prof of Public Policy @ UCLA + Drug Policy Expert, "How to legalize cannabis,"
http://www.samefacts.com/2013/12/drug-policy/how-to-legalize-cannabis/)
Debating whether to legalize pot is increasingly pointless. Unless there’s an unexpected shock to public opinion, it’s going to
happen, and sooner rather than later. The important debate now is how to legalize it. The results of legalization depend
strongly on the details of the post-prohibition tax and regulatory regimes . In the current situation, continued prohibition
might be the worst option. Full commercial legalization on the alcohol model might well be the second-worst. But that’s the way we’re heading.
I’m preparing an essay about designing a post-prohibition regime. After the jump is a set of topic sentences and paragraphs for sections of that
essay, not yet in a well-defined order. (UPDATE: Numbers inserted to facilitate comments.) Substantive comments are welcome. Rant and snark
will be ruthlessly zapped. 1. We probably should legalize cannabis. Prohibition is now breaking down. $35B/yr. is a lot of money to give to
criminals, and no one has a plausible plan to shrink the illicit market under prohibition. Even where “medical marijuana” has degenerated into
system when anyone can buy a user license from a crooked doctor, the voters still like it. Arguably, prohibition was worth trying. But it’s time to
go home. 2. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Cannabis legalization will reduce criminal revenue, intrusive enforcement, arrest,
incarceration, and disorder around illicit markets, and enhance personal liberty, consumer choice, and respect for the law, and probably reduce
bloodshed in Mexico. It might foster safer and more beneficial practices of cannabis use. 3. Legalization will certainly increase drug abuse,
including heavy use by minors. Every adult is a potential source of leakage to minors. And if we insist on making minors consume illicitlyproduced pot, we reserve 20-25% of the market for criminals. Much better to tolerate leakage and have a grey-market supply to minors like the
current system that provides them with alcohol. 4. The polarized nature of the debate means that both sides wind up spending lots of time denying
the obvious. 5. Good design tries to get as much of the advantages, and as little of the disadvantages, as possible. 6. The policies most likely to
help control increases in drug abuse are taxation and other efforts to keep prices high, rules about consumer information (labeling and marketing),
and “nudge” strategies to enhance consumer mindfulness. 7. It matters a lot whether, under conditions of legality, cannabis turns out to be a
substitute for alcohol or instead a complement. Right now, no one knows the answer, which might not be the same for all parts of the population
or the same in the long run as in the short run. 8. Analysis can help, but there’s no substitute for experience. The trick is not to get locked in to a
set of bad policies. We need a process designed to learn from mistakes. 9. Neither “cannabis” nor “legalization” names its object
with enough specificity. Lots of different things are legalization . Lots of different things are cannabis.
Voter for fairness – makes it impossible to be negative because we can’t garner stable neg offense against an
ambiguous legal procedure
2
Securitizing illegal economies conflates terror with social protest – state devalues marginalized groups
Ferradas 13 -- Associate Prof @ Dept of Anthropology, Binghamton Univ (Carmen A., 10/28/2013, "The Nature of
Illegality Under Neoliberalism and Post-Neoliberalism," PoLAR 36(2), Galileo)
Outbursts of social upheaval such as food riots and massive social protests at the turn of the millennium had become conflated with
other forms of violence, such as international terrorism. Increasingly, most aspects of the informal economy have become either linked to the
illegal or, even worse, have been presented as illegal themselves, and a discourse of security has come to dominate
hegemonic representations of the individuals at the margins of society . Rather than not being fully modern because they had a different “culture” or failed
to integrate into a modern economy, the migrants and poor of today are increasingly portrayed as outlaws, criminals that need to be closely
“secured” through various forms of policing. These portrayals are not new; we have ample evidence from the past showing us how the poor were perceived as dangerous
classes. Fears and negative constructions of the weak intensify when social inequality and unemployment becomes rampant as is the case today. Security state apparatus and various
media venues often conflate terrorism, drug trafficking, and various economic activities of the informal economy. They
rarely question, however, the dubious operations of global corporations with the support of complicit state powers. The international legal system rarely criminalizes such activities even though
they often impinge on state sovereignty and citizen rights. In the San Juan de Dios market case, discussed by Aguiar (this issue), we see how the media and national and transnational actors increasingly depict those involved in piracy
as also engaged in drug trafficking. His analysis shows that this is not always the case. Although he does not deny this might indeed happen in some cases, his ethnographic work demonstrates that many of the individuals involved in
piracy in this market were former fayuqueros (individuals involved in the smuggling of goods, particularly electronics) who were compelled to adapt to the new market conditions. According to him, many of them operate individually
and are not part of organized networks. Once electronics were available on credit with the lifting of protective measures under neoliberalism, the profitable smuggling of electronics from the United States declined abruptly. The case
he describes is similar to what happened in Argentina and Brazil as soon as the two countries signed the Mercosur agreements and also embraced open market policies. For a brief period (late 1990s and early 2000s), the economy of
the Paraguayan border cities such as Ciudad del Este and Encarnación was negatively affected as Argentines and Brazilians could buy manufacturer-guaranteed imported goods on credit without risking being caught at the border
while smuggling goods. These conditions have recently changed as the two countries have entered a post-neoliberal phase characterized among other things by greater restrictions on imports (see Jusionyte, this issue). These recent
changes make it clear that we cannot examine the emergence of illegalities in a linear fashion. The nature of the illegal shifts to adapt to the changing circumstances of nation-states and international conditions. Jusionyte and to a
besides often reproducing the official
discourse that defines what is legal and illegal, they also “produce legitimacy when they avoid, or speak around, the issues deemed uncomfortable for the local
lesser extent Aguiar examine how the media are implicated in processes of the production of the illegal. In the case of Puerto Iguazú, Jusionyte argues that
community due to the lack of social consensus over their moral and legal quality.” She emphasizes how journalists are forced to juggle their multiple positions in the Iguazú community. Besides being producers of representations of
journalists
use the public sphere tactically. In their portrayal of the frontier, she says, they construct some illegalities and obstruct others . The media are not
alone in remaining silent on some aspects of illegality. Polson shows how social analysts neglect addressing the production process of the marijuana
economy. This silence obviously has some effects as it conceals the existence of the drug war rentier nexus. Most studies either focus on the consumer side or demonize the producers without examining how the latter are
the place, they are also participants in the petty border trade of the frontier economy. This pushes them to manipulate the boundaries of the legal both in their professional and personal lives. She believes that local
entangled in a system in which the risks and benefits are unequally distributed. His study pushes us to analyze more carefully how apparently licit and legal real estate interests might be highly dependent on the need to put illegally
obtained money into circulation. This link is obvious in Argentina's current economic situation. It is estimated that around 9 billions of dollars of the nearly 180 billions of dollars that are part of the capital drain are invested in
The role played by transnational forms of
power is too often overlooked in work on illegality. In the case of the Triple Frontier, the sources of negative constructions have often
stemmed from the security apparatus of the United States, particularly in everything that pertains to the demonization of the area as one of the axes of evil. The
linkage between terrorism and various forms of illegal trade is part of this narrative . Although this was not part of my research at that
property abroad. This money laundered outside Argentina exceeds the estimates for the national debt estimated in 140 billions of dollars.
time, shortly after the September 11 events in the United States, residents of Puerto Iguazú and Foz do Iguaçu, commented on how US envoys tried to shape local journalists’ reporting. Even though at some points representatives of
the Argentine and Brazilian states might have echoed these supranational constructions, for the most part, and particularly during the last decade, authorities from both nations generally challenged them. They have particularly
representatives of the US State Department
established between forms of social protest and terrorism.
objected to the linkages
often
An Agenda to Research Illegality This Symposium addresses the irony of an increase in regulation and control at a time when the dominant paradigm has emphasized freedom, circulation and flows. Individuals and things that until
quite recently were outside the radar of the law have become subject to tight forms of inspection and discipline. The resurgence of populism and the abandonment of the Washington Consensus in South America are often associated
with what some call the post-neoliberal. Various scholars have recently analyzed the revival of supposedly defunct state redistributive and protective measures (Grugel and Riggirozzi 2012; Leiva 2008; MacDonald and Ruckert 2009;
works focus mainly in exploring the transformations in forms of governance and the political economy. They seek to identify alternatives to market
liberalism (Rovira Kaltwasser 2007) and to understand the current expansion of the nation state. However, to my knowledge, we still have not
examined ethnographically how the changing role of the state might entail new forms of illegality and criminalization. The brief analysis in this
Merino 2011). Most of the
essay suggests that we should examine more closely how the new class and state alliances are producing new politics of blame not necessarily targeted to those traditionally excluded. We should be wary, however, to think of these
Comaroff (2012:6–7) have recently challenged us to narrate world historical processes
from its undersides because they believe “the present reveals itself more starkly from the antipodes. ” By examining the South African
developments as representing a stage in the configuration of illegalities. Comaroff and
case in particular, they delve into the inequities of the Post-colony and show us that the promise of a better future with neoliberal capitalism did not materialize. The current processes examined in this Symposium suggest that there
Depending on what vantage point we choose, we might foresee a future
of individuals outlawed and reduced to bare life or we might imagine a more equitable world in which the rich, for a change, might also be subjected to forms of discipline and
might be more than one vantage point to examine the present and possible futures.
control.
Enframing of security makes macro-political violence inevitable
Burke 7 – Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales
(Anthony, Theory & Event, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2007, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason,”
Project MUSE)
threats, insecurities
and political manipulation, or the play of institutional, economic or political interests (the 'military-industrial complex'). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be discounted, but they flow
over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only come to form a powerful structure of common sense but
the apparently solid ground of the real itself. In this light, the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-making and
justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are more than merely arguments, rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly they mobilise forms of
knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media, citizens, bureaucracies and military forces
This essay develops a theory about the causes of war -- and thus aims to generate lines of action and critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based either on a given sequence of events,
with organising systems of belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than that. They are truthsystems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in modernity: ontologies, statements about truth
and being which claim a rarefied privilege to state what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I am
thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement about the nature and ideality of being (in this case political being, that of the
nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and
application of strategic knowledge for the use of armed force, and the creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security
and national survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or positivistic inquiry into the
fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of things inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential
attributes'.17 In contrast, drawing on Foucauldian theorising about truth and power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a claim to
the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity, existence and action; one that is not essential or
timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and conflictual
socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'18 in its most sweeping and powerful form. I see such a drive for ontological
certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it takes the form of the existential and rationalist ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and
exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that confines
it within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in
the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation with violence: the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual
structure that generates violence. Here we are witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an
ontology of violence (the national security state). When we consider their relation to war, the two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and
doubly in combination) tends both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in scale and duration, or in unintended
effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost
and with limited impact -- it permeates being. This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger), showing how they
crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz. This creates both a profound ethical and
pragmatic problem. The ethical problem arises because of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image
of technology and being in which humans are merely utilitarian instruments for use, control and destruction, and
force -- in the words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the linear system
of effects imagined in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon
itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction. In the era of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt
(that violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn against those that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are
made to coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21 What I am trying to
describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by security,
statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of
knowledge with particular systemic roles and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity.
Positivistic or scientific claims to epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and
political action, which in turn support larger ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a
common horizon of certainty that is one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more
totalising and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being) has analytical
The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy doctrine) claims
positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a
desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national existence, security, or order . However in practice, technique quickly passes
into ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence which
itself admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict, and the
resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy
claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for an ultimate purpose (securing being)
that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a technique not merely becomes an instrument of state power but
ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have
no essence or integrity outside their value as objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology
immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis
value, it tends to break down in action.
generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized manoeuvres in
the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the
"deterrent power" that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that
these dual ontologies of war link being, means, events and decisions into a single, unbroken chain whose very
process of construction cannot be examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S.
neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in his 2002 West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached from strong
ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war on terror'.24 Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that
obsessive ontological commitments have led to especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25 However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to disentangle strategic from existential
without interrogating more deeply how they form a conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's
thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will continue to
be made. The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the national security state and the
violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out
reason, and to open up choice in that way. However
every other possibility of revealing being', how can they be escaped? 26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is there any scope for
agency and resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the political -- needs to be respected and understood. However, we are far from
powerless in the face of them. The need is to critique dominant images of political being and dominant ways of
securing that being at the same time, and to act and choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global rule of the political. Friend and Enemy:
Violent Ontologies of the Nation-State In his Politics Among Nations Hans Morgenthau stated that 'the national interest of a peace-loving nation can only be defined in terms of national security, which is the irreducible minimum that
diplomacy must defend with adequate power and without compromise'. While Morgenthau defined security relatively narrowly -- as the 'integrity of the national territory and its institutions' -- in a context where security was in
practice defined expansively, as synonymous with a state's broadest geopolitical and economic 'interests', what was revealing about his formulation was not merely the ontological centrality it had, but the sense of urgency and priority
he accorded to it: it must be defended 'without compromise'.27 Morgenthau was a thoughtful and complex thinker, and understood well the complexities and dangers of using armed force. However his formulation reflected an
security was conceived in modern political thought as an
existential condition -- a sine qua non of life and sovereign political existence -- and then married to war and
instrumental action, it provides a basic underpinning for either the limitless resort to strategic violence without
effective constraint, or the perseverance of limited war (with its inherent tendencies to escalation) as a permanent feature of
politics. While he was no militarist, Morgenthau did say elsewhere (in, of all places, a far-reaching critique of nuclear strategy) that the 'quantitative and qualitative competition for conventional weapons is a rational instrument
influential view about the significance of the political good termed 'security'. When this is combined with the way in which
of international politics'.28 The conceptual template for such an image of national security state can be found in the work of Thomas Hobbes, with his influential conception of the political community as a tight unity of sovereign and
people in which their bodies meld with his own to form a 'Leviathan', and which must be defended from enemies within and without. His image of effective security and sovereignty was one that was intolerant of internal difference
and dissent, legitimating a strong state with coercive and exceptional powers to preserve order and sameness. This was a vision not merely of political order but of existential identity, set off against a range of existential others who
were sources of threat, backwardness, instability or incongruity.29 It also, in a way set out with frightening clarity by the theorist Carl Schmitt and the philosopher Georg Hegel, exchanged internal unity, identity and harmony for
permanent alienation from other such communities (states). Hegel presaged Schmitt's thought with his argument that individuality and the state are single moments of 'mind in its freedom' which 'has an infinitely negative relation to
itself, and hence its essential character from its own point of view is its singleness': Individuality is awareness of one's existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states,
each of which is autonomous vis-a-vis the others...this negative relation of the state to itself is embodied in the world as the relation of one state to another and as if the negative were something external.30 Schmitt is important both
for understanding the way in which such alienation is seen as a definitive way of imagining and limiting political communities, and for understanding how such a rigid delineation is linked to the inevitability and perpetuation of war.
Schmitt argued that the existence of a state 'presupposes the political', which must be understood through 'the specific political distinction...between friend and enemy'. The enemy is 'the other, the stranger; and it sufficient for his
nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in an extreme case conflicts with him are possible'.31 The figure of the enemy is constitutive of the state as 'the specific entity of a
people'.32 Without it society is not political and a people cannot be said to exist: Only the actual participants can correctly recognise, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict...to judge
whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence.33 Schmitt links this stark ontology to war when he states that the political is
only authentic 'when a fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to the whole nation,
becomes public by virtue of such a relationship...in its entirety the state as an organised political entity decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction'.34 War, in short, is an existential condition: the entire life of a human being is a
struggle and every human being is symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is
the existential negation of the enemy.35 Schmitt claims that his theory is not biased towards war as a choice ('It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but devastating war and every political deed a military action...it
When such a theory takes the form of a social discourse
(which it does in a general form) such an ontology can only support , as a kind of originary ground, the basic Clausewitzian assumption that
war can be a rational way of resolving political conflicts -- because the import of Schmitt's argument is that such 'political' conflicts are ultimately expressed through the
neither favours war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism') but it is hard to accept his caveat at face value.36
possibility of war. As he says: 'to the enemy concept belongs the ever-present possibility of combat'.37 Where Schmitt meets Clausewitz, as I explain further below, the existential and rationalistic ontologies of war join into a closed
This closed circle of existential and strategic reason generates a number of dangers. Firstly, the
emergence of conflict can generate military action almost automatically simply because the world is conceived in
terms of the distinction between friend and enemy; because the very existence of the other constitutes an
unacceptable threat, rather than a chain of actions, judgements and decisions. (As the Israelis insisted of Hezbollah, they 'deny our right to exist'.) This effaces agency, causality
and responsibility from policy and political discourse: our actions can be conceived as independent of the
conflict or quarantined from critical enquiry, as necessities that achieve an instrumental purpose but do not
contribute to a new and unpredictable causal chain. Similarly the Clausewitzian idea of force -- which, by transporting a Newtonian category from the natural into the
social sciences, assumes the very effect it seeks -- further encourages the resort to military violence. We ignore the complex history of a
conflict, and thus the alternative paths to its resolution that such historical analysis might provide, by
portraying conflict as fundamental and existential in nature; as possibly containable or exploitable, but
always irresolvable. Dominant portrayals of the war on terror, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, are arguably examples of such ontologies in action. Secondly, the militaristic force of such an ontology is visible, in
circle of mutual support and justification.
Schmitt, in the absolute sense of vulnerability whereby a people can judge whether their 'adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life'.38 Evoking the kind of thinking that would become controversial in the Bush doctrine,
Hegel similarly argues that: ...a state may regard its infinity and honour as at stake in each of its concerns, however minute, and it is all the more inclined to susceptibility to injury the more its strong individuality is impelled as a result
of long domestic peace to seek and create a sphere of activity abroad. ....the state is in essence mind and therefore cannot be prepared to stop at just taking notice of an injury after it has actually occurred. On the contrary, there arises
Identity, even more than physical security or autonomy, is put at stake in such
thinking and can be defended and redeemed through warfare (or, when taken to a further extreme of an absolute demonisation and dehumanisation of the other, by mass
in addition as a cause of strife the idea of such an injury...39
killing, 'ethnic cleansing' or genocide). However anathema to a classical realist like Morgenthau, for whom prudence was a core political virtue, these have been influential ways of defining national security and defence during the
twentieth century and persists into the twenty-first. They infused Cold War strategy in the United States (with the key policy document NSC68 stating that 'the Soviet-led assault on free institutions is worldwide now, and ... a defeat of
free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere')40 and frames dominant Western responses to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and like groups (as Tony Blair admitted in 2006, 'We could have chosen security as the battleground. But
we didn't. We chose values.')41 It has also become influential, in a particularly tragic and destructive way, in Israel, where memories of the Holocaust and (all too common) statements by Muslim and Arab leaders rejecting Israel's
existence are mobilised by conservatives to justify military adventurism and a rejectionist policy towards the Palestinians. On the reverse side of such ontologies of national insecurity we find pride and hubris, the belief that martial
preparedness and action are vital or healthy for the existence of a people. Clausewitz's thought is thoroughly imbued with this conviction. For example, his definition of war as an act of policy does not refer merely to the policy of
cabinets, but expresses the objectives and will of peoples: When whole communities go to war -- whole peoples, and especially civilized peoples -- the reason always lies in some political situation and the occasion is always due to
some political object. War, therefore, is an act of policy.42 Such a perspective prefigures Schmitt's definition of the 'political' (an earlier translation reads 'war, therefore, is a political act'), and thus creates an inherent tension between
its tendency to fuel the escalation of conflict and Clausewitz's declared aim, in defining war as policy, to prevent war becoming 'a complete, untrammelled, absolute manifestation of violence'.43 Likewise his argument that war is a
'trinity' of people (the source of 'primordial violence, hatred and enmity'), the military (who manage the 'play of chance and probability') and government (which achieve war's 'subordination as an instrument of policy, which makes it
subject to reason alone') merges the existential and rationalistic conceptions of war into a theoretical unity.44 The idea that national identities could be built and redeemed through war derived from the 'romantic counter-revolution' in
philosophy which opposed the cosmopolitanism of Kant with an emphasis on the absolute state -- as expressed by Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Bismarkian Realpolitik and politicians like Wilhelm Von Humbolt. Humbolt, a Prussian
minister of Education, wrote that war 'is one of the most wholesome manifestations that plays a role in the education of the human race', and urged the formation of a national army 'to inspire the citizen with the spirit of true war'. He
stated that war 'alone gives the total structure the strength and the diversity without which facility would be weakness and unity would be void'.45 In the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel made similar arguments that to for individuals
to find their essence 'Government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by war'.46 The historian Azar Gat points to the similarity of Clausewitz's arguments that 'a people and a nation can hope for a strong position in
the world only if national character and familiarity with war fortify each other by continual interaction' to Hegel's vision of the ethical good of war in his Philosophy of Right.47 Likewise Michael Shapiro sees Clausewitz and Hegel as
alike in seeing war 'as an ontological investment in both individual and national completion...Clausewitz figures war as passionate ontological commitment rather than cool political reason...war is a major aspect of being.'48 Hegel's
text argues that war is 'a work of freedom' in which 'the individual's substantive duty' merges with the 'independence and sovereignty of the state'.49 Through war, he argues, the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their
indifference to the stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged calm, so the corruption in nations would be the product of a prolonged,
let alone 'perpetual' peace.50 Hegel indeed argues that 'sacrifice on behalf of the individuality of the state is a substantial tie between the state and all its members and so is a universal duty...if the state as such, if its autonomy, is in
jeopardy, all its citizens are duty bound to answer the summons to its defence'.51 Furthermore, this is not simply a duty, but a form of self-realisation in which the individual dissolves into the higher unity of the state: The intrinsic
worth of courage as a disposition of mind is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualise this end, and the means to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality. This
form of experience thus contains the harshness of extreme contradictions: a self-sacrifice which yet is the real existence of one's freedom; the maximum self-subsistence of individuality, yet only a cog playing its part in the mechanism
of an external organisation; absolute obedience, renunciation of personal opinions and reasonings, in fact complete absence of mind, coupled with the most intense and comprehensive presence of mind and decision in the moment of
acting; the most hostile and so most personal action against individuals, coupled with an attitude of complete indifference or even liking towards them as individuals.52 A more frank statement of the potentially lethal consequences of
patriotism -- and its simultaneously physical and conceptual annihilation of the individual human being -- is rarely to be found, one that is repeated today in countless national discourses and the strategic world-view in general. (In
contrast, one of Kant's fundamental objections to war was that it involved using men 'as mere machines or instruments'.53) Yet however bizarre and contradictory Hegel's argument, it constitutes a powerful social ontology: an
the
nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core element of politics. It does not explain why so many policymakers
think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married to a more rationalistic form of strategic thought that claims to link
violent means to political ends predictably and controllably, and which, by doing so, combines military action and national
purposes into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire to decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it is helpful to
apparently irrefutable discourse of being. It actualises the convergence of war and the social contract in the form of the national security state. Strategic Reason and Scientific Truth By itself, such an account of
focus on the modernity of this ontology -- one that is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological progress, and in its insistence on imposing images of scientific truth from the physical
one of the reasons Clausewitz
was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed to have chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological
outlook associated with the industrial revolution'.54 Set into this epistemological matrix, modern politics and
government engages in a sweeping project of mastery and control in which all of the world's resources -- mineral,
animal, physical, human -- are made part of a machinic process of which war and violence are viewed as
normal features. These are the deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of the most revealing contemporary examples comes from the writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a
sciences (such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For example, the military theorist and historian Martin van Creveld has argued that
Harvard professor and later U.S. National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. He wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945 U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the
ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in emerging countries'. This 'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of power in foreign
Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the United States, but
in a particular epistemology (theory of knowledge) . Kissinger asserted that the West is 'deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge
policy'.55
consists of recording and classifying data -- the more accurately the better'. This, he claimed, has since the Renaissance set the West apart from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that have escaped the early impact of
Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost entirely internal to the observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for control was beset by a corrosive
anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons proliferation and constant military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and militancy of new post-colonial states, order and mastery were harder to define
and impose. He worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had 'encouraged political multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is difficult to
achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience' (emphasis added). He mourned that 'the greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order'.57 Here were
the driving obsessions of the modern rational statesman based around a hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For the two decades after 1945, our international activities were based on the assumption that
technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct "operational" concept of international order has proved too
simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. Our deepest challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though overwhelming military
Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for order and certainty continually
confront chaos, resistance and uncertainty: clay that won't be worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that refuse to
surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons of the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words. Yet as his sinister, Orwellian
exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world' demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This is a vicious, historic irony: a desire to control nature,
technology, society and human beings that is continually frustrated, but never abandoned or rethought. By 1968 U.S.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the rationalist policymaker par excellence, had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not
prevail in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's refusal to accept this conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to condemn
hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of Cambodia to two more decades of horror and misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another
strength will remain with the two superpowers.58
Republican Administration crowned more than decade of failed and destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In this struggle with the lessons of Vietnam,
we are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a craving for order,
control and certainty in the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that
Kissinger's thinking -- and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was embedded in instrumental images of
technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of power and an image of social and political order . In his essay 'The
Government of Subject Races' Cromer envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as best achieved by a
central authority working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine' .60 Kissinger analogously invoked the
revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical transformation,
virtues of 'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that technological progress no longer brought untroubled control: the Westernising 'spread of technology and its associated
rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of reality'.61 We sense the rational policymaker's frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a machine, ordered by a form of power and governmental reason which
deploys machines and whose desires and processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine. Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a seat of power in the
West and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it from the East -- human material, material wealth, knowledge,
This desire for order in the shadow of
chaos and uncertainty -- the constant war with an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern
thought, and was a major impetus to the development of technological reason and its supporting theories of
knowledge. As Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the 'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern strategy, foreign policy and
Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the apparently stable soil of natural science, in the hope of finding immovable
and unchallengeable roots there. While this process has origins in ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the Renaissance. The key
figures in this process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a hunger for political and ontological certainty, a
positivist epistemology and a naïve faith in the goodness of invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order,
and with it a new human power over the world, through a new empirical methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the
senses and the understanding. With this method, he argued, we can 'derive hope from a purer alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted'.63 In a similar move, Descartes sought
to conjure certainty from uncertainty through the application of a new method that moved progressively out from a
few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a divinely granted faculty of judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics
formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos.64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that
scientists should privilege 'objective', quantifiable qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones ; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative
what have you -- is processed by the machine, then converted into more power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance.62
analysis could science attain certain knowledge of the world'.65 Such doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth were to have powerful echoes in the 20th Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis, game theory, cybernetics and
computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of matter and energy and applied the most advanced applications of
mathematics and computing to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a terrible irony: as even Morgenthau understood, the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the
control of the weapons themselves, into political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method not merely as way of achieving a purer access to truth and epistemological certainty, but as liberating a new
power that would enable the creation of a new kind of Man. He opened the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and human power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a firmer foundation,
and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative comparison between 'men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the
new Indies' -- one that echoes in advance Kissinger's distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of empirical science: anyone making this comparison, he remarked,
'will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man'.68 We may be forgiven for blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man' was indeed in the process of stealing a new fire from the heavens and seizing God's power over the
world for itself. Not only would the new empirical science lead to 'an improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation of the Fall of Adam: For man, by the
fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not become entirely and
utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, 'in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford
mankind in some degree his bread...69 There is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement -- one that, in many ways, came to characterise western modernity itself, and which is easily recognisable in a generation of
modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam was the Judeo-Christian West's primal creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship and ambivalence. Bacon forecast
here a return to Eden, but one of man's own making. This truly was the death of God, of putting man into God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of faith could disguise the awesome epistemological violence
which now subordinated creation to man. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As such, there is nothing but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most
what would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over
creation'? If the new method and invention brought modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation, communications, education and comfort, it also enabled the Armenian
genocide, the Holocaust and two world wars; napalm, the B52, the hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and
military strategy. Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching inventions -- radar, television, rocketry, computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national
security and militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass -- brought in their wake upheaval
distinguished of human actions...inventions are a blessing and a benefit without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And
slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new
empirical science would be ambivalence as much as certainty; degradation as much as enlightenment; the
destruction of nature as much as its utilisation. Doubts and Fears: Technology as Ontology If Bacon could not reasonably be expected to foresee many of these developments, the idea that
and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery; navigation,
scientific and technological progress could be destructive did occur to him. However it was an anxiety he summarily dismissed: ...let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and sciences becoming depraved to malevolent or
luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good; talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches, light itself...Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that
after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion.71 By the mid-Twentieth Century,
, such fears could no longer
be so easily wished away, as the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer recognised. He said in a 1947 lecture: We felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting and
in the end in large measure achieving the realization of atomic weapons...In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no over-statement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they
empire over creation -- his discovery of the innermost secrets of
brought destruction and horror. Scientific powers
that had been consciously applied in the defence of life and in the hope of its betterment now threatened its total
and absolute destruction. This would not prevent a legion of scientists, soldiers and national security policymakers later attempting to apply Bacon's faith in invention and Descartes' faith in mathematics to
cannot lose.72 Adam had fallen once more, but into a world which refused to acknowledge its renewed intimacy with contingency and evil. Man's
matter and energy, of the fires that fuelled the stars -- had not 'enhanced human power and dignity' as Bacon claimed, but instead
make of the Bomb a rational weapon. Oppenheimer -- who resolutely opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb -- understood what the strategists could not: that the weapons resisted control, resisted utility, that 'with the release
of atomic energy quite revolutionary changes had occurred in the techniques of warfare'.73 Yet Bacon's legacy, one deeply imprinted on the strategists, was his view that truth and utility are 'perfectly identical'.74 In 1947
Oppenheimer had clung to the hope that 'knowledge is good...it seems hard to live any other way than thinking it was better to know something than not to know it; and the more you know, the better'; by 1960 he felt that 'terror
attaches to new knowledge. It has an unmooring quality; it finds men unprepared to deal with it.'75 Martin Heidegger questioned this mapping of natural science onto the social world in his essays on technology -- which, as 'machine',
has been so crucial to modern strategic and geopolitical thought as an image of perfect function and order and a powerful tool of intervention. He commented that, given that modern technology 'employs exact physical science...the
technology and its relation to science, society
and war cannot be reduced to a noiseless series of translations of science for politics, knowledge for force, or force
for good. Instead, Oppenheimer saw a process frustrated by roadblocks and ruptured by irony; in his view there was no smooth, unproblematic
translation of scientific truth into social truth, and technology was not its vehicle. Rather his comments raise profound and painful ethical questions that resonate with terror and uncertainty. Yet this has not
prevented technology becoming a potent object of desire, not merely as an instrument of power but as a promise and
conduit of certainty itself. In the minds of too many rational soldiers, strategists and policymakers, technology brings with it the truth of its
enabling science and spreads it over the world. It turns epistemological certainty into political certainty; it turns
control over 'facts' into control over the earth. Heidegger's insights into this phenomena I find especially telling and disturbing -- because they underline
the ontological force of the instrumental view of politics. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger's striking argument was that in the modernising
West technology is not merely a tool, a 'means to an end'. Rather technology has become a governing image of the
modern universe, one that has come to order, limit and define human existence as a 'calculable coherence of
forces' and a 'standing reserve' of energy . Heidegger wrote: 'the threat to man does not come in the first instance from the
potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence .'77
This process Heidegger calls 'Enframing' and through it the scientific mind demands that 'nature reports itself in
some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and remains orderable as a system of information'. Man is
not a being who makes and uses machines as means, choosing and limiting their impact on the world for his ends;
rather man has imagined the world as a machine and humanity everywhere becomes trapped within its logic. Man,
he writes, 'comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall...where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.
Meanwhile Man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.'78 Technological man not only becomes the name for a project of
lordship and mastery over the earth, but incorporates humanity within this project as a calculable resource. In
strategy, warfare and geopolitics human bodies, actions and aspirations are caught, transformed and
perverted by such calculating, enframing reason: human lives are reduced to tools, obstacles, useful or
obstinate matter. This tells us much about the enduring power of crude instrumental versions of strategic thought, which relate not merely to the actual use of force but to broader geopolitical strategies that see, as
limited war theorists like Robert Osgood did, force as an 'instrument of policy short of war'. It was from within this strategic ontology that figures like the Nobel prize-winning economist
Thomas Schelling theorised the strategic role of threats and coercive diplomacy, and spoke of strategy as 'the power to hurt'.79 In the 2006 Lebanon war we can
deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science'.76 Yet as the essays and speeches of Oppenheimer attest,
see such thinking in the remark of a U.S. analyst, a former Ambassador to Israel and Syria, who speculated that by targeting civilians and infrastructure Israel aimed 'to create enough pain on the ground so there would be a local
political reaction to Hezbollah's adventurism'.80 Similarly a retired Israeli army colonel told the Washington Post that 'Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy
price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-
the available critical, interpretive or
languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform or
refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question
here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought
and remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war
doctrines seek mainly to improve the accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart
from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory .82 In the case
land.'81 Conclusion: Violent Ontologies or Peaceful Choices? I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that
performative
of a theorist like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences
have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat and espouses a moral community that
stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires
the resort to war as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a
performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I suspect that
The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of
'human beings as we know them' -- which ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates
(indeed reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an ontology of being for one of
becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new possibilities through agonistic relation to others,
provides a less destructive and violent way of acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference .85 My argument here, whilst
normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and
rational instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and community -- my analysis
even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the is.
Neither the progressive flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an
international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the conceptual
and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come , against everything Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress,
modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not
simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing ...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility
does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation.
that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic
the challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government,
technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our entire
space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -- militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert
intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive not merely from particular
choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical' discourses of
scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment images of being. Confined within such an
epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers' choices become necessities, their actions become
inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die . Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which
builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained
through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may
simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing
cascade of discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses,
however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does, admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it
is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are
utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark
ontology of the friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and
power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that
choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making
even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to
produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities .88) There seems no point in
following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique.
However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the
modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that
would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his
decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that,
faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that
policy choices could aim to bring into
being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the
space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a
very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the
choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully,
questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and autonomy? Do
they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and environmental price?
Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and
effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and
consequences which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and
more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and
violence? Will our thought?
Reject the affirmative’s security discourse – this untimely intervention is the only chance for a counter-discourse
Calkivik 10 – PhD in Poli Sci @ Univ Minnesota (Emine Asli, 10/2010, "DISMANTLING SECURITY," PhD
dissertation submitted to Univ Minnesota for Raymond Duvall,
http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/99479/1/Calkivik_umn_0130E_11576.pdf)
It is this self-evidence of security even for critical approaches and the antinomy stemming from dissident voices reproducing the language of those they dissent from that constitutes the starting point for this chapter, where I elaborate
the suggestion to dismantle security was itself deemed as an
untimely pursuit in a world where lives of millions were rendered brutally insecure by poverty, violence, disease, and ongoing
political conflicts. Colored by the tone of a call to conscience in the face of the ongoing crisis of security, it was not the time, interlocutors argued, for self-indulgent critique. I will argue that it is the
element of being untimely, the effort, in the words of Walter Benjamin, “to brush history against the grain” that gives critical thinking its
power.291 It might appear as a trivial discussion to bring up the relation between time and critique because conceptions of critical thinking in the discipline of International Relations already possess the notion that critical
on the meaning of dismantling security as untimely critique. As mentioned in the vignette in the opening section,
thought needs to be untimely. In the first section, I will tease out what this notion of untimeliness entails by visiting ongoing conversations within the discipline about critical thought and political time. Through this discussion, I hope
to clarify what sets apart dismantling security as untimely critique from the notion of untimeliness at work in critical international relations theory. The latter conception of the untimely, I will suggest, paradoxically calls on critical
This notion of the untimely demands that
critique be strategic and respond to political exigency, that it provide answers in this light instead of raising more questions about which questions could be raised or what
thought to be “on time” in that it champions a particular understanding of what it means for critical scholarship to be relevant and responsible for its times.
presuppositions underlie the questions that are deemed to be waiting for answers. After elaborating in the first section such strategic conceptions of the untimeliness of critical theorizing, in the second section I will turn to a different
sense of the untimely by drawing upon Wendy Brown’s discussion of the relation between critique, crisis, and political time through her reading of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”292 In contrast to a notion of
untimeliness that demands strategic thinking and punctuality, Brown’s exegesis provides a conception of historical materialism where
critique is figured as a force of disruption, a
form of intervention that reconfigures the meaning of the times and “contest[s] the very senses of time invoked to
declare critique ‘untimely’.”293 Her exposition overturns the view of critique as a self-indulgent practice as it highlights the immediately
political nature of critique and reconfigures the meaning of what it means for critical thought to be relevant.294 It is in this sense of the untimely, I will suggest, that
dismantling security as a critique hopes to recover. I should point out that in this discussion my intention is neither to construct a theory of critique nor to provide an exhaustive review and evaluation of the forms of critical theorizing
in International Relations. Rather, my aim is to contribute to the existing efforts that engage with the question of what it means to be critical apart from drawing the epistemological and methodological boundaries so as to think about
how one is critical.295 While I do not deny the importance of epistemological questions, I contend that taking time to think about the meaning of critique beyond these issues presents itself as an important task. This task takes on
additional importance within the context of security studies where any realm of investigation quickly begets its critical counterpart. The rapid emergence and institutionalization of critical terrorism studies when studies on terrorism
were proliferating under the auspices of the so-called Global War on Terror provides a striking example to this trend. 296 Such instances are important reminders that, to the extent that epistemology and methodology are reified as the
sole concerns in defining and assessing critical thinking297 or “wrong headed refusals”298 to get on with positive projects and empirical research gets branded as debilitating for critical projects, what is erased from sight is the
political nature of the questions asked and what is lost is the chance to reflect upon what it means for critical thinking to respond to its times. In his meditation on the meaning of responding and the sense of responsibility entailed by
writing, Jean-Luc Nancy suggests that “all writing is ‘committed.’” 299 This notion of commitment diverges from the programmatic sense of committed writing. What underlies this conception is an understanding of writing as
there is always an
ethical commitment prior to any particular political commitment, such a notion of writing contests the notion of creative autonomy premised on the idea of a free, selfresponding: writing is a response to the voice of an other.In Nancy’s words, “[w]hoever writes responds” 300 and “makes himself responsible to in the absolute sense.”301 Suggesting that
legislating subject who responds. In other words, it discredits the idea of an original voice by suggesting that there is no voice that is not a response to a prior response. Hence, to respond is configured as responding to an expectation
rather than as an answer to a question and responsibility is cast as an “anticipated response to questions, to demands, to still-unformulated, not exactly predictable expectations.”302 Echoing Nancy, David Campbell makes an
The question, then, is not
whether as scholars we are engaged or not, but what the nature of this engagement is. Such a re-framing of the question is intended to highlight the political nature
important reminder as he suggests that as international relations scholars “we are always already engaged,” although the sites, mechanisms and quality of engagements might vary.303
of all interpretation and the importance of developing an “ethos of political criticism that is concerned with assumptions, limits, their historical production, social and political effects, and the possibility of going beyond them in
It is
this ethos of critique that dismantling security hopes to recover for a discipline where security operates as the
foundational principle and where critical thinking keeps on contributing to security’s impressing itself as a self-evident condition.
thought and action.”304 Taking as its object assumptions and limits, their historical production and social and political effects places the relevancy of critical thought and responsibility of critical scholarship on new ground.
Critical Theory and Punctuality Within the context of International Relations, critical thought’s orientation toward its time comes out strongly in Kimberley Hutchings’s formulation.305 According to Hutchings, no matter what form it
what distinguishes critical international relations theory from other forms of theorizing is “its orientation towards
change and the possibility of futures that do not reproduce the hegemonic power of the present .”306 What this implies about the nature
takes,
of critical thought is that it needs to be not only diagnostic, but also self-reflexive. In the words of Hutchings, “all critical theories lay claim to some kind of account not only of the present of international politics and its relation to
possible futures, but also of the role of critical theory in the present and future in international politics.” 307 Not only analyzing the present, but also introducing the question of the future into analysis places political time at the center
of critical enterprise and makes the problem of change a core concern. It is this question of change that situates different forms of critical thinking on a shared ground since they all attempt to expose the way in which what is presented
their efforts to go against the dominant currents and challenge the hegemony of
by showing how contemporary practices and discourses contribute to the perpetuation of structures of
power and domination, critical theorists in general and critical security studies specialists in particular take on an untimely endeavor. It is this understanding
of the untimely aspect of critical thinking that is emphasized by Mark Neufeld, who regards the development of critical approaches to security as “one of the more
hopeful intellectual developments in recent years.”308 Despite nurturing from different theoretical traditions and therefore harboring “fundamental differences between modernist and postmodernist
as given and natural is historically produced and hence open to change. With their orientation to change,
existing power relations
commitments,” writes Neufeld, scholars who are involved in the critical project nevertheless “share a common concern with calling into question ‘prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are
The desire for change—through being untimely and making the way to alternative futures that would no longer resemble the present—have led some scholars to
emphasize the utopian element that must accompany all critical thinking. Quoting Oscar Wilde’s aphorism—a map of the world that
does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, Ken Booth argues for the need to restore the role and reputation of utopianism in the theory and practice of international
organized.’” 309
politics. 310 According to Booth, what goes under the banner of realism—“ethnocentric self-interest writ large”311 — falls far beyond the realities of a drastically changed world political landscape at the end of the Cold War. He
describes the new reality as “an egg-box containing the shells of sovereignty; but alongside it a global community omelette [sic] is cooking.”312 Rather than insisting on the inescapability of war in the international system as political
realists argue, Booth argues for the need and possibility to work toward the utopia of overcoming the condition of war by banking on the opportunities provided by a globalizing world. The point that critical thought needs to be
critical theory purport[s] to ‘think against’ the
prevailing current” and that “[c]ritical security studies is no exception” to this enterprise.313 According to the authors, the function of critical
approaches to security is to problematize what is taken for granted in the disciplinary production of knowledge about
security by “resist[ing], transcend[ing] and defeat[ing]…theories of security, which take for granted who is to be
secured (the state), how security is to be achieved (by defending core ‘national’ values, forcibly if necessary) and from
whom security is needed (the enemy).”314 While critical theory in this way is figured as untimely, I want to suggest that this notion of untimeliness gets construed paradoxically in a quite timely
untimely by going against its time is also emphasized by Dunne and Wheeler, who assert that, regardless of the form it takes, “
fashion. With a perceived disjuncture between writing the world from within a discipline and acting in it placed at the center of the debates, the performance of critical thought gets evaluated to the extent that it is punctual and in
synch with the times. Does critical thought provide concrete guidance and prescribe what is to be done? Can it move beyond mere talk and make timely political interventions by providing solutions? Does it have answers to the
strategic questions of progressive movements? Demanding that critical theorizing come clean in the court of these questions, such conceptions of the untimely demand that critique respond to its times in a responsible way, where
being responsible is understood in stark contrast to a notion of responding and responsibility that I briefly discussed in the introductory pages of this chapter (through the works of Jean-Luc Nancy and David Campbell). Let me visit
two recent conversations ensuing from the declarations of the contemporary crisis of critical theorizing in order to clarify what I mean by a timely understanding of untimely critique. The first conversation was published as a special
issue in the Review of International Studies (RIS), one of the major journals of the field. Prominent figures took the 25th anniversary of the journal’s publication of two key texts—regarded as canonical for the launching and
development of critical theorizing in International Relations—as an opportunity to reflect upon and assess the impact of critical theory in the discipline and interrogate what its future might be. 315 The texts in question, which are
depicted as having shaken the premises of the static world of the discipline, are Robert Cox’s 1981 essay entitled on “Social Forces, States, and World Orders”316 and Richard Ashley’s article, “Political Realism and Human
Interests.”317 In their introductory essay to the issue, Rengger and Thirkell-White suggest that the essays by Cox and Ashley—followed by Andrew Linklater’s Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations318 —
represent “the breach in the dyke” of the three dominant discourses in International Relations (i.e., positivists, English School, and Marxism), unleashing “a torrent [that would] soon become a flood” as variety of theoretical
approaches in contemporary social theory (i.e., feminism, Neo-Gramscianism, poststructuralism, and post-colonialism) would get introduced through the works of critical scholars.319 After elaborating the various responses given to
and resistance raised against the critical project in the discipline, the authors provide an overview and an assessment of the current state of critical theorizing in International Relations. They argue that the central question for much of
the ongoing debate within the critical camp in its present state—a question that it cannot help but come to terms with and provide a response to—concerns the relation between critical thought and political practice. As they state, the
“fundamental philosophical question [that] can no longer be sidestepped” by critical International Relations theory is the question of the relation between “knowledge of the world and action in it.”320 One of the points alluded to in
the essay is that forms of critical theorizing, which leave the future “to contingency, uncertainty and the multiplicity of political projects” and therefore provide “less guidance for concrete political action”321 or, again, those that
problematize underlying assumptions of thought and “say little about the potential political agency that might be involved in any subsequent struggles”322 may render the critical enterprise impotent and perhaps even suspect. This
point comes out clearly in Craig Murphy’s contribution to the collection of essays in the RIS’s special issue. 323 Echoing William Wallace’s argument that critical theorists tend to be “monks,”324 who have little to offer for political
actors engaged in real world politics, Murphy argues that the promise of critical theory is “partially kept” because of the limited influence it has had outside the academy towards changing the world.Building a different world, he
suggests, requires more than isolated academic talk; that it demands not merely “words,” but “deeds.”325 This, according to Murphy, requires providing “knowledge that contributes to change.”326 Such knowledge would emanate
from connections with the marginalized and would incorporate observations of actors in their everyday practices. More importantly, it would create an inspiring vision for social movements, such as the one provided by the concept of
human development, which, according to Murphy, was especially powerful “because it embodied a value-oriented way of seeing, a vision, rather than only isolated observations.”327 In sum, if critical theory is to retain its critical
edge, Murphy’s discussion suggests, it has to be in synch with political time and respond to its immediate demands. The second debate that is revelatory of this conception of the timing of critical theory—i.e., that critical thinking be
strategic and efficient in relation to political time—takes place in relation to the contemporary in/security environment shaped by the so-called Global War on Terror. The theme that bears its mark on these debates is the extent to
which critical inquiries about the contemporary security landscape become complicit in the workings of power and what critique can offer to render the world more legible for progressive struggles.328 For instance, warning critical
theorists against being co-opted by or aligned with belligerence and war-mongering, Richard Devetak asserts that critical international theory has an urgent “need to distinguish its position all the more clearly from liberal
imperialism.”329 While scholars such as Devetak, Booth,330 and Fierke331 take the critical task to be an attempt to rescue liberal internationalism from turning into liberal imperialism, others announce the “crisis of critical
theorizing” and suggest that critical writings on the nature of the contemporary security order lack the resources to grasp their actual limitations, where the latter is said to reside not in the realm of academic debate, but in the realm of
political practice.332 It is amidst these debates on critique, crisis, and political time that Richard Beardsworth raises the question of the future of critical philosophy in the face of the challenges posed by contemporary world
politics.333 Recounting these challenges, he provides the matrix for a proper form of critical inquiry that could come to terms with “[o]ur historical actuality.”334 He describes this actuality as the “thick context” of modernity (“an
epoch, delimited by the capitalization of social relations,” which imposes its own philosophical problematic—“that is, the attempt, following the social consequences of capitalism, to articulate the relation between individuality and
collective spirit”335 ), American unilateralism in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the growing political disempowerment of people worldwide. Arguing that “contemporary return of religion and new forms of
irrationalism emerge, in large part, out of the failure of the second response of modernity to provide a secular solution to the inequalities of the nation-state and colonization,”336 he formulates the awaiting political task for critical
endeavors as constructing a world polity to resist the disintegration of the world under the force of capital.It is with this goal in mind that he suggests that “responsible scholarship needs to rescue reason in the face irrational war”337
and that intellectuals need to provide “the framework for a world ethical community of law, endowed with political mechanisms of implementation in the context of a regulated planetary economy.”338 He suggests that an aporetic
form of thinking such as Jacques Derrida’s—a thinking that “ignores the affirmative relation between the determining powers of reason and history”339 —would be an unhelpful resource because such thinking “does not open up to
where work needs to be done for these new forms of polity to emerge.”340 In other words, critical thinking, according to Beardsworth, needs to articulate and point out possible political avenues and to orient thought and action in
concrete ways so as to contribute to progressive political change rather than dwelling on the encounter of the incalculable and calculation and im-possibility of world democracy in a Derridean fashion. In similar ways to the first
debate on critique that I discussed, critical thinking is once again called upon to respond to political time in a strategic and efficient manner. As critical inquiry gets summoned up to the court of reason in Beardsworth’s account, its
realm of engagement is limited to that which the light of reason can be shed upon, and its politics is confined to mapping out the achievable and the doable in a given historical context without questioning or disrupting the limits of
what is presented as “realistic” choices. Hence, if untimely critical thought is to be meaningful it has to be on time by responding to political exigency in a practical, efficient, and strategic manner. In contrast to this prevalent form of
understanding the untimeliness of critical theory, I will now turn to a different account of the untimely provided by Wendy Brown whose work informs the project of dismantling security as untimely critique. Drawing from her
untimely critique of security entails, simultaneously, an attunement to the times
and an aggressive violation of their self-conception . It is in this different sense of the untimely that the suggestion of dismantling security needs to be situated. Critique and
Political Time As I suggested in the Prelude to this chapter, elevating security itself to the position of major protagonist and extending a call to “dismantle security” was itself
declared to be an untimely pursuit in a time depicted as the time of crisis in security. Such a declaration stood as an exemplary moment (not in the
sense of illustration or allegory, but as a moment of crystallization) for disciplinary prohibitions to think and act otherwise—perhaps the moment when a doxa exhibits its most powerful hold. Hence, what is first
needed is to overturn the taken-for-granted relations between crisis, timeliness, and critique. The roots krisis and kritik can be traced back to
discussion of the relationship between critique, crisis, and political time, I will suggest that
the Greek word krinõ, which meant “to separate”, to “choose,” to “judge,” to “decide.”341 While creating a broad spectrum of meanings, it was intimately related to politics as it connoted a “divorce” or “quarrel,” but also a moment
of decision and a turning point. It was also used as a jurisprudential term in the sense of making a decision, reaching a verdict or judgment (kritik) on an alleged disorder so as to provide a way to restore order. Rather than being
separated into two domains of meaning—that of “subjective critique” and “objective crisis”—krisis and kritik were conceived as interlinked moments. Koselleck explains this conceptual fusion: [I]t wasin the sense of “judgment,”
“trial,” “legal decision,” and ultimately “court” that crisis achieved a high constitutionalstatus, through which the individual citizen and the community were bound together. The “for and against” wastherefore present in the original
meaning of the word and thisin a manner that already conceptually anticipated the appropriate judgment. 342 Recognition of an objective crisis and subjective judgments to be passed on it so as to come up with a formula for restoring
the health of the polity by setting the times right were thereby infused and implicated in each other.343 Consequently, as Brown notes, there could be no such thing as “mere critique” or “untimely critique” because critique always
entailed a concern with political time: “[C]ritique as political krisis promise[d] to restore continuity by repairing or renewing the justice that gives an order the prospect of continuity, that indeed ma[de] it continuous.”344 The breaking
of this intimate link between krisis and kritik, the consequent depoliticization of critique and its sundering from crisis coincides with the rise of modern political order and redistribution of the public space into the binary structure of
sovereign and subject, public and private.345 Failing to note the link between the critique it practiced and the looming political crisis, emerging philosophies of history, according Koselleck, had the effect of obfuscating this crisis. As
he explains, “[n]ever politically grasped, [this political crisis] remained concealed in historico-philosophical images of the future which cause the day’s events to pale.”346 It is this intimate, but severed, link between crisis and critique
in historical narratives that Wendy Brown’s discussion brings to the fore and re-problematizes. She turns to Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” and challenges conventional understandings of historical
practice of critical theory appeals to a concern with time to the
that “[t]he crisis that incites critique and that critique engages itself signals a rupture of temporal continuity , which is at the same time a rupture in
political imaginary .”348 Cast in these terms, it is a particular experience with time, with the present, that Brown suggests Benjamin’s theses aim to capture. Rather than an unmoving or an automatically overcome
present (a present that is out of time), the present is interpreted as an opening that calls for a response to it. This call for a response highlights the idea that, far from being
a luxury, critique is non-optional in its nature. Such an understanding of critical thought is premised on a historical consciousness that grasps the present historically so as to break with the selfconception of the age. Untimely
critique transforms into a technique to blow up the present through fracturing its apparent seamlessness by
insisting on alternatives to its closed political and epistemological universe .349 Such a conception resonates with the distinction that Žižek
makes between a political subjectivity that is confined to choosing between the existing alternatives —one that takes the limits of what is given as
the limits to what is possible—and a form of subjectivity that creates the very set of alternatives by “transcend[ing] the coordinates
of a given situation [and] ‘posit[ing] the presuppositions’ of one's activity” by redefining the very situation within
which one is active.”350 With its attempt to grasp the times in its singularity, critique is cast neither as a breaking free from the weight of time (which would amount to ahistoricity) nor being weighed down
by the times (as in the case of teleology).351 It conceives the present as “historically contoured but not itself experienced as history because not necessarily
continuous with what has been.”352 It is an attitude that renders the present as the site of “non-utopian possibility” since it is
historically situated and constrained yet also a possibility since it is not historically foreordained or determined.353 It entails contesting the delimitations of choice and
challenging the confinement of politics to existing possibilities . Rather than positing history as existing objectively outside of narration, what Brown’s discussion
materialism, which conceives of the present in terms of unfolding laws of history.347 According to Brown, the
extent
highlights is the intimate relation between the constitution of political subjectivity vis-à-vis the meaning of history for the present. It alludes to “the power of historical discourse,” which Mowitt explains as a power “to estrange us
what we believe to have happened to us bears concretely on what we are
prepared to do with ourselves both now and in the future.”354 Mark Neocleous concretizes the political stakes entailed in such
encounters with history—with the dead—from the perspective of three political traditions: a conservative one, which aims to reconcile the dead
with the living, a fascist one, which aims to resurrect the dead to legitimate its fascist program, and a historical
materialist one, which seeks redemption with the dead as the source of hope and inspiration for the future .355 Brown’s
from that which is most familiar, namely, the fixity of the present” because “
discussion of critique and political time is significant for highlighting the immediately political nature of critique in contrast to contemporary invocations that cast it as a self-indulgent practice, an untimely luxury, a disinterested,
attempt to trace critique vis-à-vis its relation to political time provides a counter-narrative to the
conservative and moralizing assertions that shun untimely critique of security as a luxurious interest that is committed to
abstract ideals rather than to the “reality” of politics—i.e., running after utopia rather than modeling “real world” solutions. Dismantling security as untimely
critique entails a similar claim to unsettle the accounts of “what the times are” with a “bid to reset time.” 356 It aspires to be
untimely in the face of the demands on critical thought to be on time; aims to challenge the moralizing move , the call to conscience
that arrives in the form of assertions that saying “no!” to security, that refusing to write it, would be untimely .
Rather than succumbing to the injunction that thought of political possibility is to be confined within the framework of security, dismantling security aims to open up space for
alternative forms, for a different language of politics so as to “stop digging” the hole politics of security have dug us
and start building a counter-discourse. Conclusion As an attempt to push a debate that is fixated on security to the limit and explore what it means to dismantle security, my
engagement with various aspects of this move is not intended as an analysis raised at the level of causal interpretations or as an attempt to find better solutions to a problem that already has a name. Rather, it tries to
recast what is taken-for-granted by attending to the conceptual assumptions, the historical and systemic conditions
within which the politics of security plays itself out. As I tried to show in this chapter, it also entails a simultaneous move of refusing to
be a disciple of the discipline of security . This implies overturning not only the silent disciplinary protocols about
which questions are legitimate to ask, but also the very framework that informs those questions. It is from this perspective that I devoted two
distanced, academic endeavor. Her
chapters to examining and clarifying the proposal to dismantle security as a claim on time. After explicating, in Chapter 4, the temporal structure that is enacted by politics of security and elaborating on how security structures the
relation between the present and the future, in this chapter, I approached the question of temporality from a different perspective, by situating it in relation to disciplinary times in order to clarify what an untimely critique of security
such a notion of
the untimely paradoxically calls on critical thought to be on time in the sense of being punctual and strategic . Turning to
Wendy Brown’s discussion of the relation between critique and political time, I elaborated on the sense of untimely critique that dismantling security strives for—a critique that goes
against the times that are saturated by the infinite passion to secure and works toward taking apart the
architecture of security.
means. I tried to elaborate this notion of the untimely by exploring the understanding of untimeliness that informs certain conceptions of critical theorizing in International Relations. I suggested that
3
GOP will retake the Senate – strong candidates, low Obama popularity, congressional ballot lead, weak Dem
incumbents
Kristol 9/18/14 (William, Founder and Editor @ Weekly Standard + Political/Foreign Policy Commentator, "All
Together Now," http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/all-together-now_805307.html)
November 4 is likely to lead to a GOP takeover of the Senate after eight long years of Democratic control, and to perhaps the
largest GOP majority in the House in modern times. It’s an election that could—that should—set the stage for victory in 2016, as the Democrats’
triumph in 2006 set the stage for victory in 2008. So even though it’s contrary to interest for an opinion magazine to suggest a time out from
groaning and sniping and grumbling—and even though we reserve the right to groan and snipe and grumble at our discretion—maybe it’s a good
moment for everyone out there who thinks the country is endangered by Barack Obama, that it is being damaged by Harry Reid, and that it would
be ruined by another Democratic presidential victory in 2016 to take a deep breath, let bygones be bygones, leave future concerns to the future,
and work to win in November. Fear of the Democrats should be a sufficient motive. But is there anything else to be said to inspire voters to vote,
donors to donate, and activists to activate? Yes. The Republican class of 2014 candidates are very impressive. A glance at their
biographies would show an unusual number of high-quality men and women, many of whom have real achievements outside politics, few of
whom are career politicians or children of politicians. From Tom Cotton in Arkansas to Joni Ernst in Iowa; from Ben Sasse in
Nebraska to Dan Sullivan in Alaska; from Elise Stefanik in upstate New York to Lee Zeldin on Long Island; from Marilinda Garcia in
western New Hampshire to Martha McSally in southeastern Arizona—a new generation of Republicans has stepped forward
worthy of support. And a glance at their birth dates would show that the Grand Old Party is this year the party of youth. For example: There
are seven marquee Senate races in which the Republican candidate has a good chance to take a Democratic seat (on
top of virtually certain pickups in West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota). It is on these races that control of the Senate
will hinge. In all of these contests—Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire—the
Republican challenger is younger than his or her Democratic opponent. Looking at the GOP field in 2014, it’s perhaps an exaggeration to
invoke John F. Kennedy’s words: “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans . . . tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and
bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has
always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.” But looking at these candidates, Republicans
would be justified in thinking—as Democrats thought in 1958, two years before Kennedy’s inauguration—that theirs is the party of youth and
energy, of new ideas and bold imagination. In the 1958 off-year elections, Democrats increased their majority in the House by 48
and won 13 Republican Senate seats, defeating 10 Republican incumbents. The GOP won’t achieve a victory of that magnitude in
But they can aspire to big gains , especially when polls show disapproval of Obama high, Republicans leading
in the generic congressional ballot, and a slew of Democratic incumbents below 50 percent .
2014.
Obama gets the blame - midterms are a referendum on his performance
Podhoretz 3/18/14 (John, editor of Commentary magazine, columnist for the New York Post, the author of several
books on politics, and a former presidential speechwriter, NY Post, "Obama’s failed foreign policy just another drag
on Democrats," http://nypost.com/2014/03/18/obamas-failed-foreign-policy-just-another-drag-on-democrats/)
He is the president. It’s his watch . Americans may be war-weary, but they still look to the man in the White House
to provide an overall sense of stability and safety.¶ Democrats need Americans to feel positively about the president
going into the 2014 elections. All election experts say the party’s showing nationally in November will correlate strongly
with how the country feels about the job the president is doing.
Legalization means Dems keep the Senate – boosts turnout and ensures support for
endangered candidates
Hudak 8/21/14 (John, Political Analyst + Fellow in Governance Studies @ Brookings Institution, "Here's Why
Marijuana Legalization Just Might Keep the Senate Blue," http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/21/marijuanalegalization-senate_n_5697958.html)
Marijuana legalization might ensure Harry Reid remains the Senate Majority Leader in 2014. In a year in which the battle
for majority control of the Senate is the biggest story of the midterms, every race counts. One of the more competitive battles for
the Senate is taking place in Alaska, where incumbent Sen. Mark Begich is fighting for another six-year term. However, the Senate race
is not the only choice Alaskans will face this November. They will decide whether their state will legalize recreational
marijuana, following their counterparts to the south: Washington and Colorado. There are many reasons why the Alaska Senate race is
competitive. Begich eked out a win in 2008 over the late Senator Ted Stevens. Alaska is a conservative, Republican-voting state. Mitt Romney
carried the state by 14 points in 2012. In fact, Alaska has only given its electoral votes to a Democratic candidate once since statehood, during
LBJ’s 1964 landslide victory. Finally, this year’s Senate race falls during a midterm, when electorates tend to favor Republican
candidates, particularly with an unpopular Democrat in the White House. Marijuana legalization could change that by
dramatically changing the character and nature of the midterm electorate in Alaska , and helping Sen. Begich win
reelection . People turn out for elections when they feel passion about a candidate or a race, but ballot initiatives can also
generate interest, passion and turnout. Research by Smith, DeSantis & Kassel illustrate that ballot initiatives in 2004 centering on outlawing same
sex marriage generated additional turnout (even in a presidential year) among conservatives in key states.
Passion about marijuana
legalization can do the same, and we have evidence of this effect . In 2012, Colorado and Washington had statewide
referenda on the question of marijuana legalization. With those initiatives on the ballot, the composition of each state’s electorate changed in
significant ways. Using exit poll data to compare changes in the characteristics of the electorate in each state between 2008 and 2012, we can
make inferences about the effects of legalization initiatives. brookings Marijuana legalization supporters, particularly passionate ones, tend to be
younger and either more liberal or more libertarian in nature—though recent polls suggest broader support in the electorate. In Washington in
2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 10% of the electorate. In 2012, with legalization on the ballot, that number increased to 21% of the
electorate—a more than 100% increase. The effect was even more pronounced for the 18-24 demographic, where electoral composition increased
from 5% to 13%. In addition, in 2008, 27% of the electorate called themselves “liberal.” In 2012, that number increased to 31%. brookings
Similar trends existed in Colorado. In 2008, the 18-29 demographic composed 14% of the electorate. In 2012, that group composed 20% of
voters. In fact, in Colorado the 18-24 demographic increased from 5% to 12% of the electorate from 2008 to 2012. The ideological composition
of turnout changed as well. In 2008, 17% of the electorate called itself liberal. In 2012, that figure skyrocketed to 28%. In Washington and
Colorado, the composition of those who turned out to vote changed dramatically between 2008 and 2012—each a presidential year. Nationally,
there was little change in the composition of the electorate in terms of youth and liberalism. But in the states with marijuana legalization
initiatives it did, dramatically. brookings There is also evidence those electoral shifts helped Democrats. In Colorado, those who voted in favor of
Amendment 64 (marijuana legalization) voted for President Obama at a rate of 68%—far above his support among all Colorado voters (51%).
Similarly, in Washington, among those who voted in favor of Initiative 502 (marijuana legalization), 72% also voted for President Obama. The
president won about 56% statewide. Roll Call’s Henry Decker and FireDogLake’s Jon Walker have also offered great insight into how electoral
changes coincide with marijuana legalization initiatives. However, there is more to this story than simply turnout. In many ways,
Democrats have missed a real opportunity to make electoral gains—or limit losses—by pushing legalization
initiatives. Some credit President Bush’s reelection in 2004 to the push for same sex marriage initiatives on statewide ballots by spurring social
conservative turnout. Democrats could have received a similar boost by pushing legalization initiatives that would
alter the electorate in a year when Democrats need it for structural and political reasons .
Democratic control of the Senate dooms TPA – GOP control key to passage
Hatch 14 (Orrin, Ranking Member of US Senate Finance Committee, "HATCH PUSHES FOR SENATE ACTION
ON BILL TO HELP BOOST JOB-CREATING TRADE PACTS," 2/4, States News Serivce, lexis)
Put simply, if Congress does not renew TPA, the TPP negotiations and those with the European Union will almost certainly
fail . That is why it is so disconcerting to me to see how some of my colleagues across the aisle have responded to President Obamas call for
TPA renewal.¶ TPA is one of the few issues where both parties can and should be able work together to achieve a common goal. I know that I,
along with my Republican colleagues, stand ready and willing to work with the administration to approve TPA as soon
as possible.¶ I believe the bipartisan bill Chairman Baucus and I recently introduced to renew TPA would receive strong bipartisan
support in the Senate if it were allowed to come up for a vote .¶ Indeed, I am confident that the vast majority of my
colleagues would join me in supporting the bill.¶ The problem is, Republicans are not in the majority in the
Senate. It is the Democrats that control the agenda . And, unfortunately, the Presidents call to renew TPA does not
appear to be a priority for them.¶ The question is: Will Senate Democrats work with the President on this issue?¶ I dont know the answer
to that question. But, I have to say that things dont look good.¶ Instead of robust support for the President and his trade agenda, the response weve
seen from Democrats has ranged from awkward silence on TPA to outright hostility. ¶ Needless to say, Im extremely disappointed by this.¶ Mr.
President, the issue here is fairly simple.¶ If we want to grow our economy through trade, the Congress must approve TPA and do so soon. ¶ The
President can play a key role here. By forcefully advocating for TPA renewal, he can help turn some of the skeptics in his party around.¶
Recently, the Financial Times published a powerful editorial which outlined the need for TPA and the role the President must play for TPA to
succeed. According to the editorial:¶ Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton pulled out all the stops to push through approval of the
controversial North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. He was able to squeak through a narrow victory by deft lobbying
of lawmakers and a willingness to make a strong case for globalization to the American public. Mr. Obama is lagging behind his predecessor on
both counts. The case for TTIP and TPP are both strong. The time for Mr. Obama to make those arguments has arrived. He has every incentive to
succeed. Failure to secure [TPA] would be a grievous blow to his presidency¶ Now, I understand that there are some powerful political forces that
lead some of my friends on the other side of the aisle to oppose international trade. However, lets be clear, if we fail to approve TPA, we
will be doing our nation and our economy a great disservice .¶ International trade is a good thing for our country. It is
one of the few tools Congress has to grow our economy that does not add to the federal deficit.¶ Mr. President, as I mentioned,
Senator Baucus and I, along with Chairman Camp, have negotiated and introduced a bipartisan, bicameral TPA bill. It is, in my opinion, the only
TPA bill that stands a chance of getting passed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. ¶ My colleagues on the other side of
the aisle have a choice. They can either work with Republicans to pass our bill and empower our country to complete
these important trade agreements, or they can throw up more roadblocks and cast more uncertainty on the Presidents
trade agenda.¶ As I stated, Republicans stand ready to work with President Obama on these issues and to help these trade
negotiations succeed. For the sake of our country and our economy, I sincerely hope my Democratic colleagues here in the Senate are
willing to do the same.
TPA passage vital for the economy and global trade
Kennedy and McLarty 2/12/14 (Mark and Mack, director of George Washington University's Graduate School of
Political Management + White House chief of staff and Special Envoy for the Americas under President Bill
Clinton, "Expand trade, improve economy: Column," http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/12/tradepromotion-authority-obama-economic-growth-column/5340989/)
After struggling with anemic growth for the last six years, the nation now finds itself with an opportunity to renew its vitality
through the most powerful economic elixir: expanded trade.¶ This benefit cannot be achieved without giving our
partners the confidence that the United States is negotiating in good faith, free from last minute changes and additions. This requires giving
President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (commonly known as TPA or "fast track") to present trade agreements for an up or down vote in
Congress.¶ Passing TPA is distasteful to both Republicans who do not the trust the president and Democrats who believe the benefits of free trade
are overstated. Yet before they added cherry flavors, many medicines with powerful cures had a bitter flavor. For the sake of America's
economic health , Congress must come together in a bipartisan fashion to give President Obama fast track authority, a power
granted to every chief executive since 1974.¶ The Obama Administration, led ably by United States Trade Representative (USTR) Michael
Froman, has engaged the European Union and nations in the Pacific in serious negotiations for high standard trade agreements. These two
accords would increase ties with historic allies, make us more competitive, increase job opportunities, enhance incomes and allow American
businesses to effectively sell to the fast growing Asian region. ¶ Critics would have you believe that somehow these agreements would weaken
environmental and labor standards, but most partner countries in question are already high-income nations that embrace strong worker and
environmental protections.¶ Ambassador Froman attempted to assuage those fears saying, "We have made clear that we're committed to
negotiating a high-standard, ambitious comprehensive deal." The TPA bill introduced by Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah,
already incorporates new protections to ensure that all partner countries meet rigorous guidelines.¶ As President Clinton's chief of staff when the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was passed and one of the deciding votes the last time Congress granted Fast Track authority,
we know how hard it is to move a significant trade accord. We also know how the dire predictions of skeptics are often shown to be illusory. ¶ The
only sucking sound induced by NAFTA was the gasps of trade skeptics whose economic chimeras failed to materialize. NAFTA has instead
exceeded expectations.¶ It launched Mexico on a path to strengthen its democratic institutions and progressively open its economy. A more
democratic and competitive Mexico, along with a more tightly integrated supply chain between the three North American economies, makes each
member of the NAFTA trio more competitive in world markets. Similar benefits await if we proceed with the proposed Asian and European
accords.¶ Passing TPA will require significant attention and effort from President Obama and Congress. Over 500
advocacy groups have written to lawmakers urging a vote against it. To date, 49 more House Democrats are on record opposing fast track than
supported NAFTA in 1994.¶ Advocating for free trade will require the president to stand up to members of his own party
to further his economic agenda.¶ It will take courage to forcefully advocate for an issue that splits one's party , but the benefits
to the nation will far outweigh any intra-party strife. That is what presidential leadership is all about.¶ There has never been an
economic golden age without trade. It has been the driving force behind new innovation. Its expansion has allowed countless
people the chance to achieve financial prosperity and advance civilization.¶ Trade has a wonderful history, but we believe its
best days are still ahead. Every trade liberalization advance has enhanced the well being of mankind. The United States has
arrived at a monumental opportunity to craft landmark trade agreements with the world. Let us not fail to build accords that will
spark economic growth , create a better future for our children and launch a new golden era of trade .
That prevents multiple scenarios for global WMD conflict
Panzner 8 (Michael, faculty at the New York Institute of Finance, 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond, and
currency markets who has worked in New York and London for HSBC, Soros Funds, ABN Amro, Dresdner Bank,
and JPMorgan Chase “Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from Economic Collapse,” pg. 136-138)
Continuing calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United States and other nations to spew
forth protectionist legislation like the notorious Smoot-Hawley bill. Introduced at the start of the Great Depression, it triggered a series
of tit-for-tat economic responses, which many commentators believe helped turn a serious economic downturn into a prolonged and
devastating global disaster. But if history is any guide, those lessons will have been long forgotten during the next collapse. Eventually, fed by a
mood of desperation and growing public anger, restrictions on trade, finance, investment, and immigration will almost certainly intensify.
Authorities and ordinary citizens will likely scrutinize the cross-border movement of Americans and outsiders alike, and lawmakers may even
call for a general crackdown on nonessential travel. Meanwhile, many nations will make transporting or sending funds to other countries
exceedingly difficult. As desperate officials try to limit the fallout from decades of ill-conceived, corrupt, and reckless policies, they will
introduce controls on foreign exchange. Foreign individuals and companies seeking to acquire certain American
infrastructure assets, or trying to buy property and other assets on the cheap thanks to a rapidly depreciating dollar,
will be stymied by limits on investment by noncitizens. Those efforts will cause spasms to ripple across economies
and markets, disrupting global payment, settlement, and clearing mechanisms. All of this will, of course, continue to
undermine business confidence and consumer spending. In a world of lockouts and lockdowns, any link that
transmits systemic financial pressures across markets through arbitrage or portfolio-based risk management, or that
allows diseases to be easily spread from one country to the next by tourists and wildlife, or that otherwise facilitates
unwelcome exchanges of any kind will be viewed with suspicion and dealt with accordingly. The rise in isolationism and protectionism will
bring about ever more heated arguments and dangerous confrontations over shared sources of oil, gas, and other key
commodities as well as factors of production that must, out of necessity, be acquired from less-than-friendly nations. Whether involving raw
materials used in strategic industries or basic necessities such as food, water, and energy, efforts to secure adequate supplies will take increasing
precedence in a world where demand seems constantly out of kilter with supply. Disputes over the misuse, overuse, and pollution of the
environment and natural resources will become more commonplace. Around the world, such tensions will give rise to full-scale
military encounters, often with minimal provocation. In some instances, economic conditions will serve as a convenient
pretext
for conflicts that stem from cultural and religious differences. Alternatively, nations may look to divert attention
away from domestic problems by channeling frustration and populist sentiment toward other countries and cultures.
Enabled by cheap technology and the waning threat of American retribution, terrorist groups will likely boost the
frequency and scale of their horrifying attacks, bringing the threat of random violence to a whole new level.
Turbulent conditions will encourage aggressive saber rattling and interdictions by rogue nations running amok. Ageold clashes will also take on a new, more heated sense of urgency. China will likely assume an increasingly belligerent posture
toward Taiwan, while Iran may embark on overt colonization of its neighbors in the Mideast. Israel, for its part,
may look to draw a dwindling list of allies from around the world into a growing number of conflicts . Some observers,
like John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have even speculated that an “intense confrontation” between the United
States and China is “inevitable” at some point. More than a few disputes will turn out to be almost wholly ideological. Growing cultural and
religious differences will be transformed from wars of words to battles soaked in blood. Long-simmering
resentments could also degenerate quickly, spurring the basest of human instincts and triggering genocidal acts.
Terrorists employing biological or nuclear weapons will vie with conventional forces using jets, cruise missiles,
and bunker-busting bombs to cause widespread destruction. Many will interpret stepped-up conflicts between Muslims and
Western societies as the beginnings of a new world war .
4
Text: The United States should decriminalize the private possession and use of marihuana in the US. The Federal
Bureau of Investigation in accordance with this policy should no longer drug test their employees.
Decriminalization solves and avoids election
Blumenson and Nielson 9 (Eric – Professor of Law, Suffolk University; J.D. Harvard Law School, and Eva –
Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University; J.D., University of Virginia, “NO RATIONAL BASIS:
THE PRAGMATIC CASE FOR MARIJUANA LAW REFORM”, 2009, 17 Va. J. Soc. Pol'y & L. 43, lexis)
What is needed most, of course, is a sea change in marijuana law, not least in order to end the destructiveness of present policy.
There should be major government-funded efforts to devise the most promising alternative legal regime. Our aim in this article is to underscore
the need for policy reform, not to argue for a particular policy. But we do want to offer a few provisional thoughts on three
possibilities, any one of which would constitute a vast improvement on present policy. The first is the one that currently
exists in parts of the United States: decriminalization of use and possession. Decriminalization does not end the ban on use
or sale of marijuana, but does remove criminal penalties for individuals found possessing a small amount.
Decriminalization was a successful reform strategy in the 1970s but its momentum ran out soon after. Several states
decriminalized possession of small quantities of marijuana in the 1970s, after President Nixon's commission on marijuana recommended it
as national policy. n118 These laws, for the most part, remain in effect and take several forms. n119 [*74] Other states have
stopped short of decriminalization, but offered ways to avoid a criminal record, for example by deferring a first offender's prosecution for
a period of time and then dismissing the charge if there has been no arrest in the interim. Decriminalization has four important factors
in its favor: (1) it puts an end to the worst excesses of current marijuana policy (including arrest, imprisonment, and the
deleterious effect on law enforcement practices we have discussed); (2) studies show that decriminalization does not
increase the number of marijuana users; n120 (3) it is arguably more consistent with international drug treaty
obligations than legalization, n121 and (4) it may again have a possibility of success, at least [*75] more so than any alternatives. As
noted, Rep. Barney Frank last year filed a decriminalization bill for the first time in Congress, saying that after decades of belief in its merits, he
now thinks public opinion supports it as well. n122 Recent polls show more popular support for marijuana
decriminalization than any time in the last three decades. n123 Decriminalization retains many of the drawbacks of present
policy, however, while jettisoning the worst. It still leaves marijuana production and sale to a black market populated by criminals, and eliminates
any [*76] government control over the drug or its market. And although removing criminal penalties would liberate marijuana users from the
virtually total loss of liberty that may be imposed under current law, preventing use of the substance raises separate liberty concerns we address
elsewhere. n124 Legalization eliminates the drawbacks just noted but may have many of its own , depending on its form.
Unlike decriminalization, it fully respects individual liberty, and it can help the government control the market in harm reducing ways.
Legalization should dry up the black market just as ending prohibition did, leaving in its place licensed sellers who would have every business
incentive to insure government imposed age limits, purity standards, and labels. It draws a sharp distinction between "soft drugs" and "hard
drugs," and removes the necessity for users to buy from people who sell both; and according to MacCoun and Reuter, to the degree that
marijuana became more available and less expensive, it might draw people away from more dangerous drugs they use now. n125
Legalizing marijuana violates international law – only the CP complies
Duke 13 (Steven B. – Professor of Law, Yale Law School, “The Future of Marijuana in the United States”, 2013,
91 Or. L. Rev. 1301, lexis)
B. Legalizing Marijuana Is Prohibited by International Treaties " Decriminalization " is the mechanism of choice
for the countries and most states that have sought to de-escalate drug prohibition. Decriminalization entails sharply
reducing to the equivalent of a traffic offense or completely eliminating criminal penalties for the possession and use
of small amounts of the drug. No government, however, has ever legalized the drug's distribution, even if that distribution is
small-scale and not for profit. Although decriminalization reduces some of the dreadful costs of full-scale prohibition, it retains and could even
encourage black-market distribution. n77 Reducing or eliminating penalties for consumers while failing to legalize and regulate distribution could
even exacerbate the violence and corruption that are inherent in illegal distribution networks. Alcohol Prohibition criminalized only the
manufacture and distribution of alcohol, not its possession or use. n78 It was, therefore, a model of decriminalization. Though a good start toward
legalization, decriminalization cannot be the ultimate solution. There is a common belief that the drug control treaties, chiefly the 1961
U nited N ations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, n79 prohibit any signatory state from legalizing the drugs covered
by the treaty, one of which is cannabis. That is why it is often said that the Netherlands does not legalize the distribution of
marijuana but merely [*1317] declines to prosecute the "coffee houses" that openly serve the drug to consumers. n80 Whether the
Convention prohibits all efforts to legalize marijuana is debatable. The provision that is often read as prohibitory is Article 4(c), which states that
the parties shall take such measures as may be necessary, "subject to the provisions of this Convention, to limit exclusively to medical and
scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of drugs." n81 That clearly allows
"medical" liberalization. Article 33 provides that the parties "shall not permit the possession of drugs except under legal authority." n82 This is
either meaningless or contemplates the granting of "authority." Article 36 says that the parties shall make intentional possession, use, et cetera, of
drugs "contrary to the provisions of this Convention" punishable and that "serious offenses" should be "liable to adequate punishment particularly
by imprisonment or other penalties of deprivation of liberty." n83 This obligation, however, is subject to the parties' "constitutional limitations."
n84 Article 28 permits the cultivation of cannabis, provided it is controlled and the parties seek to "prevent the misuse of, and illicit traffic in, the
leaves of the cannabis plant." n85 Article 30 requires that the trade in drugs exist "under license" except when carried out by a state enterprise.
n86 These provisions appear to have been written by someone devoted to ambiguity. Some provisions seem to invite legalization rather than
precluding it. Nonetheless, the prevailing view is that legalization of marijuana, other than for medical or scientific uses,
is contrary to the l961 Convention and later treaties as well. n87 Some countries, most recently Portugal, Mexico, and
Argentina, have decriminalized or legalized the small-scale possession and consumption of marijuana and other drugs. If the UN
Convention [*1318] requires these states to make marijuana possession criminally punishable, then these reforms, desirable as they are, violate
the Convention. Surprisingly, however, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime praises the Portugal experiment and opines that
it does not violate the Convention. Decriminalizing drug use "falls within the Convention parameters" because
"drug possession is still prohibited , but the sanctions fall under the administrative law, not the criminal law." n88
Apparently, therefore, an unenforced ten dollar civil fine would satisfy the Convention . Perhaps full legalization with
regulation would also suffice, leaving only laissez-faire prohibited.
Violating these drug treaties spills over and collapses the treaty system
Bewley-Taylor 3 (David R. – Senior Lecturer, Department of American Studies, University of Wales Swansea,
“Challenging the UN drug control conventions: problems and possibilities”, International Journal of Drug Policy,
http://www.unawestminster.org.uk/pdf/drugs/UNdrugsBewley_Taylor_IJDP14.pdf)
Disregarding the treaties
Another strategy would
be for Parties to simply ignore the treaties or certain parts of them . In this way they could
institute any policies deemed to be necessary at the national level, including for example the legalisation of
cannabis and the introduction of a licensing system for domestic producers. This option has been gaining support amongst many
opponents of the prohibition based international system for some time. Disregarding all or selected components of the treaties ,
however, raises serious issues beyond the realm of drug control . The possibility of nations unilaterally ignoring drug
control treaty commitments could threaten the stability of the entire treaty system. As a consequence states may be wary
of opting out. Some international lawyers argue that all treaties can naturally cease to be binding when a fundamental
change of circumstances has occurred since the time of signing ( Starke, 1989 , pp. 473 / 474). Bearing in mind the dramatic changes in
the nature and extent of the drug problem since the 1960s, this doctrine of rebus sic stantibus could probably be applied to the drug treaties. Yet
the selective application of such a principle would call into question the validity of many and varied conventions.
Treaty abrogation breaks the foundations of international law
Koplow 12 (David A. Koplow, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Applied Legal Studies at
Georgetown University Law Center, former Special Counsel for Arms Control to the DOD General Counsel, Winter
2013, “Indisputable Violations: What Happens When the United States Unambiguously Breaches a Treaty?”
Fletcher Forum of International Affairs Vol. 37:1, http://www.fletcherforum.org/wpcontent/uploads/2013/02/Koplow_37-1.pdf)
However, there is a cost when the world’s strongest state behaves this way. One potential danger is that other countries
may mimic this disregard for legal commitments and justify their own cavalier attitudes toward international law
by citing U.S. precedents . Reciprocity and mutuality are fundamental tenets of international practice; it is foolhardy
to suppose that other parties will indefinitely continue with treaty compliance if they feel that the United States is taking
advantage of them by unilateral avoidance of shared legal obligations. So far, there has not been significant erosion of the
treaties discussed in the three examples. The United States and Russia will fall years short of compliance with the CWC destruction obligations,
but other parties, with the notable exception of Iran, have reacted with aplomb, comfortable with the two giants’ unequivocal commitment to
eventual compliance. Likewise, the VCCR is not unraveling, even if other states lament the asymmetry in consular access to detained foreigners.
And while many states pay their UN dues late and build up substantial arrearages, that recalcitrance seems to stem more from penury than from a
deliberate choice to follow the U.S. lead. But that persistent flouting undermines the treaties—and by extension, it jeopardizes the
entire fabric of international law . Chronic noncompliance— especially ostentatious, unexcused, unjustified
noncompliance — also sullies the nation’s reputation and degrades U.S. diplomats’ ability to drive other states to
better conform with their obligations under the full array of treaties and other international law commitments from
trade to human rights to the Law of the Sea . The United States depends upon the international legal structure
more than anyone else: Americans have the biggest interest in promoting a stable, robust, reliable system for international exchange. It is
shortsighted and self-defeating to publicly and unblushingly undercut the system that offers the U nited States so many
benefits. It is especially damaging when, following an indisputable violation, the United States acknowledges its default, participates in an
international dispute resolution procedure, and apologizes—but then continues to violate the treaty. The CWC implementation bodies, the
International Court of Justice, and even the UN General Assembly and Security Council are unable to effectively do much to sanction or penalize
the mighty United States, but it is still terrible for U.S. interests to disregard those mechanisms.
Effective international law facilitates global coordination over public goods---solves multiple existential threats
Shaffer 12 (Gregory Shaffer, Melvin C. Steen Professor of Law, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of
Political Science, University of Minnesota, “International Law and Global Public Goods in a Legal Pluralist World,”
Eur J Int Law (2012) 23 (3): 669-693, http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/3/669.full)
Power fragments and states holding nuclear weapons destabilize, risking nuclear
proliferation and
terrorist use. Climate change intensifies while states
dither
Fisheries deplete, deserts expand, and aquifers diminish
¶ Increased transnational
interdependence recasts domestic issues into global ones
examples
include
public health, and civil conflict
We face imminent financial collapse with scant collective will to address it.
eventual
that are the main contributors
findings as ‘the greatest hoax ever perpetrated’.1
and politicians with veto power trivialize repeated scientific
. International law scholarship, in the meantime, takes a turn towards celebrating pluralism
without sufficiently accounting for institutional variation to address different contexts. Those writing on global public goods challenges, at the same time, tend to come from disciplines other than law.2
. To give one mundane example, until 1997, corporate insolvency law in Indonesia was considered a purely local matter. But with the onset of the
Asian financial crisis, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Asian Development Bank rethought domestic corporate insolvency law as a global issue in light of the risks of financial conta gion, threatening a global public good, financial stability.3 Other
domestic banking regulation, tax avoidance (given the impact on state sovereign debt crises), pest control,
. In response, states create new international institutions and existing international
institutions expand their mandates. The UN Security Council has expanded its mandate for overseeing international peace and security to authorize ‘humanitarian intervention’, and the World Health Organization has done so to address public health in response to the SARS epidemic and
similar threats.4 States and state institutions sometimes create international club-like institutions with limited membership, such as the Financial Action Task Force and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, with the express aim of affecting behaviour in non-members, such as over
money laundering and bank capital requirements.5¶ So what is international law’s role in the production of global public goods? Where are greater international legal constraints and international institutions needed, and where should international law retain slack? International law both is
required to produce global public goods and can potentially impede dynamic processes that are needed to address global public goods challenges. This article provides a framework for addressing these issues in light of variation in the properties of global public goods (section 3), their
distributive implications (section 4), and alternative institutional choices for confronting them, as reflected in different theoretical visions for global governance advanced within international law scholarship (section 5). But first we address the rise of the legal pluralist vision (section 1) and
the tensions between it and the concept of global public goods (section 2).¶ 1 The Rise of the Legal Pluralist Vision¶ Legal pluralism seems a bit of a fad in international law scholarship today, just as dialectical federalism may be a bit of a fad in the United States, and constitutional
pluralism in the European Union.6 Legal pluralism is a construct, a way of understanding and envisaging the world, both positively (the way the world is) and normatively (the way it should be). The challenge with the legal pluralist construct is how it takes account of the global public goods
challenges confronting us. ¶ What has led to the rise of this academic construct, its proliferation, its catching on, its enticement of our imaginations? In part, the concept resonates with our experience of multiple overlapping orders in tension with each other, with no clear centre. In part, the
concept provides a normative vision of restructuring plural orders into pluralist ones – that is, re-envisaging them from fragmented, closed, sovereign legal orders into an open, interacting, interlinked, interdependent, multi-level structure of legal ordering. In part, it particularly resonates with
those writing in Europe, reflecting the European experience with supranational law. The European experience, encompassing both economic regulation and human rights protection, is viewed as an experimental model and ‘laboratory’ for the ordering of a global legal pluralism, one which
provides order without centralized hierarchy, hegemony, or the abandonment of public law principles to transnational market forces.7¶ Yet the turn to a pluralist vision also has something to do with our disenchantments, our disenchantment with international law, the limits of the European
experiment where a constitutional order exists but has been formally rejected by its citizens, and the failure of progressive politics in the US at the national level, spurring a strategic retreat out of political necessity to bottom up progressive initiatives from small municipal activist havens like
Berkeley, California, and Madison, Wisconsin. There are good reasons for such disenchantment within the US, with the populist lure of the Tea Party’s destructive rhetoric of any sense of collective purpose, its members cheering at Republican debates at the prospect of Americans dying
because they do not have health insurance. There are good reasons for this disenchantment in Europe with little sense of solidarity in facing a crisis threatening the Euro, the Union itself, and the world, with the biggest sovereign defaults in history, ones that would dwarf earlier defaults in
South America and Asia. It is a crisis which – to play with Hobbes’ famous phrase – could be nasty and brutish, but not short. And there are good reasons for such disenchantment globally, with the cynicism of the Bush administration’s despising of international law in invading Iraq, its
trivializing of torture, and its ordering the freeze of individual assets through Security Council resolutions with no concern for due process. International law failed to constrain power when power chose to belittle and ignore it, and it served to legitimize power when power deigned to deploy
it.¶ The concept of pluralism certainly captures much going on in the world better than its occasional foil, the concept of constitutionalism.8 There is rarely any central hierarchy in international law. And even where there is a glimpse of a shadow of hierarchy, such as decisions by the UN
Security Council or of the WTO Appellate Body, there always follows the challenge of implementation. International law depends on national systems and private actors to implement its dictates, and it has little authority to ensure that they do so.¶ We have a fragmented plurality of legal
orders spatially in at least three senses.9 First, as international functional organizations proliferate, we have a plurality at the international level – constituting a horizontal plurality. Different semi-autonomous international institutions address common issue areas in different ways. At times
actors may strategically create overlap among international institutions to reorient international legal norms when they are unable to trigger such change within an existing institution. The tensions between the rules of the WTO and the Convention on Biodiversity and its Biosafety Protocol
are a salient example.10 Institutions with overlapping mandates may also compete for leadership on a legal issue, as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Asian Development Bank did during the Asian financial crisis.11 ¶ Secondly, we have a plurality of legal orders between
levels of governance – constituting a vertical plurality. Since considerable power remains at the nation state level, whether for producing detailed law, implementing it, or enforcing it, international law mu st interact with national law to be effective. In practice, domestic law and institutions
will always remain critical parts of a recursive process of resistance, adoption, and adaptation of international legal norms, which in turn can reshape those international norms.¶ Thirdly, in an economically interdependent world, private actors develop non-public legal orders at the state and
international levels. They are sometimes encouraged by public actors that may later codify these private legal norms, or enforce them judicially, or collaborate through forming ‘public–private partnerships’. We thus also have a plurality of public and private legal orders.12¶ The concept of
legal pluralism does not signify disorder – per the international relations trope of anarchy. Legal pluralism, with its account of interacting legal orders, takes the idea of international law seriously. Otherwise, there is nothing with which national legal systems can interact, except with each
other or with private legal ordering. The normative vision of legal pluralism rather aims to foster transnational and global legal order out of the plural; it aims to structure out of the many one, but with the one constituted by the interactions of the many.13 ¶ 2 Legal Pluralism and the
Challenge of Global Public Goods¶ Despite the appeal of the legal pluralist vision, one realizes in reading thought-provoking authors on legal pluralism, such as Mireille Delmas-Marty and Nico Krisch, that though they compellingly support their arguments with examples and case studies,
their case studies do not focus on the challenges of global public goods. They do not, one might conjecture, because there is a tension between the operation of legal pluralism and the production of global public goods where processes of pluralist interaction will provide too little too late.¶
What do we mean by a global public good? In economic theory, a public good, in contrast to a private good, is one that is non-excludable (no one can be excluded from the good’s consumption) and non-rivalrous (the good’s consumption does not reduce its availability to others).14 Clean air,
for example, is a public good because it is not depleted by our breathing it, and it cannot be appropriated by a few. The term ‘good’ refers to a product, and not a normative attribute. A public good thus can be positive (such as knowledge), or negative, a good that we wish to curtail so that our
aim is to produce its absence (such as terrorism).¶ Those promoting international cooperation often broaden the definition of a public good classically used in economic theory, which was statist in its initial focus, to encompass a larger number of issues for global action. On the one hand, the
two-fold ‘publicness’ of a good in practice often lies along a continuum, so that goods may combine public and private attributes, complicating the assessment of how to generate them.15 On the other hand, one reason policy-makers arguably have developed a broader definition of global
public goods is to enhance the scope for global governance projects and thus legitimize their pursuit.16 The concept of global public goods, for example, was originated under a project sponsored by the UN Development Programme which seeks funding for projects. Inge Kaul and her
collaborators, leading that project, use a relaxed definition of public good as ‘goods with benefits that extend to all countries, people, and generations’,17 while noting that the concept of public good is a social construction.18 Such expanded definitions, however, risk making the concept of
global public goods so malleable that it becomes abused, leading to scepticism and cynicism regarding its relevance.19 As we will see in section 3, we rather need to differentiate among different types of public goods in order meaningfully to address t he role of international law and
organizations in their production. ¶ The major challenge for the production of many (but not all) global public goods, as well as those public goods that are transnational (but not global) in scope,20 and thus the challenge of celebrating legal pluralism, is collective action and free riding.
Nation states and other actors will not invest in global public goods if their independent action will have no impact, or if they can free ride on the investment of others. To produce gl obal public goods often requires a sense of collective purpose based on mutual interests and understandings.
To arrive at that collective purpose, we need (for economists) an alignment of incentives, and (for sociologists) socialization processes that lead to a common identity (such as national citizens). We are then more likely to cooperate and create institutions that invest in producing public goods.
The creation of nation states with general taxing powers and a monopoly of the legitimate use of force facilitated the production of national public goods. The development of the theory of public goods correspondingly has been statist on account of the existence of centralized decisionmaking in nation states which produce them.21 ¶ The most salient challenge internationally is that we lack legitimate, centralized institutions with general taxing and regulatory powers. We thus have traditionally depended on cooperation between nation states involving decentralized forms
of implementation and enforcement to advance collective goals. International law facilitates this cooperation through creating international institutions and common norms and rules, thereby reducing transaction, monitoring, and enforcement costs and building shared understandings.22 States
created the UN and its Security Council to help to ensure the global public good of international peace and security. They created the World Health Organization to protect public health from the spread of infectious diseases, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to address
climate stabilization, the World Trade Organization to address trade liberalization and help to manage inter-state trade conflicts so that they do not escalate into 1930s beggar-thy-neighbour policies, the Financial Action Task Force to address money laundering of illicit funds, and the
International Monetary Fund to stabilize currency and sovereign debt crises. The concerns addressed by these institutions can be viewed in global public goods terms. Yet none of these institutions has a general taxing power to address them. All of them depend on negotiations between states
over the amount of ‘contributions’.¶ 3 The Need to Differentiate between Global Public Goods¶ In order to assess the place and role of international law and institutions to promote and govern the production of global public goods, we need to differentiate among the range of public goods
challenges faced, as opposed to speaking of global public goods and international law in the abstract. Global public goods come in different varieties, calling for different institutional responses, sometimes involving greater centralization through international law and institutions, and
sometimes not. There is no one size fits all, no one optimal institutional structure. For the production of many global public goods, legal pluralism, in which different legal orders interact with each other, works fine. There may be little need for international law, at least in its hard (mandatory)
law variety, much less centralized international institutions. ¶ Since global public goods do not come in one variety, international law plays a variable role in their production. As Scott Barrett conceptualizes in his book Why Cooperate?: The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods,23 some
global public goods raise collective action problems and others do not. Barrett, following other economists, classifies global public goods into three varieties: single best efforts goods, weakest links goods, and aggregate efforts goods.24 An example of a single best efforts public good, on the
cover of his book, is the crashing of a giant asteroid into the earth. All countries are affected by this prospect. Scientists do not know when one will hit and what size it will be, but they find that small ones hit the earth about once a month, and estimate that potentially catastrophic ones that
could devastate an area the size of Manhattan every 250 years, and one that could cause the extinction of most life forms every 65 million years.25 For this global public good, the US has the incentive to finance research and implement technology to detect and deter such happenings. No
international treaty is required for it to do so. Other countries may free ride on the US’s research, or may engage in complementary research, but that will not deter the US from investing. ¶ Similarly, countries, companies, and even individual researchers have incentives to invest in basic
science on their own which can benefit the world. Joseph Salk’s development of the polio vaccine in the US was a gift to the world, as he did not patent the polio vaccine.26 Such a good can be produced by private initiatives (such as those of pharmaceutical companies and of the Gates
Foundation), purely national ones (such as those of the National Institutes of Health), or international collaborative ones (such as the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme in Tropical Diseases).27 ¶ Is there no required role for international law in these cases? Even in the
asteroid case, Barrett notes the potential negative externalities of other countries relying on the US. The US may have the incentive to invest in producing the global public good, but in a way that could create a new risk. If an asteroid bears toward the earth, and if the existing technology is
such that the asteroid could only be slightly deflected so that it would crash into a different part of the earth, who should make the decision regarding its deflection? Even if it were to be deflected into the ocean, the location of its impact would raise differential risks for countries of a
geoengineering increasingly looks like an important policy option for climate stabilization
Yet
geoengineering may benefit some countries and harm others. Climate engineering constitutes a huge experiment that
poses unforeseeable, differential risks
If
different countries engage in climate engineering, their plural efforts will interact, potentially undercutting each
other. Coordination over climate change thus raises governance challenges
there is
a role for international law and international institutions in coordinating decisions
¶ Eliminating infectious diseases and curtailing
w
m d
are weakest link public goods
tsunami.28¶ Similarly,
, given the world’s inability to reduce
carbon emissions. It thus can be viewed as a global public good, at least to avoid abrupt and catastrophic climate change.29 Since engineering the climate may be relatively cheap, it could be a single best efforts global public good.
like climate change itself,
for countries in light of uncertainties. A wealthy country may decide to invest in geoengineering to assist its own climate situation, but in the process have negative externalities on others.
. Who should decide whether and how the climate should be engineered? Once again,
even though only one or a few wealthy countries invest in geoengineering on their
own.
the proliferation of
eapons of
ass
estruction
. A wealthy country can
invest in preventing an infectious disease within its borders through financing the vaccination of its population each year. The US does so, for example, with polio vaccines. Yet it would be much more cost effective to eradicate polio, as the world did for smallpox in the 1970s. The benefitcost ratio for smallpox eradication is thought to be 159:1, if all costs are included, and 483:1, if only international funds for financing eradication efforts in developing countries are considered.30 That is a remarkable rate of return. Investing in polio eradication could provide another global
public good. Yet, in order to eradicate polio, poor and failed states, such as Somalia, are the weakest links. ¶ The
the auspices of the UN
World Health Organization, an international institution created under
leads the eradication efforts
and inheriting the mandate of an earlier institution created pursuant to the League of Nations,
. The WHO includes distinct voting rules for its regulations on
infectious diseases, which facilitate collective action for collective purposes. The general rule of international law of treaties is an ‘opt in’ rule. A state is not bound unless it consents. Under Articles 21 and 22 of the WHO constitution, however, a majority decision is binding on matters
involving ‘procedures designed to prevent the international spread of disease’, unless a state opts out. The WHO created new International H ealth Regulations in 2005 pursuant to these provisions, which require states to build institutional capacity toward containing communicable diseases,
collaborate with each other, and maintain clear points of contact.31 In parallel, the regulations expand the legal authority of the WHO’s Director-General to intervene in response to communicable disease outbreaks, including through a system for convening experts and declaring a public
health emergency of international concern. As has been shown experimentally and statistically, opt-out rules generate much broader participation than do opt-in rules.32 No WHO member, in fact, opted out of the 2005 International Health Regulations.33 ¶
weapons of mass destruction out of terrorist hands is another weakest link global public good
Keeping
. We do not know where or when such weapons will be
used, but the fallout of their use will have global repercussions, whether for life and health, civil rights, or the global economy. Countries thus have the incentive to keep these weapons out of terrorist hands, but the result will depend on the weakest links. The weakest links today are Pakistan,
Russia, and North Korea. New weakest links may emerge, as more states invest in nuclear technology to gain advantage or parity with their rivals. States in 1968 signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was extended indefinitely in 1995,34 and the Convention on the
Physical Protection of Nuclear Material in 1987, amended in 2005.35 In addition, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1540 in 2004 which enjoins all states to take measures to prevent nuclear weapons materials from being obtained by non-state actors having ‘terrorist purposes’.36
The non-proliferation regime, however, has been under some risk of unravelling, as the Bush administration created a special regime for India and reconsidered the US’s first strike options and weapons development plans.37¶ The severest global public goods challenge today is what Barrett
calls an aggregate efforts public good – that is, where the global public good can only be produced through the aggregate efforts of multiple countries. The world appears to have been startlingly successful in addressing the depletion of the ozone layer, starting with a framework convention,
then turning to hard law obligations that were progressively enhanced, and then using soft law mechanisms to facilitate compliance, even when formally hard law sanctions were available.38 The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer created a variety of sticks and
carrots to realign incent ives, including potential trade sanctions and a Multilateral Fund for Implementation for developing countries. In contrast, the world has been completely unsuccessful in addressing climate change mitigation, which i s a much more complex and difficult issue that is
more susceptible to free riding, undermining collective action. Human-induced climate change is happening and it is not clear what, if anything, effectively will be done to reduce emissions. ¶ These different public goods entail different problem types. That of weakest link public goods
involves a holdout problem, whether the holdout is an unwilling one, such as North Korea over nuclear weapons, or an unable one, such as Somalia regarding polio eradication. That of aggregate efforts public goods involves a free rider/collective action problem, resulting in underinvestment
in providing a solution. And that of best shot public goods involves a positive externalities problem because the investor does not fully capture the benefits. It is easier to fund best shot public goods, even if the result is overinvestment from the perspective of global efficiency. A technological
alternative to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) for refrigerants, propellants, and solvents (a best shot problem) appears to have resolved ozone layer depletion by facilitating the phase-out of CFCs (an aggregate efforts problem). Similarly, climate engineering (a best shot problem) has become a
default solution for addressing climate change because of the difficulty of agreeing to emissions reductions (an aggregate efforts problem).¶ There is a varying role for international law and international institutions in producing these different global public goods. For best shot global public
goods, an international institution is not needed to develop them. Private foundations could provide some of these goods, such as through prizes for the development of new drugs to combat tropical diseases. Yet where decisions over implementation can have negative externalities,
international legal obligations and institutions that constrain unilateral action can better ensure fairness and manage conflicts, and possibly produce public goods more efficiently, as in the case of asteroid deflection and climate engineering. For a ggregate efforts public goods, in comparison,
there is a greater need for centralized institutions to produce them, leading to a relinquishment of some national sovereignty. The opening quotation from Nordhaus reflects his frustration with the global collective failure to address climate change. In contrast, with weakest link public goods,
the challenge sometimes lies in building state sovereignty. The challenge for disease eradication, for example, is with ‘failed states’ that lack functional governing institutions. In other weakest-link situations involving states unwilling to cooperate, such as that of nuclear proliferation, there is
greater need for an international institution such as the UN Security Council, combined with financial transfers to secure nuclear materials. Otherwise, pressure for unilateral action will increase. ¶ In sum, international law and organizations play varying roles in the production and governance
of global public goods. Table 1 summarizes the relationship of different types of global public goods with international law and organizations in a legal pluralist world.¶ 4 The Challenge of Distributive Conflict and the Production of Global Public Goods¶ International law, like all law, has
distributive consequences, posing particular challenges for governing the production of global public goods. These distributive issues cannot be elided, although they often are in legal scholarship. At least three distributive issues arise in decisions over the provision of global public goods: the
specific terms of cooperation for producing a global public good; choices among producing different global public goods in a world of limited resources; and the potential of actual conflict in the pursuit of different public goods which can act at cross-purposes to each other. ¶ It is striking that
many of the international legal scholars who incorporate ra tional international relations theory to explain international cooperation have drawn on the familiar Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) situation from game theory.40 The Prisoner’s Dilemma game, however, elides distributive issues. In the
classic PD model, states are assumed to have a defined set of preferences and a common interest in reaching a cooperative outcome, and the primary impediment to be overcome is the fear that other states will cheat on their agreements. In PD models, mechanisms for the monitoring of state
behaviour and the sanctioning of states that violate the terms of the agreement can be created to address these concerns. International law thus comes to the rescue to facilitate mutually beneficial outcomes. Since concerns over cheating, shirking, and slacking inhibit the pr oduction of global
public goods through international cooperation, the PD model may seem appropriate. ¶ However, the Prisoner’s Dilemma game ignores another important obstacle to successful cooperation, namely conflicts among states with different interests over the distribution of the costs and benefits of
cooperation.41 When states cooperate in international politics, they do not simply choose between ‘cooperation’ and ‘defection’, the binary choices available in PD games. They rather choose among specific terms of cooperation, which raise distributive issues.42 Different states and
constituencies within them can have competing preferences for different international rules and standards. States, and especially powerful states, thus jockey to employ different forms of international law in a world of fragmented institutions in an effort to influence the development, meaning,
and impact of international law.43¶ Secondly, different states and private actors benefit from the production of some global public goods more than others. Since resources are limited, they face opportunity costs when they make choices regarding the production of public goods. They must
determine not only which public goods to fund, but also how much to fund each of them.44 Distributive concerns arise in choice and budgeting decisions, given states’ and private actors’ conflicting views. ¶ Thirdly, the pursuit of different public goods can conflict in a more direct sense. One
public good may interfere with the pursuit of another. For example, choices over the generation of at least four public goods arise in the debate over the interaction of public health, pharmaceutical patent protection, human rights, and trade policy: knowledge-generation, liberalized trade,
public health, and the right to life and human dignity.45 Knowledge has public-good attributes since once knowledge enters the public domain it is no longer excludable and our consumption does not diminish its availability.46 The central issue is how to generate knowledge that facilitates
new inventions and understandings most effectively and equitably. International trade law similarly has public good attributes, since all countries benefit not only from the wider variety of products made available at lower prices that trade liberalization facilitates, but also because they benefit
from rules constraining mutually harmful beggar-thy-neighbour policies.47 Public health constitutes a third implicated public good since we all benefit from the global eradication of diseases and we do not diminish that good when we benefit from it.48 The right to life and human dignity can
be viewed as yet another affected public good to the extent that it affects our moral sensibilities.49 ¶ The production of these public goods, however, can conflict, complicating global decision-making over the terms of international law. The recognition and enforcement of patent rights under
the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs Agreement) and other conventions can generate incentives for the production of knowledge and new drugs for the protection of human life. But the protection of pharmaceutical patent rights also can
diminish the benefits of liberalized trade by reducing the consumption possibilities of citizens, interfere with the provision of public health policies in containing diseases, and raise human rights concerns, as the AIDS epidemic illustrates. Moreover, mandatory vaccination policies to protect
public health raise human rights concerns, especially from a libertarian perspective, and in particular given uncertainty regarding the consequences of vaccinations. ¶ In sum, choices over global governance policies involve different values, priorities, and perspectives, considerable
uncertainty, and rival public goods. As a result, although the definition of a single global public good is one that is non-rivalrous, global public goods are collectively rivalrous because choices must be made among them, including in funding their production. Decisions over producing global
public goods thus raise the question of alternative institutional choices in light of trade-offs.¶ 5 Alternative Institutional Choices for the Production of Global Public Goods: Global Constitutional, Administrative Law, and Legal Pluralist Approaches¶ For the efficient production of pure
private goods we rely on (imperfect) preference revelation through the market. For the efficient production of pure public goods we rely on (imperfect) preference revelation through democratic voting. The conventional (although not sole) solution is thus to rely on the state for the production
of public goods.50 State decisions, in turn, are constrained by constitutionally provided checks and balances involving different state institutions, including democratically elected legislatures and courts which exercise judicial review of legislative and executive decisions. For the production
of global public goods, the institutional analogues are international organizations. Since centralizing decision-making within them raises serious legitimacy concerns, institutional choice poses the ultimate question for the production of global public goods. ¶ Although economists and law and
economic scholars tend to address the production of global public goods in terms of substantive effectiveness, and thus start with an assumption of what is to be measured, we first need agreement over the goal. Priorities and goals are determined through institutional processes. Where choices
among institutions affect opportunities to participate, institutional analysis is needed to focus on the relative biases of participation in alternative decision-making processes that may define priorities and goals. ¶ Problems of biased participation beset all institutional alternatives on account of
informational and resource asymmetries and divergent incentives to participate because of varying per capita stakes in outcomes. A major challenge in relying on national institutions is that they make decisions which affect outsiders who are not represented before them. In the case of many
global public goods, moreover, reliance on national decision-making raises collective action problems and free rider concerns which undercut each nation’s ability to attain its goals. International institutions can help to overcome collective action problems, as well as to reduce bias in
participation in national decision-making. However, the major challenge with international institutions is their remoteness from affected constituencies and local contexts, raising legitimacy concerns when decision-making has distributive implications. ¶ A key issue from a public policy
perspective is thus the assessment of the relative merits of institutional processes, and different combinations of them, in terms of the relatively unbiased participation of affected parties compared with other (non-idealized) institutional alternatives.51 That is, who decides regarding the
production of global public goods? Or, put differently, which institutional process, among alternative political, market, and judicial processes at the national, local, regional, and international levels, should be granted how much authority to decide on the appropriate balancing of different
goals in light of their distributive implications? These institutional choices affect how different interests, directly and indirectly, are taken into account. Such an approach is decidedly pragmatist. It recognizes that there is no single best approach to producing global public goods, but rather
alternative approaches that involve trade-offs which vary in light of particular global public goods problems, and from which we can learn through practice. ¶ In current international law scholarship, three analytic frameworks compete for addressing the challenges of global governance, and
thus implicitly of the production of global public goods: constitutionalism, global administrative law, and legal pluralism. These frameworks are sometimes put forward as alternatives that better address global governance challenges; yet, for our purposes, they are better viewed as
complements that apply differentially to the types of global public goods we have discussed. These frameworks each have attributes and deficiencies that make them more suitable frameworks for some issues compared to others. ¶ A The Global Constitutional Approach ¶ Global
constitutionalism is one of legal pluralism’s chief rivals as a contemporary vision for organizing, constraining, and legitimizing international law.52 The constitutional vision of international law comes in different varieties, but, relative to the pluralist vision, one of its major attributes is its
framing international law and international institutions in constitutional terms that involves centralized international institutions,53 often involving some form of majoritarian or supra-majoritarian decision-making. The global constitutional vision is suitable, in particular, for addressing the
if climate
change stabilization is to occur, centralized rules and institutions to oversee their application will be required, as
in the case of the protection of the ozone layer
production of aggregate efforts global public goods. Centralized institutions operating under international law help to align national incentives and to overcome free rider problems facing the production of aggregate efforts global public goods. ¶ For example,
occurred
successfully
. Under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, amendments to emissions limits can be made by a two-thirds vote of the parties
representing at least half of the total consumption of the parties of controlled ozone-depleting substances, if there is no consensus.54 Analogous voting arrangements will need to be developed for the international regulation of climate change mitigation that take account of those most
For global public goods challenges that pose imminent threats, existing institutions
will need
to be reformed
Issues such as asteroid collisions and climate
change
pose international security risks Centralized institutions
have become
important for coordinating the monitoring of dangerous diseases and declaring international public health
emergencies
¶
Centralized
institutions
can help to keep national decision-makers accountable
in
decision-making over geo-engineering and asteroid deflection for national defence.¶
implicated.¶
UN
, and in particular the UN Security Council,
and updated. The issue of UN reform was considered in the 1990s and 2000s, but remains needed to reflect today’s global context.55
could even be considered within a reformed Security Council where they
.
and regulations
, as we saw under the WHO’s 2005 International Health Regulation. Finally, as we have seen, even the production of best shot global public goods raises distributive concerns that centralized governance can help to address.
, operating under a constitutional frame of checks and balances,
. We have seen these issues raised
As globalization and technological advance increase the need for centralized
international decision-making, a constitutional frame will become of growing importance for critically scrutinizing and checking these institutions’ exercise of power. Nonetheless, although the global constitutional vision ha s certain attributes regarding the governance of centralized
institutions needed to provide global public goods, these institutions face major legitimacy challenges. The production by national institutions of public goods is beset by trade-offs, ranging from bureaucratic inefficiencies to political corruption. A vastly greater challenge at the global level is
the lack of democratic processes that reveal preferences, reflecting the lack of a global demos.56 To the extent that we rely on states to represent citizens’ interests, moreover, many states are not democratic.57 States vary considerably in terms of population, so that decision-making arguably
should take into account differences in the size of states (as opposed to generally relying on consensus voting at the international level). Since international institutions are so distant from citizens that it is difficult to conceive of democratic global institutions, we will need to re-conceive or
otherwise adapt our concept of democratic checks and balances to the international level,58 and rely on other forms of accountability mechanisms. Curiously, the existing literature on global constitutionalism has been largely silent on the issue of global public goods.59 ¶ B The Global Legal
Pluralist Approach¶ Although the concept of global public goods poses challenges for the legal pluralist vision and its focus on decentralized processes, this approach remains extremely relevant. Among legal pluralism’s virtues is that pluralism accounts better for divergences in community
values, priorities, and perspectives in light of the distributive consequences at stake in the production of global public goods. Enumerating and deliberating over these distributive issues highlights the need for pluralism to contest centralized policies.¶ The legal pluralist vision calls to the
forefront the importance of ongoing interaction with state institutions in order for global-public-goods governance to be accountable and effective. From an accountability perspective, the pluralist approach provides a needed check on centralized decision-making at the global level, such as
for the production of aggregate efforts public goods. From the perspective of effectiveness, international law is more likely to be implemented if it engages and takes account of state perceptions and concerns through pluralist interaction.¶ Legal pluralists focus on the potential pathologies of
centralized institutions and the role of pluralism in checking these pathologies. Krisch shows how, in our current socio-political context, the interaction of pluralist legal orders can produce superior ordering to a constitutionalism that is based on hierarchic, centralized decision-making, since
mutual accommodation that can result from pluralist interaction will be grounded in greater legitimacy.60 Krisch illustrates, for example, how the UN Security Council reassessed and revised its procedures regarding the freezing of individuals’ assets in the ‘war on terror’ in light of due
process concerns, only after states and other actors challenged and resisted implementation of its resolutions.61 ¶ Delmas-Marty demonstrates how pluralism can also lead to a unification of legal norms based on a ‘hybrid’ melding of different ‘ensembles’ of law, rather than on hegemony.62
Such a pluralist hybrid is more legitimate, in that it takes into account, and borrows from, different national legal systems. Because it is more legitimate, it is more likely to be implemented in practice by states. ¶ Ultimately, international law depends on national implementation. Concerns
over implementation are particularly salient regarding weakest link public goods. If an infectious disease is to be eradicated, for example, then capacity must be built in a weakest link state. Otherwise, centralized decision-making will be ineffective. Weakest link global public goods highlight
the need for pluralist interaction with states having meaningful capacity to engage with policies, such as disease eradication. Take, for example, the distribution of antiretroviral drugs to combat the AIDS crisis. Their effective use for constraining the epidemic’s ravages are enhanced where
developing countries have the capacity to provide meaningful input to tailor policies and to carry out such tailored programmes effectively. ¶ C The Global Administrative Law Approach ¶ The global administrative law approach helps to address the deficiencies of the global constitutional
vision through providing other accountability mechanisms, derived from national administrative law, which can be used to check centralized international decision-making.63 As national governments grew during the twentieth century in response to the growing complexity of national public
goods challenges, legislatures delegated increasing powers to agencies. States correspondingly developed administrative law accountability mechanisms to apply to agencies, given that legislatures were unable to oversee them sufficiently. International institutions can be viewed analogously
to national government agencies, in that both involve a delegation of power to an unelected body. ¶ The accountability mechanisms highlighted by the global administrative law pro ject are pragmatically useful for governing the production of global public goods. They include transparency
and access to information; engagement with civil society and with national parliaments; monitoring, inspection, reporting, and notice and comment procedures; reason-giving requirements; substantive standards, such as proportionality, that must be met; and judicial review.64 These
accountability mechanisms can be developed through international treaties, such as under the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters,65 and through national and international judicial decisions.
Decision-making within international institutions must be overseen, in particular, through private groups placing pressure on public representatives. Making international decision-making more transparent facilitates such processes. ¶ To give one example of the usefulness of the global
administrative law framework in the context of global public health, the WHO is increasingly engaging in public–private partnerships for innovative drug development because of the challenges of obtaining sufficient public financing.66 These partnerships raise conflicts-of-interest concerns
that a global administrative law model can help to address through transparency and other administrative law mechanisms. ¶ The global administrative law model also offers the advantage of being applicable to national decision-making over the production of global public goods, thus
providing checks on decentralization under a legal pluralist model. As we have seen, the deployment of best shot global public goods, such as technologies for asteroid deflection and climate engineering, may not require an international institution. Yet, the externalities involved in their
deployment by states calls for accountability checks. Such national decision-making can be subject to due process requirements and to monitoring and review before international administrative bodies and courts. The WTO Shrimp–Turtle case provides an excellent example. The US
exercised unilateral action to help preserve an endangered species on the high seas (a global public good). Its efforts, however, had significant implications for developing countries and their traders. The WTO Appellate Body successfully pressed the US to change its administrative law
procedures better to assure due process review of the situations and concerns of these countries and their traders.67 ¶ Nonetheless, despite its many attributes, the global administrative law approach is rather technocratic and thus lacks ambition regarding larger scale questions of governance
requiring political decision-making for the production of global public goods. ¶ Each of these three leading analytic frameworks for assessing law’s role in global governance focuses in a different way on the issues of accountability and legitimacy. Their relative attributes can be assessed in
relation to different global public goods. For the production of aggregate efforts public goods where more centralization is needed, the legal pluralist vision is particularly insufficient. The global constitutionalist perspective, which legal pluralists have criticized, offers a complementary frame
for building and critically scrutinizing centralized international institutions to which important secondary rule-making powers are delegated in light of imminent global public goods challenges, such as over international security and climate change. The global administrative law project has
been particularly important in providing practical tools drawn from domestic administrative law for enhancing the accountability of decision-making in the production of global public goods, whether at the international or at the national level. The case of best shot public goods, for example,
illustrates concerns regarding decision-making at the national level. Finally, the challenges of weakest link public goods highlight the need for ongoing interaction between centralized entities and nation states if international law and policy are to be implemented effectively. Each approach, in
short, has attributes and deficiencies, involving trade-offs and potential complementarities. They should be viewed in comparative institutional analytic terms in relation to different global public goods challenges. Table 2 summarizes our discussion.68 ¶ Although these analytic approaches
are sometimes advanced as alternatives, they play important complementary roles for enhancing the legitimacy of the international institutions that we need to produce different types of global public goods.¶ 6 International Law as Facilitator of, and Potential Constraint on, the Production of
international law
can be viewed as an
intermediate public good that facilitates the production of final substantive public goods – such as the avoidance of
ozone depletion, the provision of a stable climate through mitigation and geoengineering, financial stability, and
peace between nations. International law and institutions overcome collective action and free rider problems.
They facilitate interaction that can produce shared understandings and common purposes. And they manage the
frictions between pluralist legal orders that govern different public goods
¶
Global Public Goods¶ Law (in general) and international law (in particular) can be viewed as a public good in providing for order and stability.69 Law (in general) and
70
(in particular) also
help to
help to
. In this way, international law helps to provide for public order. However, international law, in its
prescriptive and proscriptive forms, can also constrain the production of global public goods. It may do so by creating positive or negative obligations that interfere with their production. Some contend, for example, that the positive obligations under the WTO TRIPs Agreement and other
international intellectual property conventions reduce the supply of knowledge and constrain the protection of public health.71 Others contend that the negative obligations provided in other WTO agreements could constrain needed national action on climate change, such as through carbon
taxes, an emissions-trading system, or a product ‘life cycle’ labelling regime.72 To the extent that decisions under the Convention on Biodiversity limit research on geoengineering, they too are suspect.73 ¶ Unilateral action is problematic because it can be self-serving and fail to take account
of the values and perspectives of affected others. Yet unilateral action may also be an important part of a broader transnational process leading to the production of a global public good over time. In a world of interacting legal orders, certain actors will have to act, sometimes unilaterally, to
catalyse international and global action. These actors most likely will exercise some form of power, such as market power wielded by the US and EU. To advance climate change policies globally, the US or EU may need to take unilateral action by creating its own internal system and then
imposing some form of a border tax adjustment or penalty applied to applicable imports and cross-border services from countries that do not have a remediation system of comparable effectiveness.74 In a world without centralization and hierarchy, there will often be a need for unilateral
action to spur the production of global public goods by inciting reactions and interactions which lead to the emergence of international law and international institutions to govern conflicts and maintain order. In practice, unilateralism may help to produce a global public good where common
action fails, especially in light of opt-in rules under international treaties. Although international law can help to produce global public goods, it also can get in the way of their production.¶ The possibility of unilateral action is not available to all, and the results often reflect biases. For
example, John Yoo has written of global security as a public good which is not provided by global institutions in order to ju stify US intervention in Iraq and other unilateral policies.75 The example of Iraq makes clear the need for some form of international constraint on unilateral action so
that a nation must justify its acts and take into account their impact on others. The WTO provides such a possibility in the area of regulation. It creates constraints and has a mandatory dispute settlement system to hear legal complaints, backed by sanctions. Its dispute settlement system can
press a country to negotiate in good faith with third countries and create internal administrative law mechanisms in which non-citizens’ interests are heard. These constraints are less binding in other areas, such as international security, as represented by the US invasion of Iraq, NATO’s
intervention in Kosovo, and US missile and drone attacks in the territories of other states.¶ In sum, international law represents an important ‘constraint on the unilateral definition of a global public good’.76 The stringency of this constraint, however, should vary in light of the objective at
stake, the effectiveness of a multilateral alternative, and the possibility that the national measure can take better account of its implications on outsiders in an unbiased manner. There are thus compelling reasons to refocus attention from public international law to processes of transnational
Globalization pressures transform issues that formerly were national in
scope into global ones. With globalization, national decision-making increasingly has externalities on outsiders, and
it is increasingly insufficient to attain national goals. International law and institutions thus rise in importance
legal ordering in which international law is one element in a broader interactive process. ¶ 7 Conclusion¶
. Choices over the
terms of international law, however, have distributive consequences, and the choice among global public goods and their funding involves rivalry. As a result, the key normative question becomes a comparative institutional one: that is, under what conditions are more or less centralization
and hierarchy preferable? While the choice among alternatives may be complicated at the national level, the choice becomes much more so at the international level where problems of numbers and complexity multiply.¶ The global public goods framework helps us to see both the attributes
and limits of a legal pluralist approach toward international law and institutions. Legal pluralism’s starting assumption is about the need for communities to have a voice in shaping their own destinies. It thus distrusts order imposed by hierarchical, centralized institutional authority. The
starting assumption for the production of many global public goods, in contrast, is the need for collective action to cooperate for common benefits. These starting points create a tension. There are risks of too much comfort with the legal pluralist framework as an organizing concept for the
production of global public goods. But there are parallel risks with legitimizing centralized international decision-making without global democratic checks. Comparative institutional analysis is thus required which is tailored to the particular challenges raised by the production of different
International law will play a critical role by facilitating the creation, maintenance, oversight, and
constraint of centralized international institutions, and the monitoring and review of national institutions, in relation
to decision-making implicating the production of global public goods
global public goods.
in different contexts. Given the varying contexts of different global public goods, there is no single best, universalist
approach. Rather, a pragmatic approach is required in relation to different types of public goods and real world institutional limits. These strategies must include greater international centralization (for which constitutional principles are needed), multi-level institutional interaction
(highlighting the key role of pluralism), and hybrids that include public–private partnerships (for which administrative law principles are required).
Mexico
Cartels are diverse – Doing one thing doesn’t spill over
French 5 [Taylor W. French, JD candidate, Vanderbilt; “NOTE: Free Trade and Illegal Drugs: Will NAFTA
Transform the United States Into the Netherlands?”; Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law¶ March, 2005 38
Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 501; Lexis]
In the post-NAFTA era, it has become harder for authorities to detect and destroy drug cartels, as narcotics traffickers have set
up intricate networks and complex business practices. n274 Modern drug traffickers typically create "legitimate businesses" that
they use as fronts for their illegal activities. n275 Such companies often revolve around trucking, shipping, railway, and storage, all of
which play integral roles in the drug trade. n276 Moreover, the Mexican cartels have adopted distinctive non-cartel like qualities
that reduce the likelihood of their exposure to law enforcement. n277 Unlike their predecessors, Mexican drug rings are normally
structured in small cells, each capable of independent operation. n278 Hence, if officials are able to destroy one group, the
larger organization remains [*530] unaffected. n279 In addition, " Mexican traffickers have evolved into "poly-drug'
traffickers ." n280 By transporting many types of drugs, the new cartels are much less dependent upon one substance as a
"cash crop." n281 The result is that approximately thirty percent of the heroin imported into the United States comes
from Mexico, and sixty percent of the cocaine imported into the United States comes from Mexico, buttressing the cannabis market
that "Mexico continues to dominate." n282 Thus, Mexican d