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NEG
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AT: Solvency
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Redundant Sanctions
Due to separate sanctions, Cuba would not get access to more goods when removed
from the SST
Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, 13
[Mauricio Claver, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening,”
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-26-13, PR]
Kerry supported unilaterally easing sanctions on Cuba during his Senate career, and speculation that the State Department is considering
removing Cuba from the state sponsor list – which also includes Iran, Sudan, and Syria – has been spurred by news reports citing contradictory
remarks from anonymous administration sources. Some
high-level diplomats have suggested Cuba be dropped from
the list, according to the Boston Globe. But the State Department's spokesperson Victoria Nuland
clarified in late February that it had “no current plans” to change Cuba's designation as a state
sponsor of terrorism. However, that has not slowed efforts by those seeking rapprochement with the Castro regime, as a final decision
will not be officially revealed until April 30. Cuba has been on the state sponsors of terrorism list since 1982 due to its
hostile acts and support of armed insurgency groups. While being on the list of terrorist sponsors imposes sanctions
such as prohibiting the United States from selling arms or providing economic assistance, removing
Cuba from that list would have little effect on these sanctions, as these were separately codified in
1996. However, it would certainly hand the Castro brothers a major – and unmerited – diplomatic victory. The Castros have long protested
and sought to escape the ostracism associated with the terrorism listing, while refusing to modify the egregious behavior that earned them the
designation. They are also hoping the change could improve their standing among otherwise reluctant members of Congress and lead to an
unconditional lifting of sanctions in the near future.
They don’t solve—even if the FSIA is repealed, Helms-Burton ensures IFI loans to Cuba
Feinberg, former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security
Council, 11
[Richard E., November 2011, “The International Financial Institutions and Cuba: Relations with NonMember States,” Cuba in Transition, Volume: 22, p. 56,
http://www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume22/pdfs/feinberg.pdf, date accessed
6/27/13, YGS]
The U.S. Congress, nevertheless, has passed legislation that conditions U.S. policies toward Cuban
admission to, and receipt of resources from, the IFIs.¶ These bills include the Cuban Liberty and
Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 (“Helms-Burton”) and¶ legislation concerning international terrorism,
expropriation, and trafficking in persons.¶ The most prominent of these legislative mandates,¶ HelmsBurton, instructs the U.S. Executive Directors in the IFIs “to oppose the admission of Cuba as a¶
member of such institution until the President submits a determination that a democratically
elected¶ government in Cuba is in power” (Public Law 104–¶ 114 (1996), Section 104). The bill
continues: “If any¶ international financial institution approves a loan or¶ other assistance to the
Cuban government over the opposition of the United States, then the Secretary of¶ the Treasury shall
withhold from payment to such¶ institution an amount equal to the amount of the¶ loan or other
assistance” with respect to either the¶ paid-in or callable portion of the increase in the institution’s
capital stock.
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Cuba Rejects Improved Relations
The plan is ineffective—Cuba will reject the US attempts at normalization
Lopez, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies research associate, 13
[Vanessa, 3-25-13, Institution for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies @ the University of Miami, “The
Failure of U.S. Attempts at Unilateral Rapprochement with Cuba,”
http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FOCUS_Web/Issue187.htm, accessed 6-29-13, YGS]
Nearly every U.S. President since John F. Kennedy has tried to improve U.S. relations with Cuba. Some
administrations halted these efforts when it was clear the Castros were unwilling to take any action
towards rapprochement. Other administrations unilaterally liberalized U.S.-Cuba policy. Yet,
Communist Cuba has continually rejected these efforts, responding in ways injurious to U.S. interests.¶
Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford began secret talks with the Cuban government. Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger's negotiating philosophy was clear "we are moving in a new direction; we'd like to
synchronize...steps will be unilateral, reciprocity is necessary." (1) The U.S. did not then set human rights
and democratization preconditions. In March of 1975, Kissinger announced that the U.S. was "ready to
move in a new direction" with Cuba and wanted to normalize relations with the island. However, the
man who was able to bring rapprochement between the U.S. and China, was unable to do the same with
Cuba. Cuba's unambiguous rejection came by way of Cuban troops being deployed to Angola. Ford
announced that Cuban military intervention in Angola would prevent full diplomatic relations between
Cuba and the U.S. Cuba responded by sending more troops to Angola.¶ In 1977, President Jimmy Carter
was eager to normalize U.S.-Cuba policy and ignored Cuba's military presence in Angola. Carter
liberalized travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba. and signed a maritime boundary and fishing rights accord.
However, the State Department announced that Cuba's deployment of military advisers to Ethiopia
would prevent further rapprochement. Carter continued, undeterred, and the two countries opened
Interest Sections in Washington D.C. and Havana. Over the next few years, the Cuban government
sent almost 20,000 troops to Ethiopia, demanded that the U.S. military leave Guantanamo Bay,
supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and in April of 1980, launched the Mariel Boatlift into
President Carter's lap.¶ The Reagan Administration came into office desiring improved relations with
Cuba, but soon recognized the futility of trying to ingratiate itself to the Cuban government. Cuba
continued to support insurgencies and terrorist groups around the world. Most notably, U.S. troops
confronted Cuban troops in Grenada in 1983. The U.S. tightened its Cuba policy until President Bill
Clinton entered office.¶ Clinton attempted to engage Cuba on bilateral issues such as counter-narcotics
measures, establishing modern telecommunications links, and opening news bureaus on the island.
Cuba responded by launching a Balsero Crisis. This forced the U.S. into negotiations with the Cuban
government that led to a U.S.-Cuba Immigration Accord, allowing a minimum of 20,000 Cubans a year to
enter the U.S. as permanent residents. The Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot policy followed. In February 1996,
Cuban MiGs shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes killing three U.S. citizens and one resident
over international waters. The Clinton Administration halted its efforts at liberalization because of this
unprecedented act of aggression and Congress passed the Helms-Burton Law, the Cuban Liberty and
Democratic Solidarity Act in response. In 1999, Clinton unilaterally expanded travel to Cuba for U.S.
residents and Cuban-American families, but given Cuba's lack of response, did not take further efforts at
rapprochement.¶ President George W. Bush left U.S.-Cuba policy untouched until the Black Cuban Spring
of 2003. Following the arrest and long sentences for 75 dissidents, Bush restricted travel and
remittances to the island in 2004 and took no known efforts to liberalize relations. U.S.-Cuba policy
stayed frozen until President Barack Obama came into office.¶ Obama entered the Oval Office having
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made promises to liberalize Cuba policy. His Administration swiftly lifted restrictions on CubanAmerican travel to Cuba as well as remittances sent to the island. Cuba's response was to arrest a U.S.
citizen. Alan Gross was working as a USAID subcontractor, providing Jewish groups in the island with
communications equipment. He was tried and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban jail. The U.S.
government said Gross's incarceration would prevent further liberalization. Various notable
personalities have travelled to Cuba seeking Gross's release, including President Jimmy Carter and
Governor Bill Richardson, but these efforts have all failed. Despite Gross’s continued incarceration, in
2011, Obama also liberalized “people-to-people” travel, allowing more university, religious, and cultural
programs to travel to Cuba.¶ History demonstrates that unilateral U.S. efforts have had, and are
having, no impact on Cuba's leadership. On the contrary, the Cuban government has interpreted U.S.
openings towards Cuba as signs of weakness, which have resulted in Cuba's hostility towards the U.S.
and in some instances, in reckless actions such as Mariel and the Balsero Crisis.¶ Improved relations
between the U.S. and Cuba is a laudable goal, but to be successful, Cuba must be a willing participant.
Cuba has an unambiguous pattern of harming U.S. interests when the U.S. has engaged in attempts of
unilateral rapprochement. If the U.S. would like to protect its interests, it should demand that Cuba
take the first step in any future efforts to improve relations between the two countries and offer
irreversible concessions.
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AT: CTS Advantage
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CTS Frontline
Status quo solves and attacking terrorism as a concept doesn’t precipitate change
Horgan, Professor at Penn State, and Boyle, Professor at University of St. Andrews, 08
[John and Michael J., Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 1 Issue 1, “A case against ‘Critical Terrorism
Studies’”, p. 52, accessed 6/28/13, VJ]
Another critique of terrorism studies derives from the general critique of the influence of ‘problemsolving’ theory in terrorism studies (Gunning 2007b). The argument here, and deriving from Cox, is that
terrorism studies tends to take the world as it is, rather than challenging its foundations of social and
political order, and forsakes efforts to find ways of applying scholarly knowledge to relieving the
burdens of those oppressed by unjust social and political structures (Cox 1981, p. 129). In other words,
the charge is that the study of terrorism has a predominant status quo bias, which leads it to focus on
how to solve problems for those in power, at the expense of ‘emancipation’. The ‘mode’ of thinking of
terrorism studies is thus dominated by instrumental rationality, to the detriment of reflective
approaches and interdisciplinary research. We believe this is overstating the case. Like much of
political science, the study of terrorism has been influenced by the logic of ‘problem-solving’ theory
and includes a strong dose of instrumental rationality. But to imply that all those working within an
empirical tradition of research in terrorism studies do not challenge the status quo, or suggest
uncomfortable truths to those in power, is misleading. Many of the serious scholars who work in this
field are sympathetic to the normative goals that CTS scholars espouse, and are unafraid to speak truth
to power when needed. For example, many terrorism scholars do not hesitate to tell governments
bluntly that unpopular certain foreign policy choices (such as the US invasion of Iraq or the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza) generate terrorism, and that addressing pervasive economic
and social inequalities is an essential part of counter-terrorism.4 In fact, in a 2004 ‘Open Letter to the
American People’, over 700 security studies scholars in the USA and elsewhere signed their names to a
case which included the following: We judge that the current American policy centered around the war
in Iraq is the most misguided one since the Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle
against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been a great distortion in the terms of public debate
on foreign and national security policy-an emphasis on speculation instead of facts. (Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy (2004)5 The list included such well-known terrorism experts as Jessica
Stern, David Rapoport (Co-editor of Terrorism and Political Violence), and Mia Bloom. If terrorism
scholars, including these, were solely interested in telling comforting lies to those in power, they would
shy away from these uncomfortable facts and would certainly not publicly identify themselves with such
an openly critical stance. Moreover, many of the ‘embedded experts’ identified by name in existing
CTS work have deep liberal concerns for economic and social justice (Hoffman 2007, Wilkinson 1977,
and subsequent revisions). Their ambitions may not be entirely ‘emancipatory’ (Linklater 1996), but
neither are they content to accept the world as it is. Let us be clear: within the broad community of
self-ascribed terrorism ‘experts’ there are some charlatans who will do whatever they need to get close
to power and to solve problems for them. But these are not representative of the serious scholars in the
field, and even those who do not adopt the language of critical theory often work with the same social,
political and moral purpose of advancing social justice as CTS scholars. Serious and reflective scholars of
terrorism also do not deny the observation that theory is often for someone, and for some purpose.
What they do not share is the explicit normative and ideological commitment to ‘emancipation’,
however defined. One of our chief concerns about CTS is that the precise meaning of this commitment
to emancipation has not been made clear, beyond the basic point that ‘emancipation’ would involve
strengthening the voices of moderation and increasing the political voice of some dissident groups
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(McDonald 2007, p. 257). These are worthwhile goals, certainly, but not unique to CTS in any respect.
So the analytic value of this maddeningly vague notion of emancipation in this instance is not yet
obvious to us. How exactly does attacking the concept of ‘terrorism’ generate greater prospects for
freedom in existing social relations, or produce a broadly progressive outcome (McDonald 2007, p.
257)?6 In part due to the fact that CTS advocates have not yet made their ontological and
epistemological commitments or their intellectual debts within critical theory clear, it remains unclear
just who has agency in their account, how ‘emancipation’ would be achieved, and to what substantive
normative and political goals ‘emancipation’ is directed.
CTS precludes effective policy action
Jones, Professor at University of Glasgow, and Smith, Professor at University of
London, 09
[David Martin, M.L.R., Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or
Hypocritical—Studies “on” Terrorism?”,Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 295-296, accessed 6/29/13, VJ]
Firstly, to challenge dominant knowledge and understanding and retain sensitivity to labels leads
inevitably to a fixation with language, discourse, the ambiguity of the noun, terror, and its political
use and abuse. Terrorism, Booth enlightens the reader unremarkably, is “a politically loaded term” (p.
72). Meanwhile, Zulaika and Douglass consider terror “the dominant tropic [sic] space in contemporary
political and journalistic discourse” (p. 30). Faced with the “serious challenge” (Booth p. 72) and
pejorative connotation that the noun conveys, critical terrorologists turn to deconstruction and bring
the full force of postmodern obscurantism to bear on its use. Thus the editors proclaim that terrorism
is “one of the most powerful signifiers in contemporary discourse.” There is, moreover, a “yawning gap
between the ‘terrorism’ signifier and the actual acts signified” (p. 1). “[V]irtually all of this activity,” the
editors pronounce ex cathedra, “refers to the response to acts of political violence not the violence
itself” (original italics) (p. 1). Here again they offer no evidence for this curious assertion and assume, it
would seem, all conventional terrorism studies address issues of homeland security. In keeping with
this critical orthodoxy that he has done much to define, Anthony Burke also asserts the “instability (and
thoroughly politicized nature) of the unifying master-terms of our field: ‘terror’ and ‘terrorism’” (p. 38).
To address this he contends that a critical stance requires us to “keep this radical instability and inherent
politicization of the concept of terrorism at the forefront of its analysis.” Indeed, “without a conscious
reflexivity about the most basic definition of the object, our discourse will not be critical at all” (p.
38).More particularly, drawing on a jargon-infused amalgam of Michel Foucault’s identification of a
relationship between power and knowledge, the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School’s critique of democratic
false consciousness, mixed with the existentialism of the Third Reich’s favorite philosopher,Martin
Heidegger, Burke “questions the question.” This intellectual potpourri apparently enables the critical
theorist to “question the ontological status of a ‘problem’ before any attempt to map out, study or
resolve it” (p. 38). Interestingly, Burke, Booth, and the symposistahood deny that there might be
objective data about violence or that a properly focused strategic study of terrorism would not
include any prescriptive goodness or rightness of action. While a strategic theorist or a skeptical social
scientist might claim to consider only the complex relational situation that involves as well as the
actions, the attitude of human beings to them, the critical theorist’s radical questioning of language
denies this possibility. The critical approach to language and its deconstruction of an otherwise useful,
if imperfect, political vocabulary has been the source of much confusion and inconsequentiality in the
practice of the social sciences. It dates from the relativist pall that French radical post structural
philosophers like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, cast over the social
and historical sciences in order to demonstrate that social and political knowledge depended on and
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underpinned power relations that permeated the landscape of the social and reinforced the liberal
democratic state. This radical assault on the possibility of either neutral fact or value ultimately
functions unfalsifiably, and as a substitute for philosophy, social science, and a real theory of
language. The problem with the critical approach is that, as the Australian philosopher John Anderson
demonstrated, to achieve a genuine study one must either investigate the facts that are talked about
or the fact that they are talked about in a certain way. More precisely, as J.L. Mackie explains, “if we
concentrate on the uses of language we fall between these two stools, and we are in danger of taking
our discoveries about manners of speaking as answers to questions about what is there.”2 Indeed, in
so far as an account of the use of language spills over into ontology it is liable to be a confused mixture
of what should be two distinct investigations: the study of the facts about which the language is used,
and the study of the linguistic phenomena themselves. It is precisely, however, this confused mixture of
fact and discourse that critical thinking seeks to impose on the study of terrorism and infuses the
practice of critical theory more generally. From this confused seed no coherent method grows.
The willingness to use violence against the evil of terrorism is a moral obligation.
Beres 5 - (Louis Rene, Professor of International Law, Department of Political Science, Purdue
University. Ph.D., Princeton University, 1977 “Terrorism's Executioner” The Washington Times May 31,
2005L/N)
Our world is "normally" silent in the face of evil. At worst, many are directly complicit in the maimings
and slaughters. At best, the murderers are ignored. In this unchanging world Israel must soon decide
whether to face the evil of Palestinian terrorism as a pitiable victim or to use whatever reasonable force
is needed to remain alive. The use of force is not inherently evil. Quite the contrary; in opposing
terrorist mayhem, force is indispensable to all that is good. In the case of Israel, Palestinian terrorism is
unique for its cowardice, its barbarism and its genocidal goal. Were Israel to depend upon the broader
international community for relief - upon the so-called road map - its plea would be unheard. All states
have a right of self-defense. Israel has every lawful authority to forcibly confront the still-growing evil of
Palestinian terror. Facing even biological and nuclear forms of terrorism, it now has the clear legal right
to refuse to be a victim and to become an executioner. From the standpoint of providing security to its
own citizens, this right even becomes an obligation. Albert Camus would have us all be "neither
victims nor executioners," living not in a world in which killing has disappeared ("we are not so crazy as
that"), but one wherein killing has become illegitimate. This is a fine expectation, yet the celebrated
French philosopher did not anticipate another evil force for whom utter extermination of "the Jews"
was its declared object. Not even in a world living under the shadow of recent Holocaust did Camus
consider such an absurd possibility. But Israel lacks the quaint luxury of French philosophy. Were Israel
to follow Camus' genteel reasoning, perhaps in order to implement Mr. Sharon's disengagement, the
result would be another boundless enlargement of Jewish suffering. Before and during the Holocaust,
for those who still had an opportunity to flee, Jews were ordered: "Get out of Europe; go to Palestine."
When they complied (those who could), the next order was: "Get out of Palestine." For my AustrianJewish grandparents, their deaths came on the SS- killing grounds at Riga, Latvia. Had they made it to
Palestine, their sons and grandsons would likely have died in subsequent genocidal wars intended to get
the Jews "out of Palestine." Failure to use force against murderous evil is invariably a stain upon all
that is good. By declining the right to act as a lawful executioner in its struggle with terror, Israel would
be forced by Camus' reasoning to embrace its own disappearance. Barring Mr. Sharon's disengagement,
the Jewish state would never accept collective suicide. Why was Camus, who was thinking only in the
broadest generic terms, so mistaken? My own answer lies in his presumption of a natural reciprocity
among human beings and states in the matter of killing. We are asked to believe that as greater
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numbers of people agree not to become executioners, still greater numbers will follow upon the same
course. In time, the argument proceeds, the number of those who refuse to accept killing will become
so great that there will be fewer and fewer victims. But Camus' presumed reciprocity does not exist,
indeed, can never exist, especially in the jihad-centered Middle East. Here the Islamist will to kill Jews
remains unimpressed by Israel's disproportionate contributions to science, industry, medicine and
learning. Here there are no Arab plans for a "two- state solution," only for a final solution. In
counterterrorism, Jewish executioners must now have an honored place in the government of Israel.
Without them, evil would triumph again and again. For Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Fatah,
murdered Jews are not so much a means to an end as an end in themselves. In this unheroic Arab
Islamist world, where killing Jews is both a religious mandate and sometimes also a path to sexual
ecstasy and personal immortality, an Israeli unwillingness to use necessary force against terror will invite
existential terror. Sadly, killing is sometimes a sacred duty. Faced with manifest evil, all decent
civilizations must rely, in the end, on the executioner. To deny the executioner his proper place would
enable the murderers to leer lasciviously upon whole mountains of fresh corpses.
Their criticism of our scholarship is like the pot calling the kettle black- neg authors
make unevidenced assertions and construct a straw person of traditional terror
experts.
Jones, Associate Professor and editorial board member on the Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism and Smith, Professor of War Studies, 8
(David Martin & M.L.R., April 13, 2008, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or Hypocritical—Studies “on”
Terrorism?”Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, accessed 7/3/12, CPO)
Stohl further compounds this incoherence, claiming that “the media are far more likely to focus on the
destructive actions, rather than on . . . grievances or the social conditions that breed [terrorism]—to
present episodic rather than thematic stories” (p. 7). He argues that terror attacks between 1968 and
1980 were scarcely reported in the United States, and that reporters do not delve deeply into the
sources of conflict (p. 8). All of this is quite contentious, with no direct evidence produced to support
such statements. The “media” is after all a very broad term, and to assume that it is monolithic is to
replace criticism with conspiracy theory. Moreover, even if it were true that the media always serves as
a government propaganda agency, then by Stohl’s own logic, terrorism as a method of political
communication is clearly futile as no rational actor would engage in a campaign doomed to be endlessly
misreported.
Nevertheless, the notion that an inherent pro-state bias vitiates terrorism studies pervades the critical
position. Anthony Burke, in “The End of Terrorism Studies” (pp. 37–49), asserts that established analysts
like Bruce Hoffman “specifically exclude states as possible perpetrators” of terror. Consequently, the
emergence of “critical terrorism studies” “may signal the end of a particular kind of traditionally statefocused and directed ‘problem-solving’ terrorism studies—at least in terms of its ability to assume that
its categories and commitments are immune from challenge and correspond to a stable picture of
reality” (p. 42).
Elsewhere, Adrian Guelke, in “Great Whites, Paedophiles and Terrorists: The Need for Critical Thinking in
a New Era of Terror” (pp. 17–25), considers British government–induced media “scare-mongering” to
have legitimated an “authoritarian approach” to the purported new era of terror (pp. 22–23).
Meanwhile, Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass, in “The Terrorist Subject: Terrorist Studies and the
Absent Subjectivity” (pp. 27–36), find the War on Terror constitutes “the single,” all embracing paradigm
of analysis where the critical voice is “not allowed to ask: what is the reality itself?” (pp. 28–29). The
construction of this condition, they further reveal, if somewhat abstrusely, reflects an abstract “desire”
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that demands terror as “an ever-present threat” (p. 31). In order to sustain this fabrication: “Terrorism
experts and commentators” function as “realist policemen”; and not very smart ones at that, who while
“gazing at the evidence” are “unable to read the paradoxical logic of the desire that fuels it, whereby
lack turns to excess”(p. 32). Finally, Ken Booth, in “The Human Faces of Terror: Reflections in a Cracked
Looking Glass” (pp. 65–79), reiterates Richard Jackson’s contention that state terrorism “is a much more
serious problem than non-state terrorism” (p. 76).
Yet, one searches in vain in these articles for evidence to support the ubiquitous assertion of state
bias: assuming this bias in conventional terrorism analysis as a fact seemingly does not require a
corresponding concern with evidence of this fact, merely its continual reiteration by conceptual fiat. A
critical perspective dispenses not only with terrorism studies but also with the norms of accepted
scholarship. Asserting what needs to be demonstrated commits, of course, the elementary logical
fallacy petitio principii. But critical theory apparently emancipates (to use its favorite verb) its
practitioners from the confines of logic, reason, and the usual standards of academic inquiry.
Alleging a constitutive weakness in established scholarship without the necessity of providing proof to
support it, therefore, appears to define the critical posture. The unproved “state centricity” of
terrorism studies serves as a platform for further unsubstantiated accusations about the state of the
discipline. Jackson and his fellow editors, along with later claims by Zulaika and Douglass, and Booth,
again assert that “orthodox” analysts rarely bother “to interview or engage with those involved in
‘terrorist’ activity” (p. 2) or spend any time “on the ground in the areas most affected by conflict” (p.
74). Given that Booth and Jackson spend most of their time on the ground in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion,
not a notably terror rich environment if we discount the operations of Meibion Glyndwr who would as
a matter of principle avoid pob sais like Jackson and Booth, this seems a bit like the pot calling the
kettle black. It also overlooks the fact that Studies in Conflict and Terrorism first advertised the
problem of “talking to terrorists” in 2001 and has gone to great lengths to rectify this lacuna, if it is
one, regularly publishing articles by analysts with first-hand experience of groups like the Taliban, Al
Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah.
Orthodox terrorism studies doesn’t ignore state violence or neglect non-state
perspectives.
Lutz, Professor at Indiana University, 10
(James M., December 2010, “A Critical View of Critical Terrorism Studies,” Perspectives on Terrorism,
volume: 4, p. 31-40, CPO)
Supporters of the CTS perspective also argue that the conventional approach to terrorism noticeably
ignores the violence involved in the counterterrorism strategies of governments. They further argue
that governments take advantage of the presence of dissident terrorist actions to crack down on
opponents to the regime in power. It has even been suggested that the recent wave of attacks by
dissident groups has led governments “to manufacture” a new concept of terrorism in order to further
the interests of the elite. [21] Governments in many circumstances have indeed long used threats and
acts of violent protest from dissidents as often not unwelcome pretexts for crackdowns on dissenters or
for other political purposes. Such manipulation of public events, however, does not necessarily qualify
as terrorism even when it frequently involves manipulation and repression.
The use of dissident actions as an excuse for government repression or the excesses of counterterrorism
have also been cited by CT scholars to allege that the conventional ‘orthodox’ terrorism perspective is
flawed in another way. They often suggest that the research focus has been on government reactions
while discussing terrorism from the perspective of the terrorists is “a taboo stance within Western
scholarship.” [22] While much of the conventional literature on terrorism does not directly address the
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viewpoint of the terrorists directly, the whole issue of the causes of terrorism (e.g. in studies on
radicalisation) does address the perspectives of those involved in terrorist actions. For example,
arguments that repression or lack of participation lead to political violence, including acts of
terrorism, clearly involves looking at events from the perspective of the dissidents. [23] Admittedly,
since it is – at least in Western democracies much easier to get documentary material on the
perspectives of governments and their counterterrorism strategies, greater attention has been given to
these. Even so, communiqués and statements by leaders of dissident groups to provide insights into
the perspectives of the dissident groups, have been used for analyses of the origins and motives of
dissident and insurgent groups using tactics of terrorism. Further, considerations of reform and
concessions as counterterrorist strategies implicitly view events also from the perspective of the
terrorist groups rather than merely that of the government. [24]
Turn- their counterterrorism and civil liberties impacts are much worse in a world of a
successful terror strike.
Ignatieff 4 [Michael, former director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard, former Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto and a
senior fellow of the university's Munk Centre for International Studies; “Could We Lose the War on
Terror? Lesser Evils,” New York Times Magazine, 5/02]
Consider the consequences of a second major attack on the mainland United States -- the detonation
of a radiological or dirty bomb, perhaps, or a low-yield nuclear device or a chemical strike in a
subway. Any of these events could cause death, devastation and panic on a scale that would make
9/11 seem like a pale prelude. After such an attack, a pall of mourning, melancholy, anger and fear
would hang over our public life for a generation. An attack of this sort is already in the realm of
possibility. The recipes for making ultimate weapons are on the Internet, and the materiel required is
available for the right price. Democracies live by free markets, but a free market in everything -enriched uranium, ricin, anthrax -- will mean the death of democracy. Armageddon is being privatized,
and unless we shut down these markets, doomsday will be for sale. Sept. 11, for all its horror, was a
conventional attack. We have the best of reasons to fear the fire next time. A democracy can allow its
leaders one fatal mistake -- and that's what 9/11 looks like to many observers -- but Americans will not
forgive a second one. A succession of large - scale attacks would pull at the already-fragile tissue of
trust that binds us to our leadership and destroy the trust we have in one another. Once the zones of
devastation were cordoned off and the bodies buried, we might find ourselves, in short order, living in
a national-security state on continuous alert , with sealed borders, constant identity checks and
permanent detention camps for dissidents and aliens. Our constitutional rights might disappear from
our courts, while torture might reappear in our interrogation cells. The worst of it is that government
would not have to impose tyranny on a cowed populace. We would demand it for our own protection.
And if the institutions of our democracy were unable to protect us from our enemies, we might go even
further, taking the law into our own hands. We have a history of lynching in this country, and by the
time fear and paranoia settled deep in our bones, we might repeat the worst episodes from our past,
killing our former neighbors, our onetime friends. That is what defeat in a war on terror looks like. We
would survive, but we would no longer recognize ourselves. We would endure, but we would lose our
identity as free peoples. Alarmist? Consider where we stand after two years of a war on terror. We are
told that Al Qaeda's top leadership has been decimated by detention and assassination. True enough,
but as recently as last month bin Laden was still sending the Europeans quaint invitations to surrender.
Even if Al Qaeda no longer has command and control of its terrorist network, that may not hinder its
cause. After 9/11, Islamic terrorism may have metastasized into a cancer of independent terrorist cells
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that, while claiming inspiration from Al Qaeda, no longer require its direction, finance or advice. These
cells have given us Madrid. Before that, they gave us Istanbul, and before that, Bali. There is no shortage
of safe places in which they can grow. Where terrorists need covert support, there are Muslim
communities, in the diasporas of Europe and North America, that will turn a blind eye to their presence.
If they need raw recruits, the Arab rage that makes for martyrs is still incandescent. Palestine is in a
state of permanent insurrection. Iraq is in a state of barely subdued civil war. Some of the Bush
administration's policies, like telling Ariel Sharon he can keep settlements on the West Bank, may only
be fanning the flames. So anyone who says "Relax, more people are killed in road accidents than are
killed in terrorist attacks" is playing games. The conspiracy theorists who claim the government is
manufacturing the threat in order to foist secret government upon us ought to wise up. Anyone who
doesn't take seriously a second major attack on the United States just isn't being serious. In the
Spanish elections in March, we may have had a portent of what's ahead: a terrorist gang trying to
intimidate voters into altering the result of a democratic election. We can confidently expect that
terrorists will attempt to tamper with our election in November. Condoleezza Rice, the national security
adviser, said in a recent television interview that the Bush administration is concerned that terrorists will
see the approaching presidential election as "too good to pass up." Thinking the worst is not defeatist.
It is the best way to avoid defeat. Nor is it defeatist to concede that terror can never be entirely
vanquished. Terrorists will continue to threaten democratic politics wherever oppressed or marginalized
groups believe their cause justifies violence. But we can certainly deny them victory. We can continue to
live without fear inside free institutions. To do so, however, we need to change the way we think, to
step outside the confines of our cozy conservative and liberal boxes.
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CST Fails/Turns
CTS is wrong—violence is purely instrumental
Jones, Professor at University of Glasgow, and Smith, Professor at University of
London, 09
[David Martin, M.L.R., Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or
Hypocritical—Studies “on” Terrorism?”,Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 295-296, accessed 6/29/13, VJ]
Interestingly, the specter haunting both conventional and critical terrorism studies is that both assume
that terrorism is an existential phenomenon, and thus has causes and solutions. Burke makes this
explicit: “The inauguration of this journal,” he declares, “indeed suggests broad agreement that there is
a phenomenon called terrorism” (p. 39). Yet this is not the only way of looking at terrorism. For a
strategic theorist the notion of terrorism does not exist as an independent phenomenon. It is an
abstract noun. More precisely, it is merely a tactic—the creation of fear for political ends—that can be
employed by any social actor, be it state or non-state, in any context, without any necessary moral
value being involved. Ironically, then, strategic theory offers a far more “critical perspective on
terrorism” than do the perspectives advanced in this journal. Guelke, for example, propounds a
curiously orthodox standpoint when he asserts: “to describe an act as one of terrorism, without the
qualification of quotation marks to indicate the author’s distance from such a judgement, is to condemn
it as absolutely illegitimate” (p. 19). If you are a strategic theorist this is an invalid claim. Terrorism is
simply a method to achieve an end. Any moral judgment on the act is entirely separate. To fuse the
two is a category mistake. In strategic theory, which Guelke ignores, terrorism does not, ipso facto,
denote “absolutely illegitimate violence.” Intriguingly, Stohl, Booth, and Burke also imply that a
strategic understanding forms part of their critical viewpoint. Booth, for instance, argues in one of his
commandments that terrorism should be seen as a conscious human choice. Few strategic theorists
would disagree. Similarly, Burke feels that there does “appear to be a consensus” that terrorism is a
“form of instrumental political violence” (p. 38). The problem for the contributors to this volume is
that they cannot emancipate themselves from the very orthodox assumption that the word terrorism
is pejorative. That may be the popular understanding of the term, but inherently terrorism conveys no
necessary connotation of moral condemnation. “Is terrorism a form of warfare, insurgency, struggle,
resistance, coercion, atrocity, or great political crime,” Burke asks rhetorically. But once more he misses
the point. All violence is instrumental. Grading it according to whether it is insurgency, resistance, or
atrocity is irrelevant. Any strategic actor may practice forms of warfare. For this reason Burke’s further
claim that existing definitions of terrorism have “specifically excluded states as possible perpetrators
and privilege them as targets,” is wholly inaccurate (p. 38). Strategic theory has never excluded statedirected terrorism as an object of study, and neither for that matter, as Horgan and Boyle point out,
have more conventional studies of terrorism. Yet, Burke offers—as a critical revelation—that “the
strategic intent behind the US bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia, Israel’s bombing of Lebanon,
or the sanctions against Iraq is also terrorist.” He continues: “My point is not to remind us that states
practise terror, but to show how mainstream strategic doctrines are terrorist in these terms and
undermine any prospect of achieving the normative consensus if such terrorism is to be reduced and
eventually eliminated” (original italics) (p. 41). This is not merely confused, it displays remarkable
nescience on the part of one engaged in teaching the next generation of graduates from the Australian
Defence Force Academy. Strategic theory conventionally recognizes that actions on the part of state or
non-state actors that aim to create fear (such as the allied aerial bombing of Germany in World War II
or the nuclear deterrent posture of Mutually Assured Destruction) can be terroristic in nature.7 The
problem for critical analysts like Burke is that they impute their own moral valuations to the term
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terror. We’re All Terrorists Now 301 Strategic theorists do not. Moreover, the statement that this
undermines any prospect that terrorism can be eliminated is illogical: you can never eliminate an
abstract noun. Consequently, those interested in a truly “critical” approach to the subject should
perhaps turn to strategic theory for some relief from the strictures that have traditionally governed the
study of terrorism, not to self-proclaimed critical theorists who only replicate the flawed understandings
of those whom they criticize. Horgan and Boyle conclude their thoughtful article by claiming that critical
terrorism studies has more in common with traditional terrorism research than critical theorists
would possibly like to admit. These reviewers agree: they are two sides of the same coin.
CTS’ deconstructivist strategy only serves to reify status quo discourse—it rebuilds
rather than dissipates the narrative
Edelmann, PhD candidate in Political Science and International Relations, 11
[Florian, December, Forum Regensburger Politikwissenschaftler, “The Dialectic of ConstructionDeconstruction II:
A Critical Assessment of the Research Agenda of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) Approaches”,
http://www.regensburger-politikwissenschaftler.de/frp_working_paper_12_2011.pdf, accessed
6/29/13, VJ]
This notion of a “minimal foundationlism” closely resembles Spivaks concept of “strate-gic essentialism”
(Spivak 1996: 214) and raises similar questions: when does strategic essentialism turn into an
essentialist strategy? What is the acceptable maximum of a minimal foundation? The second notion or
face of a deepening critique hints at related considerations. As long as terrorism is understood as an
object about which some form of knowledge remains attainable apart from its discursive
construction, Jarvis argues that “we are ultimately left with the same problem-solving quest for
denotation, causation and response” (Jarvis 2009: 17).4 Thus, the very limitations of a post-positivist
epistemology that Toros and Gunning identify are taken as the essence of critique: rather than applying
destabilized concepts in the study of political violence, the aim of critical re-search is to destabilize or
disturb any notion of an extra-discursive reference point (Jarvis 2008: 257-258). The ›discourse of
terrorism‹ thus figures as the primary concern of this understanding of CTS and the very project is
mainly focused on deconstructing the discursive reality of its scien-tific and political uses and
undercurrents (Jackson 2007b: 247). Discourse analysis is not only considered as a method but more
likely resembles the episteme or even the ontology of the whole edifice of a critical project (Joseph
2009: 96). Deepening terrorism research hence relates to two rather different aspects of the
deconstructivist framework. While one notion deconstructs the term terrorism explicitly in order to reconstruct or re-claim a tacit and unstable understand-ing of terrorism as discourse and historicized
form of political violence (McDonald 2007: 255), the other insists that the discursive narrative needs to
be entirely dissipated or the mainstream will likely be reinforced (Jarvis 2009: 21). These findings
seriously challenge the proposition that CTS approaches rely on a shared set of ontological,
epistemological, (even broad) methodological, and normative commitments (Jackson et al. 2011: 42).
They also seem to contradict our consideration that, by deepening the research agenda, these
approaches may result in a ›new orthodoxy‹ or reify conventional
The aff’s relativism deems terrorism and rape excusable
Jones, Professor at University of Glasgow, and Smith, Professor at University of
London, 09
[David Martin, M.L.R., Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or
Hypocritical—Studies “on” Terrorism?”,Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 295-296, accessed 6/29/13, VJ]
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In his preferred imperative idiom, Booth further contends that terrorism is best studied in the context
of an “academic international relations” whose role “is not only to interpret the world but to change
it” (pp. 67–68). Significantly, academic—or more precisely, critical—international relations, holds no
place for a realist appreciation of the status quo but approves instead a Marxist ideology of praxis. It is
within this transformative praxis that critical theory situates terrorism and terrorists. Thepolitical
goals of those non-state entities that choose to practice the tactics of terrorism in variably seek a
similar transformative praxis and this leads “critical global theorizing” into a curiously confused
empathy with the motives of those engaged in such acts, as well as a disturbing relativism. Thus,
Booth again decrees that the gap between “those who hate terrorism and those who carry it out,
those who seek to delegitimize the acts of terrorists and those who incite them, and those who abjure
terror and those who glorify it—is not as great as is implied or asserted by orthodox terrorism experts,
the discourse of governments, or the popular press” (p. 66). The gap “between us/them is a slippery
slope, not an unbridgeable political and ethical chasm” (p. 66). So, while “terrorist actions are always—
without exception—wrong, they nevertheless might be contingently excusable” (p. 66). From this
ultimately relativist perspective gang raping a defenseless woman, an act of terror on any critical or
uncritical scale of evaluation, is, it would seem, wrong but potentially excusable.
CTS reifies current power structures and fails to effect broader counter terror policies
Edelmann, PhD candidate in Political Science and International Relations, 11
[Florian, December, Forum Regensburger Politikwissenschaftler, “The Dialectic of ConstructionDeconstruction II:
A Critical Assessment of the Research Agenda of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) Approaches”,
http://www.regensburger-politikwissenschaftler.de/frp_working_paper_12_2011.pdf, accessed
6/29/13, VJ]
Analyzing the function civil society has performed in the (tacit) settlement of the Basque conflict Tellidis
argues that CTS approaches ultimately reinforce the state-centric bias of tradi-tional terrorism studies.
While these approaches adequately theorize the ambivalent role govern-mental counter-terrorism
policies may have played or often play in prolonged conflicts, CTS’ fo-cus on the core antagonism ›state
vs. terrorism‹ risks underestimating the importance and ulti-mately denying the agency of the very
human beings whose security is at stake from both sides of this antagonism. Thus, an important, if not
the most decisive, step in breaking mutually reinforc-ing circles of political violence is left understudied: the societal credibility of mutually exclusive claims of legitimacy has to be unwound (Tellidis
2011: 185). In other words, the reference point of critical studies has the (unintended) potential to
reify knowledge claims of so-called ›orthodox‹ reconstructions of terrorism. These findings, it is argued
here, point to a more profound problem of CTS approaches. Unlike Tellidis, we will show that the crucial
problem is not that critical scholars are not critical enough and therefore stick to an “orthodoxy light”
that reifies traditional approaches. Rather, it is suggested here that the core of critique is too loosely
defined and the approach is too inclusive. Therefore, an external rallying point is necessary for the
critical project: the construction of ›orthodoxy‹. We will locate this problem in the concept of
deepening terrorism research. On the one hand, a deepened perspective aims to unravel “the
ontological and ideological assumptions and interests behind terrorism studies” (Toros/Gunning 2009:
89) assuming that no (theoretical) reconstruction of a social phenomenon is value-free or objective in
the epistemolog-ical sense. This aspect strongly relies on another Coxian principle that states that
“[t]heory is al-ways for someone and for some purpose” (Cox 1981: 128, original emphasis). Deepening
a field of study thus moves to render the latent underpinnings and contingencies of its worldview and
knowledge claims manifest or explicit (Jackson et al. 2011: 43). On the other hand, the “interpre-tivist
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face of critical terrorism studies” (Jarvis 2009: 20) focuses explicitly on destabilizing and dis-turbing
common or traditional understandings of the key term. This post-positivist perspective on deepening
terminology and research tries to explicate another aspect of terrorism discourse which usually remains
implicit. Its aim is to unwind the ways in which acts of political violence - 6 - are socially (re-)constructed
as being ›terrorist‹. Asking how a distinct significance is being in-scribed into such events, for example
through media coverage and scholarly assessment, an inter-pretivist approach to deepening dissolves
the great narrative ›terrorism‹ into its different representa-tions (ibid: 18-20; Jackson 2009a: 68).
While the first interpretation of deepening stresses underlying belief systems of terrorism discourse and
the second focuses on how these “myths” (Stohl 2008: 5) are perpetuated, both aspects can be related
to a common denominator: an emphasis on inter-preting and deconstructing the discursive practices
of terrorism and its study (Joseph 2009: 95). This common denominator can be traced back to an
ontology that considers terrorism as a social fact, i.e. the social (re-)construction of certain events,
rather than an objective or brute fact. Given the already mentioned characterization of CTS as a ›broad
church‹ of critical voices sharing a set of shared core commitments (Edelmann 2011: 3), it is little
surprise that different conclusions are dawn from the common basic assumption. However, the very
way in which the underlying constructivist ontology is conceptualized requires a closer look. As Joseph
points out, social practices of knowledge production and re-production require a reference point in the
›real‹ world – only (social) facts that have happened can be spoken about and remembered. The crucial
point is thus not whether something like an objective reality outside our perception exists but what
reality we refer to as objectivity – i.e. what we take for the real (Joseph 2011: 33-34). It has already
been pointed out that the central reference point for the project of CTS is problematic: the
›orthodoxy‹ of terrorism research is a socially constructed representation of a heterodox field of
research (Edelmann 2011: 6). Joseph argues furthermore that CTS like many critical approach-es in the
IR miss a central element of Frankfurt School thought when they equate positivism (or in our case:
›orthodoxy‹) with objectivism and thereby ultimately dissolve discourse and social construction from
empirical reality. Rather, the Frankfurt School’s core critique of empiricist identity thinking is that it
takes the fetishised manifestation of a certain production structure as reality – appearance is taken for
essence (ibid. 24-26). Hence, a mere juxtaposition of social and brute facts or positivist and postpositivist approaches is prone to reify similar identity thinking: the reified appearance is the discursive
construction of certain concepts like ›terrorism‹, respec-tively its ›orthodox‹ study. Consequently, it is
argued here that deepening terrorism research by try-ing to deconstruct or explicate the underlying
assumptions and knowledge claims of its ›ortho-doxy‹ might reify the very concepts of conventional
terrorism studies. This is ultimately rein-forced through the broad, inclusive, and heterogeneous
approach to traditional scholar’s work: while CTS’ critique revolves around a shared set of perceived
shortcomings of this body of knowledge, CTS approaches widely differ in determining the degree to
which its underlying as-sumptions have to be rejected (Jackson 2009a: 69-70). More precisely, while
most of the identi-fied concrete underlying assumptions of traditional approaches – their state-centric
notion of secu-rity, their status-quo orientation, and their biased, actor-based concept of terrorism to
repeat just a few of the discussed CTS’ arguments – are plainly opposed by CTS scholars, they treat the
more abstract assumptions – the ontological and epistemological foundations – somewhat more
cautiously. At instances, they seem to struggle somehow with the consequences of their own core
concepts. Namely, the precise extent to which discourse theory, post-positivism or constructivist
perspectives have to be employed to deepen terrorism research remains an open question. This point is
vividly highlighted by the two adjacent, yet very distinct notions of deepening outlined above. In the first
interpretation, deepened research is an approach to knowledge produc-tion that is first and foremost
indebted to self- (and other-) reflectivity: the foundational category ›terrorism‹ is not per se rejected as
an essentialism, rather the essentialist use of the category is the core - 7 - of its critique. In other words,
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there is a form of violence out there that can and indeed should be disclaimed as terrorist but the
disclaimer should not (indeed cannot) be used a-historically, inde-pendently, or void of context.
Accordingly, traditional, problem-solving approaches are not re-jected per se, but only if and insofar as
they adhere to a strictly positivist epistemology treating ter-rorism solely as an object of knowledge
and not as a product of a historical contingent situation. Thus, CTS can and indeed should not be
limited to assay the discourse of terrorism (To-ros/Gunning 2009: 92). Rather, discourse analyze is a tool
of CTS amongst others as long as it serves to engage the traditional and the critical scholars’ work in
looking beyond the surface, to point out underlying assumptions and knowledge claims, and to reconstruct the historical and social context of political violence and its representations. According to this
reading, a deepened critique ultimately has to become concrete and has to seek to influence (counterterrorist) policy decisions (Gunning 2007a: 383 and 387). This understanding of the CTS project tries to
establish a middle ground and therefore requires, as Toros and Gunning argue, at least a minimalist
foun-dational base; poststructuralist anti-foundationalism facilitates only the destabilization of concepts, whereas the aim of a concrete, immanent critique is to go beyond mere destabilization and to
proceed working
CTS is a soft line approach to terrorism that legitimizes and justifies terrorist
organizations
Jones, Professor at University of Glasgow, and Smith, Professor at University of
London, 09
[David Martin, M.L.R., Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or
Hypocritical—Studies “on” Terrorism?”,Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 295-296, accessed 6/29/13, VJ]
The line of relativist inquiry that critical theorists like Booth evince toward terrorism leads in fact not
to moral clarity but an inspissated moral confusion. This is paradoxical given that the editors make
much in the journal’s introductory symposium of their “responsible research ethics.” The paradox is
resolved when one realizes that critical moralizing demands the “ethics of responsibility to the
terrorist other.” For Ken Booth it involves, it appears, empathizing “with the ethic of responsibility”
faced by those who, “in extremis” “have some explosives” (p. 76). Anthony Burke contends that a
critically self-conscious normativism requires the analyst, not only to “critique” the “strategic languages”
of the West, but also to “take in” the “side of the Other” or more particularly “engage” “with the highly
developed forms of thinking” that provides groups like Al Qaeda “with legitimizing foundations and a
world view of some profundity” (p. 44). This additionally demands a capacity not only to empathize
with the “other,” but also to recognize that both Osama bin Laden in his 298 D. M. Jones and M. L. R.
Smith Messages to the West and Sayyid Qutb in his Muslim Brotherhood manifesto Milestones not
only offer “well observed” criticisms of Western decadence, but also “converges with elements of
critical theory” (p. 45). This is not surprising given that both Islamist and critical theorists share an
analogous contempt for Western democracy, the market, and the international order these structures
inhabit and have done much to shape.
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Squo Solves CST
Critical terrorism studies portray orthodox studies incorrectly—status quo academia
solves
Horgan, Professor at Penn State, and Boyle, Professor at University of St. Andrews, 08
[John and Michael J., Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 1 Issue 1, “A case against ‘Critical Terrorism
Studies’”, p. 52, accessed 6/28/13, VJ]
As a matter of policy, neither of us believes that any form of intellectual enterprise should be discarded
if it happens to run contrary to our interests or to challenge what we do. We welcome the contribution
of CTS only if it helps to improve the analytic rigor of terrorism or open new avenues of research. We
believe that – as Mao put it – that in academia it is always a good idea to let ‘a hundred flowers bloom;
let a hundred schools of thought contend’. We say this as a prelude to qualifying the criticisms below,
levelled at CTS (or at least its current incarnation) as a way of stimulating debate, not silencing it. The
problems with CTS That said, and to begin the debate, let us summarize our reasons for supposing that
existing work on CTS should be challenged: It overstates the novelty of its case, as scholars within
terrorism studies have long acknowledged the deficiencies and limitations of current research, and
have long sought to overcome them. • It overstates the case that terrorism studies is engaged in
problem-solving and dependent on instrumental rationality. • It reinvents the wheel in some important
respects, claiming to discover theoretical significance behind well-known observations, or assuming
new or ‘innovative’ lines of inquiry that in fact already exist either in whole or in part. • In attempting
to develop its case, it employs the development of a ‘straw man’ – ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’ – that
in some cases unfairly portrays almost 40 years of multi- and interdisciplinary research. • It
demonstrates a prima facie suspicion of academics engaged in policy-‘relevant’ research and in some
extreme cases implies a kind of ‘bad faith’ among those who engage in that kind of work. • It has –
rather ironically – created just the kind of dualism that critical theory was designed to challenge, and
overlooked the fact that the same moral concerns underlying CTS are often at the heart of traditional
terrorism studies. This is the summary of our position, so let us now turn to each of these criticisms.
CTS’s critique of status quo terrorism academia is false—there is already widespread
disagreement—there’s no such thing as orthodox studies
Horgan, Professor at Penn State, and Boyle, Professor at University of St. Andrews, 08
[John and Michael J., Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 1 Issue 1, “A case against ‘Critical Terrorism
Studies’”, p. 52, accessed 6/28/13, VJ]
Some CTS advocates have positioned the CTS project against something usually called ‘terrorism
studies’, ‘Orthodox terrorism studies’ or, alternatively, ‘terrorology’. Whatever these bodies of
literature are (or at least are imagined by those who have created them as such), they are recent
intellectual constructions, the product of an over-generalization that has emerged from the
identification of (1) the limitations associated with terrorism research to date, coupled with (2) a less
than complete understanding of the nature of research on terrorism. A cursory review of the
terrorism literature reveals that attempts to generalize about something called Orthodox Terrorism
Studies are deeply problematic. Among terrorism scholars, there are wide disagreements about,
among others, the definition of terrorism, the causes of terrorism, the role and value of the concept of
‘radicalization’ and ‘extremism’, the role of state terror, the role that foreign policy plays in
motivating or facilitating terrorism, the ethics of terrorism, and the proper way to conduct ‘counterterrorism’. A cursory examination of the contents of the two most well-known terrorism journals
Terrorism and Political Violence and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism quickly reveals this. These
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differences, and the concomitant disagreements that result in the literature, cut across disciplines –
principally political science and psychology, but also others, such as anthropology, sociology, theology,
and philosophy – and even within disciplines wide disagreements about methods (for example,
discourse analysis, rational choice, among others) persist. To suggest that they can be lumped together
as something called ‘terrorology’ or ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’ belies a narrow reading of the
literature. This is, in short, a ‘straw man’ which helps position CTS in the field but is not based on a
well-grounded critique of the current research on terrorism.
Status quo terrorist discourse CAN facilitate effective policy—the claim that it reifies
state power is vacuous and untrue
Horgan, Professor at Penn State, and Boyle, Professor at University of St. Andrews, 08
[John and Michael J., Critical Studies on Terrorism, Volume 1 Issue 1, “A case against ‘Critical Terrorism
Studies’”, p. 52, accessed 6/28/13, VJ]
We don’t endorse ableist language
But we also believe that the study of political violence lends itself to policy relevance and that those
who seek to produce research that might help policy-makers reduce the rates of terrorist attack are
committing no sin, provided that they retain their independent judgment and report their findings
candidly and honestly. In the case of terrorism, we would go further to argue that being policy relevant
is in some instances an entirely justifiable moral choice. For example, neither of us has any problem
producing research with a morally defensible but policy relevant goal (for example, helping the British
government to prevent suicide bombers from attacking the London Underground) and we do not
believe that engaging in such work tarnishes one’s stature as an independent scholar. Implicit in the
CTS literature is a deep suspicion about the state and those who engage with it. Such a suspicion may
blind some CTS scholars to good work done by those associated with the state. But to assume that
being ‘embedded’ in an institution linked to the ‘establishment’ consists of being captured by a state
hegemonic project is too simple. We do not believe that scholars studying terrorism must all be policyrelevant, but equally we do not believe that being policy relevant should always be interpreted as
writing a blank cheque for governments or as necessarily implicating the scholar in the behaviour of
that government on issues unrelated to one’s work. Working for the US government, for instance,
does not imply that the scholar sanctions or approves of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The
assumption that those who do not practice CTS are all ‘embedded’ with the ‘establishment’ and that this
somehow gives the green light for states to engage in illegal activity is in our view unwarranted, to say
the very least. The limits of this moral responsibility are overlooked in current CTS work; indeed, if
anything there is an attempt to inflate the policy relevance that terrorism scholars have. Jackson
(2007c) alleges that ‘the direction of domestic counter-terrorism policies’ are ‘to a large degree based
on orthodox terrorism studies research’ (p. 225). Yet he provides no examples, let alone evidence for
this claim. Jackson further alleges ‘terrorism studies actually provides an authoritative judgment about
who may legitimately be killed, tortured, rendered or incarcerated by the state in the name of
counter-terrorism’ (p. 249). Again, there is a tension here: Jackson conjures an image of terrorism
studies which no matter its conceptual and empirical flaws is somehow able to influence governments
to the point of constructing who is and is not a legitimate target. This implies that not only is there a
secret cabal of terrorism researchers quietly pulling the strings of government, but also that those
engaged in terrorism research sanction abuse of human rights and statedirected violence. This implies
a measure of bad faith on the part of some terrorism researchers, and we believe that CTS advocates
should offer a more nuanced portrayal of those engaged in policy relevant search than this assessment
allows.
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No Alternative
It’s not enough to just criticize our scholarship- they need to explain a realistic
alternative.
Jackson, Senior Researcher @ Centre for the Study of Radicalization and
Contemporary Political Violence, et al 9
(Richard, Reader in the Department of International Politics @ Aberystwyth University, Jeroen Gunning is Lecturer in International Politics at
Aberystwyth University and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence and co-editor of
the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism, Marie Breen Smyth is Director of the Centre for the Study of Radicalisalion and Contemporary Political
Violence (CSRV) at Aberystwyth University, and a Reader in International Politics and co-editor of the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism,
Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda, p. 4 GAL)
In this broader context, the specific aim of this volume is to bring together an eminent group of scholars to explore. First, why a new "critical'
approach to the study of political terrorism is needed and. second, what such an approach might entail in terms of its ontology, epistemology,
methodology, normative standpoint, ethics, contribution to policy, its relation to other disciplines, and most importantly, its future research
agenda. We accept that articulating
a clear, achievable, and relevant research agenda is the litmus test of any
new approach.
It is not enough to simply point out what is lacking in current research; a clear and realistic alternative
must also be provided. In essence, our primary purpose was to make the case for critical terrorism studies in a much clearer and more
developed form than we have up to this point. We hope that the following chapters will go some way towards this goal, while at the same time
opening up and stimulating new questions, issues, debates, relationships, and collaborations.
Counter-discourses remain marginal or get co-opted- can’t change political discourse
about terrorism.
Jackson (Department of International Politics, University of Wales) 11
Richard, 3/1/11, “Culture, identity and hegemony: Continuity and (the lack of ) change in US
counterterrorism policy from Bush to Obama,” Macmillan Publishers, Volume 48: Number 2/3, page
390–411 md
Of course, these sites and social practices are not monolithic or free from contradiction; they have also
been the means through which the dominant discourse or truth regime has been resisted, contested,
challenged and deconstructed (see Croft, 2006). However, counter-narratives and discourses expressed
through movies, books, jokes, protests and other texts have to date remained relatively marginal in
America’s broader culture and political system, or have been successfully incorporated into the
dominant discourse. Certainly, they have yet to make a significant impact on counterterrorism policy,
the proposed reforms of the Obama administration notwithstanding (see below) or on US political
discourse about terrorism more broadly. There are very few national-level politicians publically arguing
that terrorism is a relatively minor threat, that the United States has overreacted, that terrorists oppose
US policies rather than its values, or that a ‘war’ on terror is a misguided and unhelpful response, for
example.
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Emancipation Alt Bad
The alternative denies a pragmatic understanding of politics- don’t make the perfect
the enemy of the good, you should endorse our specific action instead of their utopian
universalism.
Jones, Associate Professor and editorial board member on the Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism and Smith, Professor of War Studies, 8
(David Martin & M.L.R., April 13, 2008, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or Hypocritical—Studies “on”
Terrorism?”Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, accessed 7/3/12, CPO)
In analogous visionary terms, Booth defines real security as emancipation in a way that denies any
definitional rigor to either term. The struggle against terrorism is, then, a struggle for emancipation
from the oppression of political violence everywhere. Consequently, in this Manichean struggle for
global emancipation against the real terror of Western democracy, Booth further maintains that
universities have a crucial role to play. This also is something of a concern for those who do not share
the critical vision, as university international relations departments are not now, it would seem, in
business to pursue dispassionate analysis but instead are to serve as cheerleaders for this critically
inspired vision.
Overall, the journal’s fallacious commitment to emancipation undermines any ostensible claim to
pluralism and diversity. Over determined by this transformative approach to world politics, it
necessarily denies the possibility of a realist or prudential appreciation of politics and the promotion
not of universal solutions but pragmatic ones that accept the best that may be achieved in the
circumstances. Ultimately, to present the world how it ought to be rather than as it is conceals a deep
intolerance notable in the contempt with which many of the contributors to the journal appear to
hold Western politicians and the Western media.6
It is the exploitation of this oughtistic style of thinking that leads the critic into a Humpty Dumpty
world where words mean exactly what the critical theorist “chooses them to mean—neither more nor
less.” However, in order to justify their disciplinary niche they have to insist on the failure of
established modes of terrorism study. Having identified a source of government grants and academic
perquisites, critical studies in fact does not deal with the notion of terrorism as such, but instead the
manner in which the Western liberal democratic state has supposedly manipulated the use of violence
by non-state actors in order to “other” minority communities and create a politics of fear.
The alternative is overly utopian- you can’t solve terrorism by recognizing
interconnectedness and singing Kumbaya.
Jones, Associate Professor and editorial board member on the Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism and Smith, Professor of War Studies, 8
(David Martin & M.L.R., April 13, 2008, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or Hypocritical—Studies “on”
Terrorism?”Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, accessed 7/3/12, CPO)
Moreover, the resolution of this condition of escalating violence requires not any strategic solution that
creates security as the basis for development whether in London or Kabul. Instead, Booth, Burke, and
the editors contend that the only solution to “the world-historical crisis that is facing human society
globally” (p. 76) is universal human “emancipation.” This, according to Burke, is “the normative end”
that critical theory pursues. Following Jurgen Habermas, the godfather of critical theory, terrorism is
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really a form of distorted communication. The solution to this problem of failed communication resides
not only in the improvement of living conditions, and “the political taming of unbounded capitalism,”
but also in “the telos of mutual understanding.” Only through this telos with its “strong normative bias
towards non violence” (p. 43) can a universal condition of peace and justice transform the globe. In
other words, the only ethical solution to terrorism is conversation: sitting around an un-coerced table
presided over by Kofi Annan, along with Ken Booth, Osama bin Laden, President Obama, and some
European Union pacifist sandalista, a transcendental communicative reason will emerge to
promulgate norms of transformative justice. As Burke enunciates, the panacea of un-coerced
communication would establish “a secularism that might create an enduring architecture of basic
shared values” (p. 46).
In the end, un-coerced norm projection is not concerned with the world as it is, but how it ought to
be. This not only compounds the logical errors that permeate critical theory, it advances an ultimately
utopian agenda under the guise of soi-disant cosmopolitanism where one somewhat vaguely
recognizes the “human interconnection and mutual vulnerability to nature, the cosmos and each
other” (p. 47) and no doubt bursts into spontaneous chanting of Kumbaya.
Turn- Their emancipation alternative will be coopted to justify further violence.
McDonald (Assistant Professor of International Security in the Department of Politics
and International Studies at the University of Warwick.) 07
Matt, 1/9/07, “Emancipation and Critical Terrorism Studies” European Political Science, Volume 6
Number 3, pages 252 – 259 md
Defining an overtly emancipatory approach to the study of terrorism is not without its dangers and
certainly not without its critics. The language of ‘emancipation’, albeit a version of it that few working in
the critical theoretical tradition would endorse, was invoked by President Bush to justify intervention
in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the ‘war on terror’. At this level, advancing the normative
imperative of emancipation (however defined) risks contributing to the possibility of its invocation
and ‘use’ as intellectual ballast for violent crusades involving the ‘enforcement’ of freedom. This
concern is evident in post-modern objections to the violence of Enlightenment ‘grand narratives’, and
will be somewhat familiar to those engaged in debates concerning ‘humanitarian intervention’ or
‘human security’ in international relations. But rather than illustrating the inherent problems of
emancipation as a guiding normative principle, it may well be that precisely the internal tensions and
contradictions of practices carried out in the name of ‘emancipation’ (e.g. the tens of thousands of dead
among those ‘liberated’ in the case of Iraq) provide the basis for immanent critique and genuine
emancipatory change. Genuine emancipation cannot, as Booth (1999) has suggested, be achieved at the
expense of others.
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AT: Non-State Terrorist Focus/You Ignore State Terrorism
Their argument that terror scholarship ignores state violence is a straw personpolitical scientists have a long history of analyzing state violence, even if it’s not
labeled terrorism.
Lutz, Professor at Indiana University, 10
(James M., December 2010, “A Critical View of Critical Terrorism Studies,” Perspectives on Terrorism,
volume: 4, p. 31-40, CPO)
There is little doubt that one of the reasons for the increase in Homeland Security Studies results from
the fact that government grants and contracts are more readily available for these types of analysis
since terrorist attacks can be a major threat to the security of states and the safety of their citizens.
The consequent increase in the number of studies that deal with this type of threat obviously does
respond to the needs of governments that are attempting to provide better security, even if these
studies do not necessarily enhance a more basic understanding of the sources of violence—terrorist and
otherwise. Governments, much to the dismay of academics everywhere, are more interested in
practical research (often narrowly defined) and not very interested in the pure research that so many
academics are particularly fond of. This focus on Homeland Security is therefore a rather natural
government response; it does not necessarily constitute proof of any effort to eliminate or prevent
any alternative analysis of violence by the state from those interested in Terrorism Studies even if it
does lead some more researchers to focus on dissident terrorism. Moreover, the claim that a
“terrorism industry” has been established that serves the state [8], appears to be something of an
overstatement; it appears to be designed to discredit those who are primarily interested in dissident
and insurgent terrorism.
The claim that the study of state uses of terrorism has been ignored predates the emergence of the CTS
perspective. One earlier search of the literature in 1987 claimed that there have been virtually no
discussions of state uses of terrorism in the social science literature [9], a claim that the CTS perspective
has widely accepted. Yet, while political scientists may not have referred to the use of violence by
governments as terrorism (see the next section), they actually have a long history of looking at violent
state activities in domestic arenas. In the past, political scientists regularly divided forms of
government into totalitarian, authoritarian, and democratic regimes. The authoritarian category has
perhaps been an overly broad one as it was used to encompass everything not fitting easily in the
other two categories. In discussions of totalitarian societies, however, inevitably one criterion among
others that was applied was the use of terror as a means of social control, especially through secret
police agencies. [10] Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and Mao’s Peoples Republic of China were held
up as classic examples of such totalitarian systems. More recent examples would include North Korea
and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, at least before he engaged in a war to ‘liberate’ Kuwait.
Many of the authoritarian regimes in a variety of forms also relied on the explicit or implicit use of
illegal or illegitimate force against dissenters. Some of the rulers, such as Idi Amin in Uganda or
Francois Duvalier in Haiti, were notorious for the level of violence perpetuated by their security forces or
(para-) military units. To reiterate the basic point, violence by governments against domestic
populations has hardly been ignored by political scientists in academia. The fact that it has not been
analyzed under the heading ‘terrorism’ does not mean that it has not been studied. It has, in fact,
been studied for long time and in some depth, for instance in the literature on human rights
violations.
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Terrorism studies don’t exclude state terror from their analysis.
Lutz, Professor at Indiana University, 10
(James M., December 2010, “A Critical View of Critical Terrorism Studies,” Perspectives on Terrorism,
volume: 4, p. 31-40, CPO)
State reliance on terrorist techniques that is directed against its own citizens, moreover, has also been
considered in the ‘orthodox’ terrorist literature. Wilkinson [11] in one of his early works, discussed the
differences between revolutionary terrorism and repressive (state) terrorism in a period well before
terrorism became a hot topic. Even before him Thornton [12] noted that terrorism could begin with
the state and its security forces and not with dissidents. More recently, David Claridge [13] provided
not only a very good definition of terrorism covering both dissident and regime terrorism, he also
provided a rather compelling argument that some governments could and did indeed engage in
campaigns of terrorism. These early references in the literature suggest that the field of Terrorism
Studies has not ignored terrorism from above or been pre-empted by Homeland Security analysts or
‘the establishment’ in quite the way that CTS scholars claim. While a majority of those interested in
the use of terrorism may not focus on such activities by states, it does not mean that they deny the
existence state terrorism as such.
Some direct state-inspired or -supported violent activities utilized in international politics, of course,
have not been ignored by social scientists or by government themselves. There has been a great deal
of interest in practices that would generally be considered ‘terrorist’. Security agencies such as the
CIA, KGB, SIS, PIDES, and a multitude of others have been directly responsible for assassinations,
bombings, and other types of unlawful behavior – some more than others. Further, they have provided
support for existing violent insurgent groups in other countries. That goes back a long way in history.
Bulgarian governments supported the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in the
1920s, the Italian OVRA aided Croatian dissidents in Yugoslavia in the 1930s, the East German
Democratic Republic (DDR) supported the West German Red Army Faction in the 1970s, the Czech
communist regime provided support for the Italian Red Brigades in the same decade, the US Reagan
administration States supported the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s while Pakistan has provided
various types of support for Islamist groups active in Kashmir and Afghanistan for decades. These and
other examples are known well enough to suggest that such government activities in the international
arena have not been ignored by academia. In fact, these kinds of covert operations, while different
than attacks against one’s own citizens, have been quite well studied, most frequently in the context
of international relations rather than terrorism studies. This also explains in part why discussions of
these type of war by proxy activities have been under-represented in key terrorism journals. [14]
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State Violence ≠ Terrorism
Not every form of state violence is terrorism. Alleging this drains the term ‘terrorism’
of any real meaning.
Lutz, Professor at Indiana University, 10
(James M., December 2010, “A Critical View of Critical Terrorism Studies,” Perspectives on Terrorism,
volume: 4, p. 31-40, CPO)
It needs to be recognized that not every form of violence that is evil or reprehensible, when performed
by governments, constitutes terrorism. Genocide is far worse than terrorism, but genocide does not
primarily seek to create fear in a target audience. In fact governments undertaking genocide may even
seek to lull the victims into a false sense of security to make the killing easier. This was the case with the
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Jews during the Holocaust and, more recently, according to some
reports, also with the Tutsi in Rwanda. Similarly, harsh repression of non-violent dissent is evil, but it is
usually not terrorism as long as it is not indiscriminate. Slavery is a pernicious attack on human
dignity, but it is not terrorism. Institutional violence in which some citizens have fewer rights or
situations where equal rights are not equally protected are to be deplored, but it is not terrorism (unless
accompanied by government-tolerated vigilante violence intended to enforce the control of particular
groups). It is quite legitimate and desirable to focus public and scholarly attention on these issues, but
it is not appropriate to consider them to be examples of terrorism. To fault those who study other
forms of terrorism than state terrorism, as CTS scholars do, is unjust since these type of situations are
actually frequently analyzed in other academic (sub-)disciplines. Therefore, it cannot be said that ‘
orthodox’ analysts “refuse to examine cases of state terrorism” (very broadly defined). [20] If almost
every example of government use of force to maintain law and order is labeled state terrorism, then
the concept of ‘terrorism’ ceases to have any real meaning and simply becomes a polemic term used
to apply a negative and pejorative label to a government or states that an observer dislikes.
Repression is not the same as terrorism- state repression, while terrible, is avoidable
by obeying laws. Terrorism involves random and indiscriminate use of violence.
Lutz, Professor at Indiana University, 10
(James M., December 2010, “A Critical View of Critical Terrorism Studies,” Perspectives on Terrorism,
volume: 4, p. 31-40, CPO)
A second distinction relevant to a consideration of the claims advanced by CTS scholars about certain
state actions involves the essential difference between state repression and state terrorism. All
countries and their governments can be considered repressive in the sense that they enforce laws with
which some citizens will disagree. Ordinary criminals are naturally also concerned with repression by the
police. Repression can also occur in institutional contexts where a particular group in society is
disadvantaged. These inequalities can take an institutional form and even be considered structural
violence (e.g. if woman are legally prohibited from voting or from engaging in certain occupations or are
not allowed to own property). Certain religious or ethnic groups may have fewer rights of face special
barriers to social mobility. If a day of worship does not fall on the traditional “weekend,” adherents can
perceive themselves as suffering disadvantages. It has been suggested that such inequalities and
injustices in the system have become an underlying cause of terrorism. [15] While all of these
situations of discrimination and unequal treatment are clearly deplorable, they are not necessarily
examples of terrorism. They may not constitute terrorism even in cases of governments that are truly
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repressive, regimes that deny or deprive some or all of their citizens of their most basic civil rights and
liberties since there are many other forms of political violence and repression.
Distinguishing between repression and terrorism is important. Sproat made a key distinction between
the two. [16] Repression involves state uses of violence against specific individuals who have violated
the laws of the land, however unfair these laws may be. Any citizen, however, can avoid such negative
actions by state authorities by obeying the laws. Individuals who are arrested for violating the laws do
serve as an example and a deterrent to others, but the persons who are arrested are chosen because
of their individual transgressions. Terrorism by the government, on the other hand, occurs when a
member of a group is selected for victimization, usually at random, to provide a negative example for
others belonging to the same (sub-) group. The choice of victims does not distinguish between the
innocent and the guilty. The key element is the external audience that is being targeted. [17] In such
circumstances, it is not possible for any individual to avoid the negative state action by obeying the laws
of the land. Such exemplary violence meant to intimidate others qualifies as terrorism and is different
from mere repression. It is important to note that not all repression is terrorism, even though state
terrorism in most cases probably would qualify as repression.
Terrorism and state repression should be conceptually distinct.
Lutz, Professor at Indiana University, 10
(James M., December 2010, “A Critical View of Critical Terrorism Studies,” Perspectives on Terrorism,
volume: 4, p. 31-40, CPO)
This distinction between repression and terrorism is important to bear in mind when charges are
made that Western countries have actively supported terrorist regimes. To some extent this claim
would appear to result from confusing repression with terrorism. It loses a great deal of its salience
when it is recognized that it has been repressive states that have been supported by the West, but not
necessarily terrorist regimes. The distinction, of course, may not be important for the citizens who
suffer in one form or another at the hands of security forces and secret police agencies. Yet for analytic
purposes, it is important to distinguish terrorism as a technique of intimidation and group punishment
from repression—or from even harsh repression—as a technique for governing against the will of the
population or sectors thereof.
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Discourse/Ontology Focus Bad
Their focus on questioning discourse and ontology prevents us from having any
objective data or policy prescriptions- the permutation is best.
Jones, Associate Professor and editorial board member on the Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism and Smith, Professor of War Studies, 8
(David Martin & M.L.R., April 13, 2008, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or Hypocritical—Studies “on”
Terrorism?”Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, accessed 7/3/12, CPO)
Firstly, to challenge dominant knowledge and understanding and retain sensitivity to labels leads
inevitably to a fixation with language, discourse, the ambiguity of the noun, terror, and its political
use and abuse. Terrorism, Booth enlightens the reader unremarkably, is “a politically loaded term” (p.
72). Meanwhile, Zulaika and Douglass consider terror “the dominant tropic [sic] space in contemporary
political and journalistic discourse” (p. 30). Faced with the “serious challenge” (Booth p. 72) and
pejorative connotation that the noun conveys, critical terrorologists turn to deconstruction and bring
the full force of postmodern obscurantism to bear on its use. Thus the editors proclaim that terrorism
is “one of the most powerful signifiers in contemporary discourse.” There is, moreover, a “yawning gap
between the ‘terrorism’ signifier and the actual acts signified” (p. 1). “[V]irtually all of this activity,” the
editors pronounce ex cathedra, “refers to the response to acts of political violence not the violence
itself” (original italics) (p. 1). Here again they offer no evidence for this curious assertion and assume, it
would seem, all conventional terrorism studies address issues of homeland security.
In keeping with this critical orthodoxy that he has done much to define, Anthony Burke also asserts the
“instability (and thoroughly politicized nature) of the unifying master-terms of our field: ‘terror’ and
‘terrorism’” (p. 38). To address this he contends that a critical stance requires us to “keep this radical
instability and inherent politicization of the concept of terrorism at the forefront of its analysis.”
Indeed, “without a conscious reflexivity about the most basic definition of the object, our discourse will
not be critical at all” (p. 38).More particularly, drawing on a jargon-infused amalgam of Michel
Foucault’s identification of a relationship between power and knowledge, the neo-Marxist Frankfurt
School’s critique of democratic false consciousness, mixed with the existentialism of the Third Reich’s
favorite philosopher,Martin Heidegger, Burke “questions the question.” This intellectual potpourri
apparently enables the critical theorist to “question the ontological status of a ‘problem’ before any
attempt to map out, study or resolve it” (p. 38).
Interestingly, Burke, Booth, and the symposistahood deny that there might be objective data about
violence or that a properly focused strategic study of terrorism would not include any prescriptive
goodness or rightness of action. While a strategic theorist or a skeptical social scientist might claim to
consider only the complex relational situation that involves as well as the actions, the attitude of
human beings to them, the critical theorist’s radical questioning of language denies this possibility.
Their discourse and ontology arguments are non-falsifiable and can’t produce a
coherent method for understanding terrorism.
Jones, Associate Professor and editorial board member on the Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism and Smith, Professor of War Studies, 8
(David Martin & M.L.R., April 13, 2008, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or Hypocritical—Studies “on”
Terrorism?”Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, accessed 7/3/12, CPO)
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The critical approach to language and its deconstruction of an otherwise useful, if imperfect, political
vocabulary has been the source of much confusion and inconsequentiality in the practice of the social
sciences. It dates from the relativist pall that French radical post structural philosophers like Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, cast over the social and historical sciences in
order to demonstrate that social and political knowledge depended on and underpinned power
relations that permeated the landscape of the social and reinforced the liberal democratic state. This
radical assault on the possibility of either neutral fact or value ultimately functions unfalsifiably, and
as a substitute for philosophy, social science, and a real theory of language.
The problem with the critical approach is that, as the Australian philosopher John Anderson
demonstrated, to achieve a genuine study one must either investigate the facts that are talked about
or the fact that they are talked about in a certain way. More precisely, as J.L. Mackie explains, “if we
concentrate on the uses of language we fall between these two stools, and we are in danger of taking
our discoveries about manners of speaking as answers to questions about what is there.”2 Indeed, in
so far as an account of the use of language spills over into ontology it is liable to be a confused
mixture of what should be two distinct investigations: the study of the facts about which the language
is used, and the study of the linguistic phenomena themselves.
It is precisely, however, this confused mixture of fact and discourse that critical thinking seeks to
impose on the study of terrorism and infuses the practice of critical theory more generally. From this
confused seed no coherent method grows.
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CTS => Relativism
Their critical theory’s attempt to empathize with the terrorist collapse into Marxist
relativism.
Jones, Associate Professor and editorial board member on the Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism and Smith, Professor of War Studies, 8
(David Martin & M.L.R., April 13, 2008, “We’re All Terrorists Now: Critical—or Hypocritical—Studies “on”
Terrorism?”Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, accessed 7/3/12, CPO)
Critical theory, then, embraces relativism not only toward language but also toward social action.
Relativism and the bizarre ethicism it engenders in its attempt to empathize with the terrorist other
are, moreover, histrionic. As Leo Strauss classically inquired of this relativist tendency in the social
sciences, “is such an understanding dependent upon our own commitment or independent of it?”
Strauss explains, if it is independent, I am committed as an actor and I am uncommitted in another
compartment of myself in my capacity as a social scientist. “In that latter capacity I am completely
empty and therefore completely open to the perception and appreciation of all commitments or value
systems.” I go through the process of empathetic understanding in order to reach clarity about my
commitment for only a part of me is engaged in my empathetic understanding. This means, however,
that “such understanding is not serious or genuine but histrionic.”5 It is also profoundly dependent on
Western liberalism. For it is only in an open society that questions the values it promotes that the
issue of empathy with the non-Western other could arise. The critical theorist’s explicit loathing of the
openness that affords her histrionic posturing obscures this constituting fact.
On the basis of this histrionic empathy with the “other,” critical theory concludes that democratic
states “do not always abjure acts of terror whether to advance their foreign policy objectives . . . or to
buttress order at home” (p. 73). Consequently, Ken Booth asserts: “If terror can be part of the menu of
choice for the relatively strong, it is hardly surprising it becomes a weapon of the relatively weak” (p.
73). Zulaika and Douglass similarly assert that terrorism is “always” a weapon of the weak (p. 33).
At the core of this critical, ethicist, relativism therefore lies a syllogism that holds all violence is terror:
Western states use violence, therefore, Western states are terrorist. Further, the greater terrorist uses
the greater violence: Western governments exercise the greater violence. Therefore, it is the liberal
democracies rather than Al Qaeda that are the greater terrorists.
In its desire to empathize with the transformative ends, if not the means of terrorism generally and
Islamist terror in particular, critical theory reveals itself as a form of Marxist unmasking. Thus, for
Booth “terror has multiple forms” and the real terror is economic, the product it would seem of “global
capitalism” (p. 75). Only the engaged intellectual academic finding in deconstructive criticism the
philosophical weapons that reveal the illiberal neo-conservative purpose informing the conventional
study of terrorism and the democratic state’s prosecution of counterterrorism can identify the real
terror lurking behind the “manipulation of the politics of fear” (p. 75).
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Gotta Kill Terrorists
Terrorists have religious motivations that make discourse and compromise
meaningless. The only way to win the war we are in is to kill them before they kill us.
Peters 4 - (Ralph, Retired Army Officer, “In Praise of Attrition,” Parameters, Summer)
Trust me. We don’t need discourses. We need plain talk, honest answers, and the will to close with the
enemy and kill him. And to keep on killing him until it is unmistakably clear to the entire world who
won. When military officers start speaking in academic gobbledygook, it means they have nothing to
contribute to the effectiveness of our forces. They badly need an assignment to Fallujah. Consider our
enemies in the War on Terror. Men who believe, literally, that they are on a mission from God to
destroy your civilization and who regard death as a promotion are not impressed by elegant
maneuvers. You must find them, no matter how long it takes, then kill them. If they surrender, you
must accord them their rights under the laws of war and international conventions. But, as we have
learned so painfully from all the mindless, left-wing nonsense spouted about the prisoners at
Guantanamo, you are much better off killing them before they have a chance to surrender. We have
heard no end of blather about network-centric warfare, to the great profit of defense contractors. If you
want to see a superb—and cheap—example of “net-war,” look at al Qaeda. The mere possession of
technology does not ensure that it will be used effectively. And effectiveness is what matters. It isn’t a
question of whether or not we want to fight a war of attrition against religion-fueled terrorists. We’re
in a war of attrition with them. We have no realistic choice. Indeed, our enemies are, in some respects,
better suited to both global and local wars of maneuver than we are. They have a world in which to
hide, and the world is full of targets for them. They do not heed laws or boundaries. They make and
observe no treaties. They do not expect the approval of the United Nations Security Council. They do
not face election cycles. And their weapons are largely provided by our own societies. We have the
technical capabilities to deploy globally, but, for now, we are forced to watch as Pakistani forces fumble
efforts to surround and destroy concentrations of terrorists; we cannot enter any country (except,
temporarily, Iraq) without the permission of its government. We have many tools—military, diplomatic,
economic, cultural, law enforcement, and so on—but we have less freedom of maneuver than our
enemies. But we do have superior killing power, once our enemies have been located. Ultimately, the
key advantage of a superpower is superpower. Faced with implacable enemies who would kill every
man, woman, and child in our country and call the killing good (the ultimate war of attrition), we must
be willing to use that power wisely, but remorselessly. We are, militarily and nationally, in a transition
phase. Even after 9/11, we do not fully appreciate the cruelty and determination of our enemies. We
will learn our lesson, painfully, because the terrorists will not quit. The only solution is to kill them and
keep on killing them: a war of attrition. But a war of attrition fought on our terms, not theirs. Of course,
we shall hear no end of fatuous arguments to the effect that we can’t kill our way out of the problem.
Well, until a better methodology is discovered, killing every terrorist we can find is a good interim
solution. The truth is that even if you can’t kill yourself out of the problem, you can make the problem
a great deal smaller by effective targeting. And we shall hear that killing terrorists only creates more
terrorists. This is sophomoric nonsense. The surest way to swell the ranks of terror is to follow the
approach we did in the decade before 9/11 and do nothing of substance. Success breeds success.
Everybody loves a winner. The clichés exist because they’re true. Al Qaeda and related terrorist groups
metastasized because they were viewed in the Muslim world as standing up to the West successfully
and handing the Great Satan America embarrassing defeats with impunity. Some fanatics will flock to
the standard of terror, no matter what we do. But it’s far easier for Islamic societies to purge
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themselves of terrorists if the terrorists are on the losing end of the global struggle than if they’re
allowed to become triumphant heroes to every jobless, unstable teenager in the Middle East and
beyond. Far worse than fighting such a war of attrition aggressively is to pretend you’re not in one
while your enemy keeps on killing you. Even the occupation of Iraq is a war of attrition. We’re doing
remarkably well, given the restrictions under which our forces operate. But no grand maneuvers, no
gestures of humanity, no offers of conciliation, and no compromises will persuade the terrorists to halt
their efforts to disrupt the development of a democratic, rule-of-law Iraq. On the contrary, anything less
than relentless pursuit, with both preemptive and retaliatory action, only encourages the terrorists
and remaining Baathist gangsters.
Aggressive military action against terrorists and their sponsors is the only way to end
their jihad against the west - embrace of nonviolence makes future attacks inevitable.
Mcinerney and vallely, 4 (Thomas and Paul, Lt. General USAF (Retired) and Maj. General US Army
(Retired), both analysts for Fox News, Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror, p. 167-8)
After the axis powers declared war on the United States in December 1941, the United States did not
limit its response to fortifying the Hawaiian Islands, increasing antisubmarine patrols along the Atlantic
Coast, and upgrading the efforts of the FBI to crack rings of domestic Axis sympathizers and capture
saboteurs. Osama bin Laden has openly and repeatedly declared war on the United States. The radical
Islamists see themselves in jihad against the West, and they see the United States as the leading
“Crusader” power. They see moderate Muslims who wish live in peace as traitors. Backed by state
sponsors of terror like Iran they have become a global threat just as much as the National Socialists
were. Though militarily puny their dreams and their potential danger are grandiose: inflaming a billion
Muslims worldwide and creating a radical Islamist empire. To that end they will cooperate with rogue
states like North Korea. They will do everything they can to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The
bottom line is that they must be stopped. End their state sponsorship, and they wither. Buttress the
forces of moderate Islam, encourage freedom and tolerance in Islamic societies grant Muslims in Iraq
and Iran the opportunity to vote against tyranny and the mullahs, then the radicals do more than
wither, they disappear to the fringes of Muslim society. If we are to stop the spread of radical Islam we
cannot be satisfied with the conviction of a failed terrorist bomber, dismantling a terrorist cell, or
freezing the bank account of a terrorist front – however necessary all these things are. To rely purely
on defensive measures cedes the initiative to the radical Islamists. Instead, we need to take the battle
to them. The counteroffensives in Afghanistan and Iraq were first steps to the endgame, they are not
the endgame itself. The endgame is taking down the Web of Terror entirely so that the global terror
threat dissolves. We have laid out the broad parameters of an active strategy for this war. Despite the
best wishes of some, the Web of Terror cannot be talked to death, no “peace process” will work, no
foreign aid will suffice unless the countries involved make a commitment – as Libya has apparently
done – to forgo jihad, forgo terrorism, forgo weapons of mass destruction. Countries that will not do
this willingly must be compelled to do it. Terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction are not something we have to live with; they are something that the rogue states of the
Web of Terror have to live without.
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AT: Sanctions Unethical
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Lifting Sanctions Doesn’t Solve Economic Deprivation
Lifting the embargo wouldn’t help the Cuban people-internal blockades mean that no
goods go to the people
Carter, Washington Times Writer, 2k
(Tom, Sept 21, 2000 Cubanet, “Doctors testify lifting Cuba sanctions would not help average citizens”
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y00/sep00/21e6.htm, accessed 7/9/13, KR)
Lifting the U.S. economic embargo to allow the sale of food and medicine to Cuba will do nothing to
help the average Cuban, two doctors who recently defected from the island nation testified on Capitol
Hill yesterday. ¶ "We consider that only cutting the umbilical cord that sustains [Cuban President Fidel
Castro's] empire, and by this we mean suspending any external aid, we can suffocate the malignancy
that is killing [the Cuban people] today," said Dr. Leonel Cordova, 31, a general practitioner from
Havana, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.¶ Speaking as a doctor who served his patients,
he said he believed no food or medicine sent from the United States would help the Cuban people if it
went through a government organization.¶ "The U.S. embargo on Cuba does not affect the people of
Cuba. The revolutionary leaders have everything, every kind of medicine from the United States," said
Dr. Cordova, who defected in May while on a medical mission to Zimbabwe. "No food or medicine will
reach the people. It is all funneled through the Cuban government for high-level Communist officials
and tourists."¶ At a luncheon at the Heritage Foundation earlier, Dr. Noris Pena, a dentist who also
defected in Zimbabwe, elaborated.¶ "It is not the external embargo that is the problem with Cuba's
medical system, it is the internal blockade. With or without the U.S. embargo, the Cuban people will
suffer," she said.
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Sanctions Ethical and Cause Compliance
Sanctions work—ethical or practical failures are due to lack of quid pro quo
Lopez, PhD from Syracuse University, 99
[George A., March, Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 13, Issue 1, “More Ethical than Not: Sanctions
as Surgical Tools: Response to “A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy””, page 145, Wiley Library, accessed
7/5/13, VJ]
Beyond this “sanctions theory,” the empirical record of sanctions’ success has more positive examples
than simply the South African case, which Gordon considers an anomaly. Certainly in the Rhodesian
case, sanctions combined with diplomatic incentives and initiatives to produce the settlement
resulting in majority rule. As I will amplify below, the Iraq case is characterized by a great deal more
compliance than is recognized regarding weapons of mass destruction. And there is no question that
economic sanctions was one of the factors that pressured the Belgrade government to participate in
the Dayton peace accords process. As we write, Libya has finally agreed to release for trial the two
suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. Gordon’s claims that sanctions are a patent failure, and that the
evidence (and the logic of sanctions) suggests that sanctions are far more likely to guarantee
noncompliance, are simply incorrect. If there is a practical or ethical dilemma with sanctions it is not
compliance failure, but compliance underachievement. From recent analyses of cases, however, we
know that this results because leaders who impose sanctions have neither fully used nor fully
understood the mechanism and how to properly assess its impact. In some cases the Security Council
has not set conditions for the immediate lifting of sanctions upon compliance; or, they have “moved
the goalposts” after sanctions have been imposed. Most problematic, sanctioners have failed to mix
sanctions with incentives in order to get meaningful compliance. There is little question that the UN
Sanctions Committee system has learned some unfortunate lessons through trial and error and that,
especially regarding the Iraq case, the Security Council was fairly unimaginative in executing an effective
sanctions policy. In particular, the council failed to see in the multiple requirements placed on Iraq
after the Gulf War an opportunity to mix pressure, pain, and promises in ways that might have
sparked more compliance and that would have rewarded the real progress made in Iraq’s compliance
with various provisions important to the council. Sanctions have gone awry because the council did
not mix carrots (such as the partial lifting of sanctions as rewards) with sticks (keeping sanctions on the
free flow of oil) in attempting to close down Iraq’s weapons development.
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Ethically Justified- Self-Defense and Humanitarian Reasons
Sanctions are ethically justified—self-defense and humanitarian intervention
Winkler, PhD in political science, 99
[Adam, Human Rights Quarterly Volume 21 Issue 1, “Just Sanctions”, Page 141-142,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_rights_quarterly/v021/21.1winkler.html#authbio, accessed
7/9/13, VJ]
Under the laws of just war, just cause is necessary to legitimize any resort to force. What constitutes
just cause is a limited range of potential motivations behind the use of force, including self-defense 50
and humanitarian intervention. 51 [End Page 141] Under the principle of self-defense, states can resort
to doing harm when faced with an actual or imminent infringement of state sovereignty. Self-defense
against aggression has been codified as a legitimate reason to use force in Articles 2 and 51 of the UN
Charter, 52 but the principle can be traced to the beginnings of the just war tradition. 53 The scope of
self-defense is broad enough to encompass collective self-defense, enabling allied states to come to
the assistance of a nation under attack by an aggressor. 54 Self-defense can also justify the use of
harmful force enacted for the purposes of deterrence, a strategy designed to diminish potential future
infringements of sovereignty. But the principle of self-defense has its limits: one can fight back to repel
an attack, but one cannot harm the aggressor for purposes of revenge or domination. 55 In the context
of economic sanctions, self-defense means that states certainly can resort to harmful economic
measures when faced with infringements of territorial boundaries; where just war would declare the
use of armed force to be legitimate, economic sanctions of some sort are justifiable. Self-defense
would also allow the adoption of sanctions when an aggressor state imposes measures of economic
coercion against other states without appropriate reason. If, for example, one nation declared economic
war on a neighbor, the neighboring state and its allies would be justified in imposing economic sanctions
as a defensive response. An example of self-defense supplying just cause for the use of economic
sanctions is the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Although there had been longstanding disputes over
the borders of the two countries, the existing borders were internationally recognized. In addition, Iraq
was clearly the aggressor under international norms; the UN General Assembly's 1974 Declaration on
Aggression provides that the first resort to armed force in a dispute is prima facie evidence of
aggression, 56 and Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of aggressive force against the
territorial integrity of another nation. Therefore, when the Security Council imposed mandatory
sanctions against Iraq, just cause was present. 57 Beyond self-defense, the laws of just war consider
humanitarian [End Page 142] intervention to constitute just cause legitimizing the use of force. 58
Therefore, when a state engages in widespread violations of internationally recognized human rights,
other nations can properly resort to harmful force to end the violations. Although the exact marking
lines are unclear for when the treatment of people within a state reaches the level at which an
international response is justified, among the conditions allowing the use of force are enslavement,
genocide, and subjugation of peoples. 59 While the principle of self-determination generally allows the
state to deal with its citizens in the manner that they as a people wish to be treated, selfdetermination is a misnomer if the state severely oppresses part of its population. 60 And while some
have suggested that concern with humanitarian ideals represents a new focus for international
relations--an evolution from states to individuals as relevant actors 61 --the laws of just war dictate that
humanitarian intervention can amount to just cause, thereby providing at least one instance where
the pursuit of humanitarian ideals maintains a focus on the state. 62 Humanitarian reasons would
support the resort to economic sanctions, and, indeed, violations of international humanitarian norms
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have provided justification for the use of sanctions in recent years. For example, the UN Security
Council's sanctions against Serb-controlled areas of the former Yugoslavia 63 were prompted in part
by the Serbian war policy of "ethnic cleansing," a polite way of referring to genocide. During the late
1980s, the Iraqis also engaged in genocide. Targeting its Kurdish population, Iraq used chemical
weapons, destroyed Kurdish villages, and buried Kurdish casualties in mass unmarked graves. 64 Even
in the absence of territorial aggression, this would have supplied ample just cause for the imposition
of economic sanctions against Iraq. [End Page 143]
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Moral Responsibility is with the Target
The responsibility for immoral sanction doesn’t rest with sanctioners—it lies with the
authoritarian leaders of the country
Lopez, PhD from Syracuse University, 99
[George A., March, Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 13, Issue 1, “More Ethical than Not: Sanctions
as Surgical Tools: Response to “A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy”” page 145-146, Wiley Library,
accessed 7/5/13, VJ]
Gordon correctly notes that there has also been difficulty with implementing in full the humanitarian
exemptions and programs that are intended to operate during sanctions episodes. She, again rightly,
raises concerns about their adequacy to the needs of a beleaguered population. Whether it be in the
case of the Haiti or the Angola (UNITA) sanctions, we can now point to terrible ineptitude and lack of
political will in enforcing sanctions as keys to their ineffectiveness, and by extension to their harsh
impact on the innocent. We can also point to the slowness with which humanitarian exemptions have
been adjusted in response to the documented need of vulnerable populations. But these are
correctable problems, and they have been analyzed in some detail by both the Security Council and
humanitarian agencies. That past behavior does not inspire confidence that attention will be paid to
all the humanitarian needs of a sanctioned population may be clear, but being naive about issues of
moral agency in the impact of sanctions compounds the problem. Specifically, Gordon takes the facts
that harm comes to innocents and that sanctions are imposed by sanctioners and mistakenly makes
the pain of the former the direct and singular responsibility of the latter. She refuses to deal with the
intermediary and decision-making role that leadership in a target state plays in determining the
impact of sanctions. While she blames the imposers of sanctions for treating a general population
instrumentally, she appears not to acknowledge at all the moral responsibility of despicable leaders
who victimize their own people instrumentally through the manipulation of sanctions. While the
impact of sanctions maybe either immoral or moral, any judgment regarding their impact on innocent
people must be assessed by examining the responses of the sanctioned country’s leader and in light of
the international humanitarian relief effort mobilized on behalf of the innocent. Again here, the case
of Iraq focuses the discussion on the burden of responsibility borne by Iraqi leaders.
Sanctions are necessary— we can and should assume that we have the consent of the
people—they can’t express consent under authoritarian regimes
Lopez, PhD from Syracuse University, 99
[George A., March, Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 13, Issue 1, “More Ethical than Not: Sanctions
as Surgical Tools: Response to “A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy””, page 146-147, Wiley Library,
accessed 7/5/13, VJ]
Two other disagreements with Gordon are noteworthy. The first concerns the problem of sanctions’
having increased moral power if they were imposed with the consent of those likely to bear their
brunt. Gordon, considering as the norm the South Africa case, wherein the African National Congress
and resident trade union and church groups endorsed sanctions outright, is unwilling to consider cases
of implied consent, which may come from exiles or the wider international community in the name of
a repressed people. I would claim that recent evidence, such as the crowds in the streets of Russia and
Eastern Europe toppling statues of past dictators and the throngs in the Congo rejoicing after the fall
of Mobuto, underscores a fundamental generalization: We can morally argue for sanctions on some
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countries because history supports the contention that repressed people will consent to such.
Considering the evidence of the past in repressive states, such as Haiti, Iraq, or Rwanda, we can
combine the criterion of “right intention” with “right reason” in a philosophical sense to maintain that
if these (Haitian, Iraqi, or Rwandan) citizens lived in an environment where they could speak freely,
they would argue for bystanders, or outsiders, to take all actions, such as sanctions, on their behalf to
bring down the regime, To suggest, as Gordon appears to do, that under repression citizens need to
express consent for external coercive sanctions in order for the latter to be moral is to condemn those
citizens to being the regime’s next targets.
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AT: Humanitarian Impact
There are checks on humanitarian impacts, and that impact is miniscule anyway
Lopez, PhD from Syracuse University, 12
[George A., Spring, Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 26, Issue 1, “In Defense of Smart Sanctions: A
Response to Joy Gordon”, page PQ, Pro Quest, accessed 7/5/13, VJ]
Joy Gordon has been the foremost singular intellectual voice calling for close scrutiny of sanctions on
humanitarian grounds and for the application of ethical criteria to assess them. Thus, it is not surprising
that she has astutely pointed out the serious impact of aviation sanctions on health and other sectors,
and the potentially far-reaching legal and ethical dilemmas inherent in the sanctions listing process and
in financial sanctions. 11 No serious analyst of sanctions can claim that smart sanctions have no
unintended consequences, or that there are no inconsistencies in particular cases. The disagreements I
have with Gordon's assessment--in addition to the '90s hangover mentioned at the outset--are twofold.
First, the humanitarian impact of targeted sanctions is miniscule compared to that during the era of
trade sanctions, and Gordon does not place her current examples in that larger context. She does
acknowledge that the studies of sanctions in the mid to late 1990s and the practical changes they
underwent during this time went a long way toward ameliorating much of their worst humanitarian
effects. Her claim that not every set of targeted sanctions is subject to a pre-assessment of impact by
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs is correct. But that is not because
humanitarian concerns are slighted in sanctions design as the Security Council resolution is being
formulated. Rather, it is because the Council has had sufficient experience in crafting sanctions so as to
preempt many of the potential negative consequences. 12 And, I would assert, the truer test of
whether the sanctions process is committed to avoiding negative humanitarian effects lies in the
presence of effective sanctions-monitoring mechanisms, which can aid in correcting unintended
consequences. Monitoring mechanisms also allow policy-makers to continually improve the design
and implementation of sanctions to bring them more fully in line with the rule of humanitarian law.
UN missions, the special representatives of the secretary-general, and the panels of experts for each UN
sanctions case all focus on monitoring in ways that did not exist a decade ago. 13 My second major
disagreement with Gordon is again a matter of degree. Specifically, I am referring to her concerns about
due process rights and the listing controversy that has engulfed the UN's "1267 regime" for
counterterrorism. While I understand her critique, Gordon's judgment is more severe than my own, as I
believe she fails to acknowledge a few realities of the past five years. First, although she describes most
of the reforms undertaken over time by the Council regarding delisting and due process, Gordon does
not give sufficient weight to these. I would claim that in passing five new resolutions since 2006 the
Security Council has undergone a remarkable evolution to a more rights-sensitive system that is
consistent with the concerns and claims of the "like-minded states" that championed the due process
challenge, and at the same time holds firm to a fundamental distinction made by a number of Security
Council members that placing an entity or individual on the sanctions list is an act of preventive security,
not a judicial decision subject to judicial review. 14 Further, Gordon overestimates the significance of a
very small number of cases of due process in connection to asset freezes that are currently working their
way through the European court system and that comprise this controversy. Moreover, analysts and
lawyers of quite different persuasions disagree about the role and place of the European human rights
judicial system in evaluating Security Council resolutions in this issue area. In sum, Gordon's concern
with targeted sanctions writ large, when the listing due process problem has affected a very small
number of individuals, and only in the counterterrorism area, seems overstated.
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Smart Sanctions Avoid Ethical Harms
“Smart sanctions” solve humanitarian concerns
Lopez, PhD from Syracuse University, 99
[George A., March, Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 13, Issue 1, “More Ethical than Not: Sanctions
as Surgical Tools: Response to “A Peaceful, Silent, Deadly Remedy””, page 148, Wiley Library, accessed
7/5/13, VJ]
Gordon dismisses much too quickly the possibility of “smart sanctions” that can have minimal
humanitarian impact and target elites responsible for the policies that generated the sanctions.
Admittedly, the idea of “smart sanctions” may be more elegant in conceptualization than application at
the present time. But the momentum in the diplomatic and academic communities to make them a
reality is in full force. Various analyses and forums have now explored in detail the possibility of more
robust and refined sanctions mechanisms, such as asset freezes and other financial measures, which
can be more dynamically integrated with arms embargoes and bans on travel and international
meetings, and targeted specifically at elites. To be fully effective, these smarter measures will need
further strategic design and improved implementation through monitoring and via the enforcement
capabilities of the Security Council.5 But their advent—and their importance to the international
community-is clear. On balance, then, I cannot share Gordon’s condemnation of sanctions as
categorically unethical. There is no question that this decade has witnessed a set of costly and
sometimes inhumane sanctions cases, with Iraq being an extraordinary quagmire. But some other
sanctions episodes (Rhodesia, South Africa, and Libya) have appeared to be successful without terrible
humanitarian consequences, while other cases had limited negative humanitarian tragedy relative to
accomplishing compliance (the former Yugoslavia). As a result of these experiences and from critiques
like Gordon’s, sanctions that are more just, ethical, and effective now lie within our grasp. When they
are again called for in response to violations of international norms, we should move deliberatively to
assure that sanctions be imposed only under these heightened criteria.
Targeted sanctions are better than generic ones
Lopez, PhD from Syracuse University, 12
[George A., Spring, Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 26, Issue 1, “In Defense of Smart Sanctions: A
Response to Joy Gordon”, page PQ, Pro Quest, accessed 7/5/13, VJ]
Gordon's first concern, that targeted sanctions are no more successful than general trade sanctions,
has varied dimensions.4 The first is Gordon's contention--echoing Daniel Drezner--that targeted
sanctions, which are applied by the UN Security Council, will always have limited success because UN
member states have varied goals in imposing them and quite diverse commitments to enforcing them
fully. 5 But this is true of every public policy that is legislated, whether at the domestic or international
level (for example, by a resolution of the Security Council). The measure of success of a policy lies not in
the intentions of its framers, nor very much in assessing the roadblocks or inconsistencies that such a
policy may manifest in its implementation. Rather, the measure of success lies in the empirical impact
of the policy--and, in the case of sanctions, on constraining its targets in the manner specified in the
Security Council resolution. Thus, a perfect policy outcome would be one in which the change in
behavior of the target perfectly conforms to the resolution imposing the sanctions. Moreover, because
economic sanctions of even the targeted variety are political in nature, they will always be affected by
the current tensions within the Security Council, with its various rivalries among regional and other
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powerful actors, and will invariably fall victim to problems of implementation, monitoring, and
compliance. In the worst instances, issues of implementation, monitoring, and compliance are a function
of the weak workings of the Security Council, in which major world powers will muster up the
organizational strength to legislate targeted sanctions, but will have neither the political will nor the
institutional strength to carry them out in full. A second, data-based point undercuts Gordon's claim
that targeted sanctions fare no better than trade sanctions. The global volume of trade for 2010 was
nearly $15 trillion, more than double the $6 trillion of 1995. Moreover, the trade-based component of
the gross domestic product of most countries has steadily increased as well. Both logically and
empirically, then, the application of traditional trade sanctions focused on entire nations in our
current era would have a much more substantial dislocation to both unintended secondary entities
and, most certainly, the general population than they did in the early 1990s. Trade-based sanctions in
2012 would more rapidly affect the quality of life of average people within a targeted country, and in a
more widespread manner. This is an outcome that Gordon clearly wants to avoid. Thus, it is difficult to
understand how Gordon could argue that targeted sanctions imposed on those persons and entities
most responsible for an objectionable policy, or placed on those who violate existing sanctions, fail to be
superior to such broadly affecting trade sanctions. A third approach to support my argument for the
utility of targeted sanctions emerges if we assess their success by examining more than just the
general strengths and weaknesses of the discrete types of targeted measures--for example, financial,
aviation, and so on--that are analyzed by Gordon. Especially in judging the adequacy of Security Council
sanctions, and as a recent book by Andrea Charron convincingly demonstrates, sanctions cases should
also be analyzed in terms of the very specific types of violations in international law they are meant to
correct and the UN Charter-based goals that the Security Council expressed in adopting them. 6 Utilizing
this lens of analysis points to four types of goals for which sanctions are imposed: to end serious
violent conflict; to prevent international terrorism; to control nuclear proliferation; and to protect
human rights and civilians during serious violent conflict. After a brief discussion of each of these
goals, I assess how well targeted, smart sanctions performed in achieving them.
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Cuba Supports Terrorism
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General
Cuba has not met the requirements to be removed from SST and doing so would be an
insult to American people
Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, 13
[Mauricio Claver, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening,”
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-26-13, PR]
Pursuant to the statutory criteria stipulated under Section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act (as
currently re-authorized under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act), Cuba can only be removed from the state
sponsors of terrorism list in two ways: Option one is to have the U.S. president submit a report to
Congress certifying that there has been a fundamental change in the leadership and policies of Cuba’s
government, that Cuba no longer supports acts of international terrorism, and that Cuba has provided “assurances” that it will not support
acts of international terrorism in the future. It would be disingenuous for anyone to argue that there has been a
“fundamental change” when the Castros have ruled Cuba with an iron fist for 54 years. Option one
does not pass the laugh test. Option two is to have the president decide to terminate the listing and
submit, at least 45 days before doing so, a report to Congress that the Cuban government has not
provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six months and has made
assurances to the United States that it will not support terrorist acts in the future. It would be an
insult to the American people if Cuba were to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism
based solely on assurances of change by a dictatorship that brutally represses its population, defies
the rule of law, routinely foments anti-Americanism around the world with provocative antidemocratic rhetoric, and is holding in its prisons an American aid worker, Alan P. Gross. Arrested in December 2009, Gross’s “crime”
was helping members of Cuba’s Jewish community connect to the Internet. The last time the United States relied on a
dictator’s “assurances” to justify removing a country from the sponsors list was in 2008, when
President George W. Bush accepted the assurances of the Kim family that North Korea would not
provide support for or engage in international terrorism. That obviously has not worked out well.
Cuba is a threat to the US—laundry list
Suchlicki, founding North-South Center Executive Director, 13
[Jaime, previous Director of the University’s Research Institute for Cuban Studies, 4-4-13, Institute for
Cuban and Cuban-American Studies
University of Miami, “Cuba’s Continuous Support for Terrorism,”
http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FOCUS_Web/Issue188.htm, accessed 6-25-13, PR] YGS
In addition to its proven technical prowess to interfere and intercept U.S. telecommunications, Cuba has
deployed around the world a highly effective human intelligence network. The type of espionage carried
out by Ana Belén Montes, the senior U.S. defense intelligence analyst who spied for Cuba during some
16 years until her arrest in 2001, has enabled the Castro regime to amass a wealth of intelligence on
U.S. vulnerabilities as well as a keen understanding of the inner-workings of the U.S. security system.
Such information and analysis was provided to Saddam Hussein prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and
would undoubtedly be provided to a strategic ally like Iran. While one may argue that factors such as
Iran’s limited military capabilities and sheer distance diminish any conventional concerns, one should
expect that Tehran, in case of a U.S.-Iran conflict would launch an asymmetrical offensive against the
U.S. and its European allies through surrogate terrorist states and paramilitary organizations. In such a
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scenario, Cuban intelligence would be invaluable to Iran and its proxies and Cuban territory could be
used by terrorist groups to launch operations against the U.S. In more specific terms: Cuba directly and
through Venezuela continues to provide intelligence to Hamas and Hezbollah. Ghazi Nasr al Din, one of
the most important representatives of Hezbollah in Venezuela, has maintained close contact with
Venezuelan government officials and most likely with Cuban officials. Current and former member of
Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA), a Basque terrorist organization continue to reside in Cuba. While
some of these terrorists are on the island as part of an accord between the Cuban and Spanish
governments, others are hiding in Cuba, fugitives of Spanish justice. The FBI estimates that Cuba has
provided safe harbor to dozens of fugitives from U.S. justice who live on the island under the
protection of the Castro regime. Some of these fugitives are charged with or have been convicted of
murder, kidnapping, and hijacking, and they include notorious killers of police officers in New Jersey
and New Mexico. Warranting special mention are the outstanding U.S. indictments against Cuban Air
Force pilots Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez and General Rubén Martínez Puente, the head of the Cuban
Air Force, who in 1996 ordered these Cuban pilots to shoot down two unarmed civilian American
aircraft over international waters in the Florida Straits. That act of terrorism killed four men, three of
them American citizens. On March 4, 2013, the 44th Anniversary of the founding of the “Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine,” an Iranian supported organization, the Cuban Ambassador to Lebanon,
Rene Ceballo Prats, reaffirmed “Cuba’s firm support for the Palestinian cause.” The previous year, in
March 2012, a delegation of the Front headed by Abu Sami Marwan, visited Cuba at the invitation of
Cuba’s Communist Party. Jose R. Balaguer, head of Cuba’s party International Department expressed
“the support and solidarity of Havana with the Palestinian cause.” Another Cuban official emphasized
“Cuba’s support for the Palestinian struggle to establish an independent state with eastern Jerusalem as
its capital.” In an attempt to obtain unilateral concession from the U.S., Gen. Raul Castro’s regime has
toned down some of the violent anti-U.S. propaganda of older brother Fidel. Yet the commitments and
interrelationships with anti-American terrorist groups have not disappeared. They have taken a more
sophisticated approach; many times using proxies such as Venezuelan supporters.
There is evidence that Cuba is sponsoring multiple terrorist groups
Hudson, national security reporter, 13
[John, reporter on national security and foreign policy from the Pentagon to Foggy Bottom, the White
House to Embassy Row, and for The Cable, 6-3-13, Foreign Policy, “Rubio: Cuba belongs on the ‘state
sponsors of terrorism' list,”
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/03/rubio_cuba_belongs_on_the_state_sponsor_of_t
error_list, accessed 6-24-13, PR] YGS
In the face of mounting calls to remove Cuba from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FLA)
defended Foggy Bottom's recent decision to keep Cuba on the list, in a statement to The Cable. "The Castro regime sponsors terrorism abroad
and against their own people, and removing
a country from the list of nations that sponsor terrorism requires
evidence of reform," Rubio said. "We have not seen such evidence in Cuba." In its annual Country Reports on Terrorism
released last week, the State Department acknowledged that some conditions on the island were improving, but maintained
three reasons for keeping Cuba on the list: Providing a safe haven for some two dozen members of Basque
Fatherland and Liberty (ETA), a Spanish rebel group charged with terrorist activity; providing aid to Colombia's rebel
group the FARC "in past years" -- Cuba no longer supports the group today; and providing harbor to "fugitives wanted
in the United States." "It remains clear that Cuba is the same totalitarian state today that it has been for decades," Rubio told The
Cable. "This totalitarian state continues to have close ties to terrorist organizations. "
Cuba is sponsoring terrorist groups and Castro brothers are a threat
Ros-Lehtinen, Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee Chairman, 13
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
[Ileana, 5-30-13, “As Cuba Remains on State Sponsor of Terrorism List, Ros-Lehtinen Concerned That
Report Underestimates Threat For Political Reasons,”
http://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/press-release/cuba-remains-state-sponsor-terrorism-list-ros-lehtinenconcerned-report-underestimates, accessed 6-24-13, PR] YGS
“The release of the State Department 2012 Country Reports on Terrorism continues to rightfully designate Cuba on the State Sponsor of
Terrorism (SST) list. The report reaffirms that the Cuban
dictatorship provides safe haven to foreign terrorist
organizations such as the FARC and ETA and harbors fugitives wanted in the United States, one of them being
Joanne Chesimard who is wanted for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. “While the report reminds us that the Cuban regime supports
acts of international terrorism, I am disappointed that the report failed to mention the unjustly detainment of U.S. citizen Alan Gross, the fact
that Cuba
collaborates with other SST regimes such as Iran and Syria, and operates an extensive spy
network that poses a significant threat to our national security. The Administration should immediately stop giving
concessions to the regime and deny U.S. visas to their operatives who will never respond to diplomatic niceties. The Castro brothers
will always take any step to undermine U.S. interests, harm U.S. citizens, and support our enemies .”
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Cuba Supports FARC
Cuba has not met the requirements to be removed from SST and doing so would be an
insult to American people
Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, 13
[Mauricio Claver, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening,”
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-26-13, PR]
Pursuant to the statutory criteria stipulated under Section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act (as
currently re-authorized under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act), Cuba can only be removed from the state
sponsors of terrorism list in two ways: Option one is to have the U.S. president submit a report to
Congress certifying that there has been a fundamental change in the leadership and policies of Cuba’s
government, that Cuba no longer supports acts of international terrorism, and that Cuba has provided “assurances” that it will not support
acts of international terrorism in the future. It would be disingenuous for anyone to argue that there has been a
“fundamental change” when the Castros have ruled Cuba with an iron fist for 54 years. Option one
does not pass the laugh test. Option two is to have the president decide to terminate the listing and
submit, at least 45 days before doing so, a report to Congress that the Cuban government has not
provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six months and has made
assurances to the United States that it will not support terrorist acts in the future. It would be an
insult to the American people if Cuba were to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism
based solely on assurances of change by a dictatorship that brutally represses its population, defies
the rule of law, routinely foments anti-Americanism around the world with provocative antidemocratic rhetoric, and is holding in its prisons an American aid worker, Alan P. Gross. Arrested in December 2009, Gross’s “crime”
was helping members of Cuba’s Jewish community connect to the Internet. The last time the United States relied on a
dictator’s “assurances” to justify removing a country from the sponsors list was in 2008, when
President George W. Bush accepted the assurances of the Kim family that North Korea would not
provide support for or engage in international terrorism. That obviously has not worked out well.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Cuba Harbors US Fugitives
Cuba government is housing over 70 US fugitives and terrorists
Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, 13
[Mauricio Claver, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening,”
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-26-13, PR]
Second, the State Department country report says that “the
Cuban government continued to permit fugitives wanted
in the United States to reside in Cuba and also provided support such as housing, food ration books,
and medical care for these individuals.” That has not changed either. The FBI estimates that Cuba has provided
safe harbor to more than 70 fugitives from U.S. justice who live on the island under the protection of
the Castro regime. Some of these fugitives are charged with or have been convicted of murder,
kidnapping, and hijacking, and they include notorious killers of police officers in New Jersey and New
Mexico. Warranting special mention are the outstanding U.S. indictments against Cuban Air Force
pilots Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez and Francisco Pérez-Pérez and General Rubén Martínez Puente, the
head of the Cuban Air Force, who in 1996 ordered the pilots to shoot down two civilian American
aircraft over international waters in the Florida Straits. That act of terrorism killed four men, three of
them American citizens.
Cuba government is housing over 70 US fugitives and terrorists
Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, 13
[Mauricio Claver, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening,”
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-26-13, PR]
Second, the State Department country report says that “the
Cuban government continued to permit fugitives wanted
in the United States to reside in Cuba and also provided support such as housing, food ration books,
and medical care for these individuals.” That has not changed either. The FBI estimates that Cuba has provided
safe harbor to more than 70 fugitives from U.S. justice who live on the island under the protection of
the Castro regime. Some of these fugitives are charged with or have been convicted of murder,
kidnapping, and hijacking, and they include notorious killers of police officers in New Jersey and New
Mexico. Warranting special mention are the outstanding U.S. indictments against Cuban Air Force
pilots Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez and Francisco Pérez-Pérez and General Rubén Martínez Puente, the
head of the Cuban Air Force, who in 1996 ordered the pilots to shoot down two civilian American
aircraft over international waters in the Florida Straits. That act of terrorism killed four men, three of
them American citizens.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Cuban WMDs
Cuba developed weapons that are a threat to the security of the US
Suchlicki, founding North-South Center Executive Director, 13
[Jaime, previous Director of the University’s Research Institute for Cuban Studies, 4-4-13, Institute for
Cuban and Cuban-American Studies
University of Miami, “Cuba’s Continuous Support for Terrorism,”
http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FOCUS_Web/Issue188.htm, accessed 6-25-13, PR] YGS
Worrisome to the U.S. are reports that “have uncovered covert operations between Cuba and Iran in
the development and testing of electromagnetic weapons that have the capacity to disrupt
telecommunication networks, cut power supplies and damage sophisticated computers.” (1)
Furthermore, Cuba can easily provide Iran with valuable information from its sophisticated espionage
apparatus. Iran is also able to obtain information on biotechnology from Cuba. In the late 1990s, Cuba
began “transferring (licensing) both its medical biotechnologies and, along with the technical knowhow, implicit capabilities to develop and manufacture industrial quantities of biological weapons,”
creating a significant security threat for the United States and Israel.
[The North-South Center was an independent research facility devoted to improving relations in the
Western Hemisphere, wrote extensively about Latin America]
Werry, Master of Arts in National security affairs, 8
[Kevin G., 3-17-08, Calhoun, “U.S. policy towards Cuba as a two level game or defending executive policy
discretion in the face of domestic pressure,”
http://calhoun.nps.edu/public/bitstream/handle/10945/4152/08Mar_Werry.pdf?sequence=1, accessed
6-27-13, PR]
Certainly the
most publicized period for Cuba’s involvement in the realm of terrorism during the post
Cold War came in 2002 when then Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, John Bolton, accused
Cuba of producing germs for biological warfare.133 This quickly caused alarm amongst the American public and helped
boost the cause of the Cuban-American hardliners, but his claims were tempered by intelligence analysts and Secretary of State Colin Powell to
say that Cuba had not produced the germs, but was capable of doing so. This
capability was based upon the fact that
Cuba’s biotechnology industry was regarded as one of the best throughout the world by the mid1990s based upon their training and investment in the programs.134 Based upon previous research on
the matter, there was very little question about the capabilities of the Cuban government and their
potential to create weapons of mass destruction in biological warfare. The Cuban government has not only pursued
biotechnology since the mid 1980s with training from the Russians, Chinese, Iraq, and Iran to name a few, but from 1991 through 1999 they
continually increased spending on these to $3.5 billion, which hardly seems to mesh with their modest outputs that resulted in vaccines for
meningitis, hepatitis, and the development of interferon.135 The profit from these programs in terms of exports, mostly to third world
countries, brought in just over $100 million annually for the period of 1991 to 1999.136 The
Cuban government has conducted
studies through their Institute of Oceanography as to which areas along the Cuban coast would allow
the flow of bottle and containers to flow the fastest to the coast of the United States, which has been
considered as a way to deploy bacteriological containers.137 Cuba has also used rhetoric to express
their possible intent against the U.S. in terms of biological warfare as early as 1997 when Castro,
“compared the United States to a dragon and Cuba to a lamb and warned that if the dragon tried to
eat the lamb, it would find its meal ‘poisoned’,” raising the concerns of the U.S. about Cuban intent.1
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Cuban Support for Venezuela = Terrorism
Cuba’s involvement in Venezuela is an act of terrorism—Venezuela’s relations with
Iran and Syria are a threat to the US
Carone, Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, 13
[Mauricio Claver, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening,”
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-26-13, PR]
The State Department’s previous rationale for continuing to list Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism stands and now new justifications can be
added: Terrorism
is defined in U.S. law as “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or
property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in
furtherance of political or social objectives.” The arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of Alan P. Gross for actions internationally
protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Cuba is a signatory, is an act of terrorism. Moreover, the
Castro regime has now made it clear that Gross will be held hostage until the United States releases five Cuban spies convicted in U.S. federal
courts. In addition, thousands
of Cuban soldiers and intelligence officials are stationed in Venezuela. Cuba’s
presence and control over the highest levels of Venezuela’s military, police, and intelligence services
not only threatens to subvert democracy in that nation, but it allows those Venezuelan authorities to
be Cuba’s proxies in trafficking drugs and weapons, and in providing support to such extremist
organizations as Hezbollah and Iran’s al-Quds. Cuba’s close political ties with other state sponsors of
terrorism – particularly Iran and Syria – and its history of sharing intelligence with rogue regimes are
of serious concern and, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, pose a risk to U.S.
counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere. As President Obama himself recognized last month when he
renewed the “national emergency” designation regulating the movement and anchorage of vessels in the Florida Straits (a yearly evaluation
process undertaken by U.S. presidents since the 1996 downing of U.S. civilian aircraft by the Castro regime), “the
Cuban government
has not demonstrated that it will refrain from the use of excessive force against U.S. vessels or aircraft
that may engage in memorial activities or peaceful protest north of Cuba.” To remove Cuba from the
state sponsors of terrorism list based on mere hopes of bettering relations would be foreign-policy
malpractice. Cuba must earn its removal from this list. Clearly it has not done so, and, as long as the
Castro brothers retain their absolute control over the island, nor is it likely to do so.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Add-Ons
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
AT: Oil Spills Add-On
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Oil Spills FL
Status quo solves—already cooperation over oil spill cleanup
Helman, Forbes writer, 11
[Christopher, 12/12, Forbes, “U.S. Should Drop Cuba Embargo For Oil Exploration”,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/12/12/u-s-should-drop-cuba-embargo-for-oilexploration/, accessed 7/8/13, VJ]
the Obama administration is doing something to ensure that
drilling is up to snuff.
At least
Repsol’s
rig
According to an excellent article from Bloomberg today, Repsol’s Chinese-built Scarabeo 9 rig will soon by boarded by four U.S. inspectors (two from the Coast
Guard, two from the Dept. of Interior) who will do what they can to check out the rig and watch some drills. But, according to the article, there will be real limits to
what the inspectors can inspect. They won’t get to check the rig’s all-important blowout preventor, or the well casing or drilling fluids that are to be used. Though
the U.S. inspectors will discuss any concerns they have with Repsol, they will have no enforcement authority. Although the offshore industry’s best service
companies and parts manufacturers are right here on the U.S. Gulf coast, Repsol will have to train its people and scrounge for spare parts from the rest of the world.
The administration, again, according to the Bloomberg article, has granted some
U.S. companies the license to respond to an oil spill were it to occur in Cuban waters. The government
But here’s something that completely blows my mind.
won’t say how many companies have that license or who they are, but there’s at least two of them: Wild Well Control and Helix Energy Solutions Group. Helix plans
so it can quickly respond to any Cuban blowout. Of course it’s smart
and safe for the U.S. government to put defensive measures in place in the event of a spill, but the
message to the industry is clear: we refuse to give superior U.S. operators the license to drill for oil in Cuba, but we want to make
sure you’re ready to clean up any problems. And the message to Cuba: we’re not going to let you use our
engineers, just our janitors. Knowing that a top-notch American clean-up crew is on standby in case of a blowout is not a big incentive for Cuba to
to stage a subsea containment cap on the U.S. coast
keep its own regulators on top of things.
No agreements are enforced even if US and Cuba co-operate.
Mall, National Resources Defense Council Land and Wildlife program, 13
[Amy, 3/4/13, The Energy Collective, “Laws Covering Oil and Gas Wells on Public/Private Lands Poorly
Enforced,”http://theenergycollective.com/amymall/194021/enforcing-laws-oil-and-gas-wells-publicand-private-land-not-we, accessed 7/1/13, AS]
The review made me very concerned about the lack of oversight of oil and gas production on federal
oil and gas leases; I got the sense that it's like a party of teenagers with no parents at home. Many rules
are going without enforcement. And in some cases I felt that the BLM staff may be having a tough time, trying to enforce the laws without
proper resources to do the job appropriately. Just some examples of what was found in this review: ¶ In Wyoming, "there
was an overall lack of enforcement of identified issues and/or non-compliant items in many records, many conditions of approval (COA) not
being followed that were not identified in the inspections as being issues, and non-compliant items requiring action."¶ In New Mexico,
Environmental Inspection records were found to be inadequate in detail and not in accordance with
the handbook, and it does not appear that non-compliance orders are issued for environmental issues or violations. The reviewers found
that the inspectors telephone and ask an operator to comply with surface standards, without documenting the call as a Verbal Warning.¶ In
North Dakota: "Not
all of the required inspections are being performed due to the demand from the
ongoing permitting workload for drilling."¶ In Bakersfield, California the review found that "The drilling inspection process in
Bakersfield is best summarized as a light review of drilling activity and, most importantly, exhibited a lack of proper documentation.....
Bakersfield is not performing casing or cementing inspections."¶ In Oklahoma, the reviewer
was concerned with the lack of
environmental protection measures, including unfenced open reserve pits with liquids after drilling
operations and erosion of pit berms without sediment traps.¶ There is a lot more in this report, but the bottom line was
that the BLM Inspection and Enforcement program has a long way to go before the public can have confidence that the agency is fulfilling its
responsibilities to protect our public lands and clean air and clean water, and ensure that laws are being followed. Some
problems may
be solved by additional resources devoted to inspections and enforcement, but money alone won't
solve the problem. Protecting the environment needs to be a much higher priority for the agency.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
The embargo’s protecting the environment in the status quo- it’s keeping Cuba from
drilling for oil close to the US coastline- lifting the embargo would drastically increase
the risk of a devastating oil spill
Claver-Carone 8 (7/25/8, Mauricio Claver-Carone, writer for The New York Times, How The Cuban Embargo
Protects The Environment, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25iht-edcarone.1.14793496.html)
NCM GDI 2013
For almost a decade now, the Castro regime has been lauding offshore lease agreements. It has tried Norway's StatoilHydro, India's state-run
Oil & Natural Gas Corporation, Malaysia's Petronas and Canada's Sherritt International. Yet, there
is no current drilling activity
off Cuba's coasts. The Cuban government has announced plans to drill, then followed with
postponements in 2006, 2007 and this year. Clearly, foreign oil companies anticipate political changes
in Cuba and are trying to position themselves accordingly. It is equally clear they are encountering
legal and logistical obstacles preventing oil and gas exploration and development. Among the impediments are
well-founded reservations as to how any new discovery can be turned into product. Cuba has very limited refining capacity,
and the U.S. embargo prevents sending Cuban crude oil to American refineries. Neither is it financially
or logistically viable for partners of the current Cuban regime to undertake deep-water exploration
without access to U.S. technology, which the embargo prohibits transferring to Cuba. The prohibitions
exist for good reason. Fidel Castro expropriated U.S. oil company assets after taking control of Cuba
and has never provided compensation. Equally important, foreign companies trying to do business with Cuba still face a lot of
expenses and political risks. If, or when, the Cuban regime decides again to expropriate the assets of these companies, there is no legal
recourse in Cuba. Frankly, it is bewildering why some seem to believe that U.S. companies partnering with one more anti-American dictatorship
to explore and develop oil fields will somehow reduce fuel costs for American consumers and contribute to U.S. energy independence. One
needs only to look at the reaction of the international oil markets when Hugo Chávez of Venezuela
nationalized assets of U.S.-based ConocoPhillips and Chevron.
What message would the United States be sending to oil-rich, tyrannical regimes around the world
about the consequences of expropriation if we were now to lift the embargo that was imposed after
Fidel Castro expropriated the assets of Esso, Shell and Texaco? For many years the U.S. embargo has
served to protect America's national security interests; today it is also serving to prevent Cuba's
regime from drilling near U.S. shores. And that's good for the environment.
No spills – financial incentives and moratoriums.
USA Today, 12
(USA Today, 4/19/12, “Editorial: 2 years after BP spill, lower
risks”,http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-04-19/BP-Deepwater-oilspill/54419466/1 accessed 7/1/13, AS)
Fortunately, Congress and regulators don't do the actual drilling, so what the commission had to say about the oil industry was most significant.
The good news here is that commission members praised the industry for taking safe drilling practices and emergency preparations more
The financial incentives for avoiding such blowouts are huge. BP became a global pariah after
the accident and had to sell assets, borrow money and cut its dividend to pay for the cleanup and
damages. Its stock price is still about 25% lower than it was before the accident.¶ No company wants
seriously.¶
to be the next BP . Nor do companies want any rival to be the next blundering malefactor, because
they were all collectively punished by a drilling moratorium in the Gulf after the accident.¶ Though the rig
count in the Gulf has recovered almost to pre-blowout levels (42 active rigs then, 37 now), there are still reasons to be wary and continue close
oversight. Despite the improvements, the oil spill commission gave the industry an overall grade of C+; the panel noted that there have been
three significant, preventable accidents at offshore platforms around the world in the past 10 months, though none in U.S. waters or as serious
as the BP accident.¶ So
is drilling in ultradeep offshore waters completely safe? Of course not, and it never
will be. The better question is whether the risks have been lessened enough to make it worth going
after the prodigious amounts of oil there, and here the answer is yes.¶ The United States, which still imports almost
half its oil, can't afford not to tap such a substantial domestic supply. The industry knows it can't afford another Deepwater Horizon accident.
That's not a perfect deal, but it's sufficient.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Won’t collapse the environment
Washington Post 97
(“Diversity Is Not Enough to Ensure Hardy Ecosystems,” p. A03, l/n)
Ecologists have long maintained that diversity is one of nature’s greatest strengths, but new research suggests
that diversity alone does not guarantee strong ecosystems. In findings that could intensify the national
debate over endangered species and habitat conservation, three new studies suggest that a greater
abundance of plant and animal varieties does not always translate to better ecological health. At least
equally important, the research found, are the types of species and how they function together. “Having a long
list of Latin names isn’t always better than a shorter list of Latin names,” said Stanford University
biologist Peter Vitousek, co-author of one of the studies published in the journal Science. Separate
experiments in California, Minnesota and Sweden found that diversity often had little bearing on the
performance of ecosystems -- at least as measured by the growth and health of native plants. In fact, the
communities with the greatest biological richness were often the poorest when it came to
productivity and the cycling of nutrients. One study compared plant life on 50 remote islands in northern
Sweden that are prone to frequent wildfires from lightning strikes. Scientist David Wardle of Landcare Research in
Lincoln, New Zealand, and colleagues at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, found that islands
dominated by a few species of plants recovered more quickly than nearby islands with greater
biological diversity. Similar findings were reported by University of Minnesota researchers who
studied savannah grasses, and by Stanford’s Vitousek and colleague David Hooper, who concluded that
functional characteristics of plant species were more important than the number of varieties in determining how
ecosystems performed. “In aiming to protect natural ecosystems, we cannot just manage for species variety
alone,” the Stanford researchers wrote. British plant ecologist J.P. Grime, in a commentary summarizing the
research, said there is not yet “convincing evidence that species diversity and ecosystem function are
consistently and causally related.” “It could be argued,” he added, “that the tide is turning against the
notion of high biodiversity as a controller of ecosystem function and insurance against ecological
collapse.”
Too many alt causes – bad tech and too profit-driven
USA Today, 12
(USA Today, 4/24/12, “Letters: Science, not profit, must lead deep water drilling,”
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/letters/story/2012-04-24/Ted-Danson-oil-DeepwaterHorizon/54513946/1, accessed 7/1/13, AS)
There are a few critical points not mentioned in the USA TODAY editorial on the BP oil spill that should
have been addressed ("Editorial: 2 years after BP spill, lower risks"). First of all, deep water drilling
represents a "brave new world" of oil exploration and novel technology as humans probe depths of
water, oil and rock that sustain thousands of atmospheres of pressure. At these levels, the technology
used to drill and extract oil can easily fail as we approach the yield strengths of many of the confining
materials subjected to extreme conditions. There is also a high chance of significant fracture of the
ocean/sea floor in drilling and hole erosion from gushing, hot and high pressure oil (along with
particulates and other mineral-rich fluids) that could make repair nearly impossible and could
permanently poison our waters.¶ The greatest lesson from the BP oil spill is that politicians and
businessmen cannot solve problems created by our advanced technology. Only scientists and
engineers can. We must listen to them and adopt a more rational approach to drilling that places
safety above profit.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
SQ Solves – Clean Up
Status quo solves- Obama, Coast Guard, and NOAA are already preparing contingency
plans for an oil spill in Cuban waters.
Nerurkar, Specialist in Energy Policy, and Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs,
11
(Neelesh, Mark P., November 28, Congressional Research Service, “Cuba’s Offshore Oil Development:
Background and U.S. Policy Considerations”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41522.pdf, Accessed 78-13, ABS)
In light of oil spill concerns, there has been increased congressional and public interest on the status of
oil spill preparedness and response and coordination between Cuba and the United States. A number
of analysts and policy groups have been encouraging U.S.-Cuban engagement on the issue,46 while
some policy groups maintain that the United States should focus on preventing Cuba from engaging in
offshore oil exploration altogether.47 The Obama Administration has been making efforts to prepare
for a potential oil spill in Cuban waters that could affect the United States. The U.S. Coast Guard has
been working with state, local, and other federal agencies to ensure that area contingency plans
covering Florida are adequate. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in
cooperation with the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has
run trajectory models in order to identify potential landfall areas along the U.S. coasts, information
that is being used to enhance the area contingency plans.48 Since March 2011, the Coast Guard’s
Seventh District in Miami has been working to develop an International Offshore Drilling Response Plan.
As part of this effort, the Coast Guard hosted an inter-agency table top exercise in Miami on November
17, 2011, responding to a fictitious international spill off the coast of Florida.49 U.S. agencies have
also engaged with officials from Repsol, which has provided information regarding its plans related to
drilling and oil spill response. The company has offered U.S. agencies an opportunity to inspect the
Scarabeo-9 oil rig. Both the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) are planning to inspect the rig before it enters Cuban waters.
According to U.S. officials, Repsol maintains that it will adhere to U.S. regulations and the highest
industry standards when conducting its exploratory drilling in Cuban waters.50
Status Quo solves spills – Obama will remove embargo in case of spill and drilling
companies have increased tech.
Allen, NPR correspondent on the Southeast, 12
(Greg, NPR, “U.S. Watches Closely As Oil Drilling Begins Off Cuba,” 2/13/12,
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/13/146635957/u-s-watches-closely-as-oil-drilling-begins-off-cuba, 6/26/13, ND)
Complicating matters is the fact that this new well is being drilled in the waters of a country that's
under a strict U.S. embargo. Unless they apply for and receive special permission from the government,
U.S. companies are banned from doing any work on the well — even if there's a spill.¶ Jorge Pinon, a
former oil company executive and now a research fellow at the University of Texas, says if there's a
blowout, the U.S. president is sure to immediately lift the embargo for companies that respond. ¶
Pinon also says the Spanish company doing the drilling, Repsol, has a lot of experience with deepwater drilling in the Gulf. And, he says, the company has upgraded its procedures to incorporate
lessons learned in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill.¶
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
No cooperation
Oil companies are halting Cuban prospects – means US Cuba coop does nothing.
Goodhue, Editor at the Reporter, 13
(David, 7/6/13, Keynoter Publishing Company, “Last Cuban offshore oil project ending for now,”
http://www.keysnet.com/2013/06/06/487368/last-cuban-offshore-oil-project.html, accessed 7/1/13,
AS)
Cuba suffered a major disappointment when several countries were unsuccessful in finding oil in the
deep waters of the Florida Straits last year. The area — about 70 miles from Key West — might contain
large amounts of oil, but it is in very deep water, the crude is difficult to find and working in the area is
highly expensive.¶ Operations in the Straits cost companies about $100 million each in exploratory missions alone, said Jorge Piñon,
associate director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy Program at the University of Texas at Austin.¶ “I have been told that
the oil is there, but the traps/structures are very difficult. So oil companies are probably likely to
spend their limited capital dollars in other more promising, less risky areas (not only technical but also politically)
than Cuba,” Piñon said in an e-mail. “They would rather go to Brazil, Angola, Alaska, U.S. Gulf of Mexico or the new growing market of shale in
Argentina.”¶ The Straits exploration — conducted by four international companies on a giant Chinese-built, Italian-owned semi-submersible oil
rig — worried both environmentalists and critics of Cuba’s Castro regime. But the operation was largely a bust and only two of the participating
companies are still in the region: Malaysia’s Petronas and Gazprom, from Russia. They’re operating in a partnership and are now only
conducting “some seismic work,” Piñon said.¶ The
first company to work on the rig, Spain’s Repsol, closed its Cuban
offices. And Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, is going through too many financial difficulties to invest again in the risky Straits, according to
Piñon. The area near the Bahamas where Zarubezhneft is exploring is much shallower — around 2,000 feet below the surface as opposed to
6,000 feet in the Straits. This makes it a more attractive place for companies like Zarubezhneft to search for offshore fossil fuels.¶ Valentina
Matvienko, speaker of the Russian Federation Council — the country’s equivalent of the U.S. Senate — pledged in a May interview with Cuba’s
state-run Granma newspaper continued investment and involvement in Cuba’s offshore energy projects.¶ “We are currently negotiating a
broad range of projects relating to energy, and Russian companies such as Zarubezhneft are actively involved in oil prospecting in Cuban
waters, and this work is going to continue,” Matvienko said.¶ But the company might not use the Songa Mercur when it returns, according to oil
industry sources. One of the reasons Zarubezhneft is leaving Cuba is because the rig was having equipment difficulties. Instead, Zarubezhneft
may come back in a drill ship, a traditional seagoing vessel with oil-drilling capabilities.¶ However,
Lee Hunt, president emeritus
of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, said finding a ship that complies with the 52year-old U.S.-imposed trade embargo against Cuba could be difficult. Such a vessel must have fewer
than 10 percent of its parts made in the United States. If the ship is not compliant with the embargo,
companies using it could face U.S. sanctions.
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AT: Repsol Platform Risks Spills
Repsol platform is safe
AFP 2012
[AFP, 1-10-12, “US satisfied with Cuban oil platform safety,”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jRdZVwA6kWw7F0ZAkIfaNktRDbA?docId=CNG.9b69248aac87f5b8178771447c4c27a7.461, accessed 6-30-12, GZ]
US safety inspectors say an oil platform managed by the Spanish company Repsol for the Cuban
government meets their safety standards.¶ The Cuban government plans to use the platform to drill for oil deep in Gulf of
Mexico waters, off the coasts of Trinidad and Tobago.¶ Safety inspectors who checked the platform Scarabeo 9 "found
the vessel to generally comply with existing international and US standards by which Repsol has
pledged to abide," the US Interior Department said in a statement dated Monday and sent to AFP.¶ The inspectors were
invited by Repsol to examine the platform but "their review does not confer any form of certification or endorsement under US or international
law," the statement says.¶ Neither Cuba or Repsol are required to follow US recommendations, the Interior Department said.¶
Representatives from the United States and Cuba participated in an emergency preparedness seminar
in the Bahamas recently along with officials from other countries that have interests in the Gulf of Mexico. They exchanged
information on how to handle a disaster in the Gulf.¶ The United States has a large oil industry presence in the Caribbean
and the Gulf of Mexico, which was the site of the devastating 2010 oil spill, the worst environmental disaster in US history.¶ US Coast
Guard personnel based in Florida are updating their contingency plans in case of another oil platform
accident, the Interior Department said.¶ The Repsol platform safety inspection fulfills an agreement US officials
reached with the Cuban government last year.¶ US Coast Guard Vice Admiral Brian Salerno told a House Natural Resources
Committee in November that the inspection was "consensual," but noted there was no mechanism to compel them to allow the visit.¶ Daniel
Whittle of the non-governmental Environmental Defense Fund told the panel that the Cubans plan to drill as many as six exploratory wells by
2013.¶ "We had frank and open discussions and Cuban officials acknowledged the challenges associated with building an offshore oil and gas
industry from scratch," he said.¶ "They repeated their pledge
to follow the highest international environmental and
safety standards and expressed a strong willingness to cooperate with the United States and other
countries in the region on all aspects of environmental protection and safety matters."
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No Impact- Biodiversity Not Key to Environment
Adaptation and migration solve
Ian Thompson et al. 9, Canadian Forest Service, Brendan Mackey, The Australian National University, The
Fenner School of Environment and Society, College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, Steven McNulty, USDA
Forest Service, Alex Mosseler, Canadian Forest Service, 2009, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity
“Forest Resilience, Biodiversity, and Climate Change” Convention on Biological Diversity
While resilience can
be attributed to many levels of organization of biodiversity, the genetic composition of species is
genet- ic diversity within a species, species diversity within a forested
community, and community or ecosystem diversity across a landscape and bioregion represent
expressions of biological diversity at different scales. The basis of all expressions of biological diversity is the genotypic
variation found in populations. The individuals that comprise populations at each level of ecological organization are
subject to natural se- lection and contribute to the adaptive capacity or re- silience of tree species and forest ecosystems
(Mull- er-Starck et al. 2005). Diversity at each of these levels has fostered natural (and artificial) regeneration of
the most fundamental. Molecular
forest ecosystems and facilitated their adaptation to dramatic climate changes that occurred during the quaternary period (review by: DeHayes
et al. 2000); this diversity must be maintained in the face of antici- pated changes from anthropogenic climate warming.
Genetic
diversity (e.g., additive genetic variance) within a species is important because it is the basis for the natural
selection of genotypes within popu- lations and species as they respond or adapt to en- vironmental changes (Fisher
1930, Pitelka 1988, Pease et al. 1989, Burger and Lynch 1995, Burdon and Thrall, 2001, Etterson 2004, Reusch et al. 2005, Schaberg et al. 2008).
The potential for evolutionary
change has been demonstrated in numerous long- term programmes based on
artificial selection (Fal- coner 1989), and genetic strategies for reforestation in the presence of rapid climate
change must focus on maintaining species diversity and genetic diversi- ty within species (Ledig and Kitzmiller 1992). In the face of
rapid environmental change, it is important to understand that the genetic diversity and adap- tive
capacity of forested ecosystems depends largely on in situ genetic variation within each population of a species
(Bradshaw 1991). Populations exposed to a rate of environmental change exceeding the rate at which populations can adapt, or disperse, may
be doomed to extinction (Lynch and Lande 1993, Burger and Lynch 1995). Genetic diversity deter- mines the range of fundamental ecophysiological tolerances of a species. It governs inter-specific competitive interactions, which, together with dispersal mechanisms, constitute
the fundamental de- terminants of potential species responses to change (Pease et al. 1989, Halpin 1997). In the past, plants
have
responded to dramatic changes in climate both through adaptation and migration (Davis and Shaw 2001). The
capacity for long-distance migration of plants by seed dispersal is particularly important in the event of rapid environmental change. Most, and
probably all, species are capable of long-distance seed disper- sal, despite morphological dispersal syndromes that would
indicate morphological adaptations primarily for short-distance dispersal (Cwyner and MacDon- ald 1986, Higgins et al. 2003). Assessments of
mean migration rates found no significant differences be- tween wind and animal dispersed plants (Wilkinson 1997, Higgins et al. 2003). Longdistance migration can also be strongly influenced by habitat suitabil- ity (Higgins and Richardson 1999) suggesting that rapid migration may
become more frequent and vis- ible with rapid changes in habitat suitability under scenarios of rapid climate change. The discrepancy between
estimated and observed migration rates during re-colonization of northern temperate forests following the retreat of glaciers can be accounted
for by the underestimation of long-distance disper- sal rates and events (Brunet and von Oheimb 1998, Clark 1998, Cain et al. 1998, 2000).
Nevertheless, concerns persist that potential migration and ad- aptation rates of many tree species may not be able to keep pace with
projected global warming (Davis 1989, Huntley 1991, Dyer 1995, Collingham et al. 1996, Malcolm et al. 2002). However, these models refer to
fundamental niches and generally ignore the ecological interactions that also govern species dis- tributions.
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Cartagena Convention CP
The US and Cuba can coordinate oil spill response through the Cartagena convention,
even without direct bilateral engagement.
Nerurkar, Specialist in Energy Policy, and Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs,
11
(Neelesh, Mark P., November 28, Congressional Research Service, “Cuba’s Offshore Oil Development:
Background and U.S. Policy Considerations”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41522.pdf, Accessed 78-13, ABS)
Both Cuba and the United States are signatories to multilateral agreements that commit the two
parties to prepare for and cooperate on potential oil spills. This includes the International Convention
on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response, and Cooperation (OPRC), which was adopted under the
auspices of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 1990 and entered into force in 1995. The
convention was adopted in response to a U.S. environmental initiative in the aftermath of the 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill. Under the convention, parties are required to establish measures for dealing
with pollution incidents, either nationally or in co-operation with other countries.70 The IMO is given
a central role under the convention in providing information services, education and training, and
technical services and assistance. Both Cuba and the United States are also parties to the Convention
for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region, known
as the Cartagena Convention, which was adopted in 1983 and entered into force in 1986. The
agreement includes a Protocol Concerning Co-operation in Combating Oil Spills in the Wider Caribbean
Region. The protocol calls for an exchange of information among the signatories regarding contacts,
laws, regulations, institutions, and operational procedures relating to the prevention of oil spill
incidents and to the means of reducing and combating the harmful effects of oil spills. It also states
that parties to the agreement should conclude appropriate bilateral or multilateral subregional
arrangements as necessary to facilitate implementation. It obligates each party to assist other parties
in response to an oil spill incident according to these arrangements.71
Short of direct U.S.-Cuban bilateral engagement on oil spill preparedness and coordination, these two
multilateral agreements could provide a mechanism for some U.S.-Cuban cooperation on oil spills. For
example, in order to implement the Cartagena Agreement’s protocol on oil spill cooperation in the
Caribbean, the IMO maintains a regional activity center in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, known as the
Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Information and Training Center for the Wider Caribbean
(RAC/REMPEITC-Caribe). The Center’s objective is to strengthen the operational effectiveness of the
Cartagena Agreement and OPRC through the provision of technical services, training activities,
information sharing, and exercises.72 The United States and Cuba could work through the IMO and its
regional center in Curacao to engage on oil spill preparedness and coordination.
CP’s the key first step to effective oil spill cooperation.
Bert, USCG, 2011-2012 Military Fellow, U.S. Coast Guard and Clayton, Fellow for
Energy and National Security, 12
[Melissa and Blake, March 7th, 2012, Council on Foreign Relations, “Addressing the Risk of a Cuban Oil
Spill,” http://www.cfr.org/cuba/addressing-risk-cuban-oil-spill/p27515, accessed 7/10/13, AS]
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As a first step, the United States should discuss contingency planning for a Cuban oil spill at the
regular multiparty talks it holds with Mexico, the Bahamas, Cuba, and others per the Cartagena
Convention. The Caribbean Island Oil Pollution Response and Cooperation Plan provides an
operational framework under which the United States and Cuba can jointly develop systems for
identifying and reporting an oil spill, implement a means of restricting the spread of oil, and identify
resources to respond to a spill. Washington should also instruct the U.S. Coast Guard to conduct basic
spill response coordination with its counterparts in Cuba. The United States already has operational
agreements in place with Mexico, Canada, and several countries in the Caribbean that call for routine
exercises, emergency response coordination, and communication protocols. It should strike an
agreement with Cuba that is substantively similar but narrower in scope, limited to basic spilloriented advance coordination and communication.
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I/L Defense
Another BP is not likely and even if it was, the oil industry would contain the damage.
USA Today, 12
(USA Today, 4/19/12, “Editorial: 2 years after BP spill, lower
risks”,http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-04-19/BP-Deepwater-oilspill/54419466/1 accessed 7/1/13, AS)
One is that the spill, as bad as it was, didn't cause the sort of long-term, catastrophic environmental
damage that some predicted at the time. While the Gulf is still recovering, it's no dead sea.¶ The other is
that another spill of this magnitude is much less likely today, and that if one did happen, the oil
industry would be better able to stop it and contain the damage.¶ The second conclusion is as much educated guess
as scientific fact. Much has changed since that awful day when BP's well blew out and killed 11 men on the drilling rig, and then ran wild for
Tighter rules govern leasing and drilling; the
industry has learned from BP's blunders; and robust new emergency plans exist for responding to an
accident should one occur. Two "capping stacks" are now positioned in Houston for use on any future well blowout in the Gulf.¶
almost three months, releasing more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.
USATODAY OPINION¶ About Editorials/Debate¶ Opinions expressed in USA TODAY's editorials are decided by its Editorial Board, a
demographically and ideologically diverse group that is separate from USA TODAY's news staff.¶ Most editorials are accompanied by an
opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature that allows readers to reach conclusions based on both sides of an argument rather than just the
Editorial Board's point of view.¶ Even two years later, however, some things that should have been fixed are still under study or stuck in limbo.
Incredibly, for example, there's no final requirement yet for upgrading the crucial blowout preventer that formed the last line of defense on
BP's well in 2010, and which failed so catastrophically.¶ And Congress has lost the resolve politicians showed after the accident. Not only have
lawmakers failed to pass critical legislation to enhance drilling safety, the House approved a measure to allow offshore leasing without
adequate review, earning disbelief and scorn from members of the National Oil Spill Commission that studied the spill and issued
recommendations in early 2011. In a new report that gave the Obama administration a B for the changes it made to the way the oil industry is
regulated, commission members gave Congress a D, and that seems charitable.
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AT: Latin American Relations Add-On
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Latin American Relations FL
Snowden’s asylum offers hurt US Latin American relations
Forero, Washington Post, 13
(Juan, June 23rd 2013, the Washington Post, “Snowden may head to Latin America”,
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-23/world/40152173_1_julian-assange-ecuador-s-u-sambassador, accessed 7/8/13, EB)
The three Latin American countries said to be helping Edward Snowden flee from American
authorities are united in their opposition to the Obama administration and pursue foreign policy
objectives designed to counter U.S. influence. As Snowden, the intelligence contractor who disclosed documents about
U.S. surveillance programs, arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong on Sunday, Russian media reported that he was booked on a flight to
the Cuban capital Havana, and from there on to Caracas, Venezuela. By Sunday afternoon, Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo
Patiño, said via his Twitter account that his government had received an asylum request from Snowden. Ecuador’s embassy in London is already
hosting Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that published reams of classified U.S. documents. WikiLeaks, which is also
assisting Snowden, said in a brief statement that Snowden “is bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purpose of asylum.”
WikiLeaks said that once in Ecuador, Snowden’s request for political asylum would be processed. The Ecuadoran government of President
Rafael Correa, a populist who expelled the U.S. ambassador from Quito in 2011, did not confirm the WikiLeaks account. But his administration,
which has sought a greater role for the small country on the international stage, has reveled in the attention it has received since Assange holed
up in its London embassy. “Assange has been in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a year,” Patiño said in a Thursday tweet. “We will not
faint in this fight for liberty.” Analysts who closely follow the region said it would make sense for the former contractor to the National Security
Agency to wind up in Venezuela or Ecuador. Both countries are led by self-styled leftist leaders who are publicly hostile to the Obama
administration and position themselves to oppose U.S. policies in this region and beyond. “Their
foreign policy is based on being
the anti-United States, and so this is consistent with that posture,” said Carl Meacham, director of the
Americas program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. “They try, at every
stop, to point out the problems they have with U.S. foreign policy.” In Venezuela, the new president,
Nicolás Maduro, a former foreign minister, has suggested that the United States had a hand in the
death of Hugo Chávez, who led the country for 14 years and frequently accused Washington of hatching assassination plots against
him. Chávez died in March after a long battle with cancer. Chávez, like Correa, expelled the U.S. ambassador from Venezuela. “The different
elite groups that represent the United States government and its imperial policies will have to recognize that in Venezuela there’s a revolution,”
Maduro said earlier this month. “They will have to accept our system, as they had to with Vietnam and
other countries.” Ecuador’s relations with Washington have also been strained, with Correa frequently
critical of American policies in Latin America and eager to form alliances with U.S. adversaries such as
Iran. Still, Ecuador has an ambassador in Washington, and the United States last year appointed Adam E.
Namm as ambassador in Quito.
Latin America is economically independent of the US – foreign investment and stable
growth
Ben-Ami, former Israeli foreign minister, 2013
(Shlomo, 6/5/2013, Project Syndicate, “Is the US Losing Latin America?,”, http://www.projectsyndicate.org/commentary/the-new-nature-of-us-influence-in-latin-america-by-shlomo-ben-ami,
accessed 7/8/13, AFGA).
MADRID – It is a mantra increasingly heard around the world: US power is in decline. And nowhere does this seem truer than in
Latin America. No longer is the region regarded as America’s “backyard”; on the contrary, the continent has arguably never been so united and
independent. But this view fails to capture the true nature of US influence in Latin America – and elsewhere as well.¶ It is true that US attention
to Latin America has waned in recent years. President George W. Bush was more focused on his “global war on terror.” His successor,
Barack Obama, seemed to give the region little thought as well, at least in his first term. ¶ Indeed, at the Summit of
the Americas in Cartagena in April 2012, Latin American leaders felt sufficiently confident and united to
challenge US priorities in the region. They urged the US to lift its embargo on Cuba, claiming that it had
damaged relations with the rest of the continent, and to do more to combat drug use on its own turf, through
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education and social work, rather than supplying arms to fight the drug lords in Latin America – a battle that all
acknowledged has been an utter failure. ¶ It is also true that Latin American countries have pursued a
massive expansion of economic ties beyond America’s sway. China is now Latin America’s secondlargest trading partner and rapidly closing the gap with the US. India is showing keen interest in the
region’s energy industry, and has signed export agreements in the defense sector. Iran has
strengthened its economic and military ties, especially in Venezuela.¶ Similarly, in 2008, Russia’s thenPresident Dmitri Medvedev identified the US war on terror as an opportunity to create strategic partnerships with
rising powers such as Brazil, and with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a Venezuelan-inspired bloc
opposed to US designs in the region. The energy giant Gazprom and the country’s military industries have
spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to demonstrate Russia’s ability to influence America’s neighborhood – a direct
response to perceived American meddling in Russia’s own “near abroad,” particularly Georgia and Ukraine. ¶ Yet it
would be a mistake to regard Latin America’s broadening international relations as marking the end of US
preeminence. Unlike in the bygone era of superpowers and captive nations, American influence can no longer be
defined by the ability to install and depose leaders from the US embassy. To believe otherwise is to ignore how
international politics has changed over the last quarter-century.¶ A continent once afflicted by military takeovers
has slowly but surely implanted stable democracies. Responsible economic management, poverty-reduction
programs, structural reforms, and greater openness to foreign investment have all helped to generate
years of low-inflation growth. As a result, the region was able to withstand the ravages of the global financial
crisis.
Democracy can’t be enforced in Latin America – Venezuela proves.
Brewer, C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates, 13
(Jerry, 7/1/13, Mexidata.info, “Some Anti-USA Leaders in Latin America Disregard
Democracy,” http://www.mexidata.info/id3653.html, accessed 7/9/13, AS)
Realistically, most
people in the west would like to assume that democracy should dominate nearly all
political ideologies. However, the very hegemony of true democracy has weakened and faded in many
areas of the world, which had leaned towards and eventually away due to certain political rule and
military oppression.¶ Those governments, especially in Latin America, that have turned from collective
decision making and fair elections, and sought to rewrite their nation's constitutions to focus on
central powers that control legislative and judiciary functions, are openly defying much of the rule of law.¶ Probably
the best example of this was in Venezuela, under the dictatorial-like rule of Hugo Chavez from 1999 until the controversial day of his
pronounced death on March 5, 2013.¶ Hugo
Chavez probably inflicted more lasting structural damage on Venezuela's political institutions,
control of economic matters, weakened the
legislature and judiciary, and tightened the grip by the military. There was rampant systematic corruption and
economy and people than any other president in Venezuela's history. He took
mismanagement outside of transparency, especially with the state run oil company PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela).¶ PDVSA had not filed
financial statements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since 2004, further revealing the secrecy of the massively squandered
Venezuelan oil wealth. Officials
reported that it was difficult to determine how Venezuela had been
spending its oil windfall, given the lack of government transparency - with Venezuela ranked 162 out of 179
countries listed in the Transparency International Corruption Index.¶ The true results of Chavez's leftist rule also showed
massive gifts of money and oil to buy loyalty and support. Venezuela purchased $3.5 billion in bonds to help pay off
Argentina's debt. And on August 4, 2007 Guido Antonini Wilson, a Venezuelan businessman, arrived in Buenos Aires on a chartered flight with
Argentine energy officials and executives of PDVSA. Argentine customs
agents caught him with a suitcase stuffed
with $800,000 in cash he did not declare, that reportedly was from Chavez and a political gift to the
presidential campaign of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.¶ The legacy Chavez left to some of his closest leftist neighbors and
protégés, such as Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, is a record of the Venezuelan poor continuing to live below
the poverty line, in squalor, unsafe homes, with little food and rolling blackouts of electricity. All this with massive oil revenues that can't be
accounted for.¶ Morales and Correa followed their mentor Chavez with close and unwavering allegiance. They have also taken on Chavez's
penchant, and fiery tongue, in order to hurl vicious insults at the US over the years, most directly at former President George W. Bush. One of
the personal attacks by Chavez referred to Bush as the devil, with Chavez claiming to smell an odor of sulfur at the UN - a rant voiced on US soil.
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Drug policy’s an alt cause.
Bachelet and Hills et al, co-chairs¶ of the Sol M. Linowitz Forum¶ Inter-American
Dialogue, 12
[Michelle and Carla A., 4/6/12, Sol M. Linowitz Forum Inter-American Dialogue, “Remaking the
Relationship¶ the United states and Latin
america,”http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD2012PolicyReportFINAL.pdf, accessed
7/1/13, AS]
In the spirit of “shared responsibility,” often invoked by senior US policy ¶ officials, it is critical that the
US government respond to increasing calls ¶ from Latin American leaders for a serious review of drug
policy. As the ¶ Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy made clear, current ¶ measures
addressing the drug problem are not working and alternatives ¶ need to be considered . That
commission, led by three highly regarded ¶ former Latin American presidents—Fernando Henrique
Cardoso of Brazil, ¶ Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, and César Gaviria of Colombia—rightly emphasized that
drug problems and their contributions to criminal violence and ¶ widespread corruption threaten the
rule of law in a number of countries .¶ The commission’s recommendations—including the
decriminalization of ¶ marijuana, greater emphasis on drugs as a public health problem, and ¶
increased support for harm reduction—should be taken seriously and should serve as a starting point
for an honest US-Latin American dialogue ¶ on the drug question .¶ More serious attention and
resources directed at reducing consumption in ¶ the United States are essential . Since the commission’s
report in 2009, even ¶ some sitting Latin American presidents, including Mexico’s Felipe Calderón, ¶
Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos, and Guatemala’s Otto Pérez Molina, have ¶ called for collective pursuit
of new drug policy options, including consideration of legalization . Although there is debate about the
merits of alternative policies—and political obstacles in the region and, particularly, in the ¶ United
States, remain strong—a serious discussion is urgently needed about ¶ how to be more effective in
dealing with the drug problem.
Law-enforcement issues are key to relation building.
Bachelet and Hills et al, co-chairs¶ of the Sol M. Linowitz Forum¶ Inter-American
Dialogue, 12
[Michelle and Carla A., 4/6/12, Sol M. Linowitz Forum Inter-American Dialogue, “Remaking the
Relationship¶ the United states and Latin
america,”http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD2012PolicyReportFINAL.pdf, accessed
7/1/13, AS]
This sense of urgency is underscored by the alarming crime statistics ¶ reported in the region. According
to the United Nations, Latin America ¶ has the highest rate of homicides per capita of any region in the
world.¶ Although the causes are many, the narcotics trade is a key contributor.¶ A correlated problem is
the flow of dangerous arms southward from the ¶ United States. According to credible reports, these
weapons are used in the ¶ bulk of murders committed in Mexico. There are political hurdles in the ¶ United States to
more effective control of such arms flows, but more can ¶ and should be done—without infringing on the right to bear arms—at both ¶ the
federal and state levels . For example, there could be more extensive ¶ background checks and tougher penalties for states that do not comply
.¶ President Barack Obama’s July 11, 2011, executive order, which tightened ¶ reporting requirements on individuals purchasing multiple
dangerous ¶ weapons and cracked down on straw buyers, was a welcome step .¶ The
United States should also be more
vigorous in sharing information ¶ about criminals repatriated to the region and more supportive of
national ¶ efforts at rehabilitation and reintegration of returned migrants. Returning ¶ migrants with
criminal records have aggravated an already serious security ¶ situation in such countries as Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador. The ¶ United States should provide the critical information that national
and local ¶ law enforcement agencies need to understand the dangers represented by ¶ each deportee
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so they can mitigate the risks .¶ Extensive cooperation between the region and the United States on a
range ¶ of law enforcement-related issues is fundamental . Witness, judge and prosecutor protection as well as
improved training and investigative techniques ¶ could benefit from US assistance and expertise. The United States should ¶ also encourage
the expansion of such instruments as the United Nation’s ¶ International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which ¶ supports
the country’s justice system in tackling high-profile cases, promotes legislative reforms, and shores up institutional capacity . ¶ For
such
cooperation to be effective, it will be important for the nations ¶ of the region to strengthen their
commitment to institutional, democratic ¶ reforms and adherence to the rule of law . Governments,
the private sector, ¶ and civil society groups need to assume greater responsibility in dealing ¶ squarely
with underlying domestic challenges like weak judiciaries, inadequate taxation, and failing schools.
Without a real partnership, any effort ¶ would have limited success.
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Immigration reform solves
Comprehensive Immigration is key to rebuilding Latin American relations.
Bachelet and Hills et al, co-chairs¶ of the Sol M. Linowitz Forum¶ Inter-American
Dialogue, 12
[Michelle and Carla A., 4/6/12, Sol M. Linowitz Forum Inter-American Dialogue, “Remaking the
Relationship¶ the United states and Latin
america,”http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD2012PolicyReportFINAL.pdf, accessed
7/1/13, AS]
Washington’s failure to repair the United States’ broken immigration ¶ system is breeding resentment
across the region, nowhere more so ¶ than in the principal points of origin and transit: Mexico, Central
America, ¶ and the Caribbean . Latin Americans find the idea of building a wall on the ¶ US-Mexico
border particularly offensive.¶ Despite bitter political battles over immigration in the United States,
there ¶ is general agreement about what sensible reform would include . It combines effective border
and employer enforcement, the adoption of a general ¶ worker program consistent with labor market
needs in the United States, ¶ and a path toward residence and citizenship for the estimated 12 million ¶
unauthorized residents living in the country . This package is similar to ¶ the reform effort (unfortunately
defeated in Congress) proposed under ¶ President George W . Bush .¶ The complicated and divisive
politics of the United States, compounded by ¶ the weakness of the US economy, have so far blocked
this comprehensive ¶ approach . But more limited measures such as the Dream Act, allowing ¶ children
brought to the United States without appropriate documentation ¶ an opportunity to qualify for
citizenship, would not only be welcomed in ¶ US Latino communities and in Latin America, but it would
demonstrate ¶ that the issue is being taken seriously and with a measure of compassion ¶ in Washington
.¶ Sensible US immigration policies promise to benefit the US economy .¶ Migrants make up a significant
percentage of younger workers . Their presence would improve the labor demographic and increase
the US capacity ¶ for economic growth even while their contributions help sustain the US ¶ social
security system . Immigration reform would also recognize the growing “Latinoamericanization” of
the United States . Roughly one sixth of the ¶ population is currently of Latino descent . The cultural,
demographic and ¶ family ties of those 50 million people will continue to deepen . The United ¶ States’
inability to respond to the policy challenge of immigration will have ¶ increasingly negative
consequences, standing in the way of a more productive relationship with Latin America .¶ But Latin
American governments have to do their part as well . They should ¶ make the investments and reforms
needed to spur economic development, ¶ reduce poverty, and expand job opportunities, particularly in
those areas ¶
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Alt Causes to Latin American Relations
Guantanamo Bay is hurting the U.S.’s international image
The Atlantic, 7
(The Atlantic, October 1 2007, The Atlantic Monthly Group. “Guantanamo's Shadow,”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/10/guantanamos-shadow/306212/, accessed
7/8/13, EB)
“Nothing has hurt America’s image and standing in the world—and nothing has undermined the global effort to combat nihilistic
terrorism—than the brutal torture and dehumanizing actions of Americans in Abu Ghraib and in other prisons (secret or otherwise).
America can win the fight against terrorism only if it acts in ways consistent with the values for which it stands; if its behavior descends
to the level employed by the terrorists, then we have all become them instead of us.” ¶ “Gitmo has hurt the US in two
different ways. At the strategic level, it has undercut the U.S. case around the world that we represent
a world view and a set of values that all can admire, even those who do not wish to replicate our
system and society in their own countries. Gitmo has become a symbol for cruelty and inhumanity
that is repugnant to a wide sector of the world community and a powerful tool that al Qaeda can use
to damage US interest and recruit others to its cause. At the tactical level, Gitmo deludes many in the US, an never
more than the senior leaders of the Bush Administration, into believing that harsh interrogation techniques can produce good
intelligence and is a necessary tool in fighting terrorist. This 'truth' spread from Gitmo to Iraq and we have paid a horrible price for it.Ӧ
“It has hurt America disastrously. The so-called global war on terrorism depends fundamentally on
America's moral authority, so that other nations will want to cooperate with us. Guantanamo has
become a vibrant symbol of American exceptionalism, but this exceptionalism is unwanted around
the world.”¶ “this one is so basic. i speak as a republican so this is not a partisan comment. the founders would be rightly ashamed
of us. we have forgotten, as truman and eisenhower never did, that america's power is as much about what it stands for as for its hard
power characteristics. this has all been put in the worst kind of peril by Gitmo.” ¶ “The controversies that have surrounded the system
have outweighed any benefit. The main reason for locating the facility at Guantanamo—to attempt to keep it out of the reach of
anyone's legal system—was never justifiable.”¶ “The Guantanamo system has hurt the U.S. and our fight against Al Qaeda. We have
abandoned the moral high ground and, through our actions, have become one of the principle recruiting agents for Islamic
extremism.”¶ “Our strongest asset internationally was our reputation and credibility on human rights. We have squandered that.” ¶
“Hurt, on balance, because it has severely damaged our moral case in the world, which we have to have in order to rally support for
combating Al Qaeda.”¶ “Both in the obvious public relations way, worldwide, and quite directly, in showing Al Qaeda that we can very
easily and quickly be seduced into wild overreactions. That is just what Osama Bin Laden hoped. Since it worked so well, he has an
incentive to repeat."¶ “It has done enormous damage to our reputation and soft power.”
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AT: Economy Impact
No econ impact
Miller 2k – economist, adjunct professor in the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Administration,
consultant on international development issues, former Executive Director and Senior Economist at the
World Bank (Morris, Winter, “Poverty as a cause of wars?”)
The question may be reformulated. Do wars spring from a popular reaction to a sudden economic crisis
that exacerbates poverty and growing disparities in wealth and incomes? Perhaps one could argue, as
some scholars do, that it is some dramatic event or sequence of such events leading to the exacerbation
of poverty that, in turn, leads to this deplorable denouement. This exogenous factor might act as a
catalyst for a violent reaction on the part of the people or on the part of the political leadership who
would then possibly be tempted to seek a diversion by finding or, if need be, fabricating an enemy and
setting in train the process leading to war. According to a study under- taken by Minxin Pei and Ariel
Adesnik of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, there would not appear to be any merit
in this hypothesis. After studying ninety-three episodes of economic crisis in twenty-two countries in
Latin America and Asia in the years since the Second World War they concluded that:19 Much of the
conventional wisdom about the political impact of economic crises may be wrong ... The severity of
economic crisis – as measured in terms of inflation and negative growth – bore no relationship to the
collapse of regimes ... (or, in democratic states, rarely) to an outbreak of violence ... In the cases of
dictatorships and semi-democracies, the ruling elites responded to crises by increasing repression
(thereby using one form of violence to abort another).
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AT: Democracy
Democratic peace theory is false – studies are too short term, don’t account for
nationalist sentiment and clashing interests– the more democratic states there are,
the more likely war is.
Larison, PhD in history from the University of Chicago, 12
(Daniel, April 17th, 2012, The American Conservative, “Democratic Peace Theory Is
False,” http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/democratic-peace-theory-is-false/,
accessed 7/9/13, AS)
Fabio Rojas invokes democratic peace theory in his comment on Rachel Maddow’s new book, Drift: The Unmooring of
American Military Power (via Wilkinson):¶ The idea is simple – for whatever reason, democracies almost never fight each
other. Of course, democracies go to war against non-democracies. But for some reason, democracies just don’t fight each other.¶ What’s the
policy implication of all this? First, the sorts of rules that Maddow proposes are useless. People will just ignore the rules when they want to
when they want war. Second, you have to reduce the population of non-democracies. Thus, if the Federal government wants to protect the
United States by preventing war, the best, and cheapest, way to do it is to provide support and assistance for indigenous movements for
Once people have a genuine democracy at work, they just don’t want to fight with
each other. They just don’t.¶ Rojas’ claim depends entirely on the meaning of “genuine democracy.” Even
though there are numerous examples of wars between states with universal male suffrage and
elected governments (including that little dust-up known as WWI), the states in question probably don’t
qualify as “genuine” democracies and so can’t be used as counter-examples. Regardless, democratic peace theory
draws broad conclusions from a short period in modern history with very few cases before the 20th
century. The core of democratic peace theory as I understand it is that democratic governments are more accountable to their
democracy and tolerance.
populations, and because the people will bear the costs of the war they are going to be less willing to support a war policy. This supposedly
keeps democratic states from waging wars against one another because of the built-in electoral and institutional
checks on government power. One small problem with this is that it is rubbish.¶ Democracies in antiquity fought against one another.
Political equality and voting do not abolish conflicts of interest between competing states. Democratic peace theory doesn’t
account for the effects of nationalist and imperialist ideologies on the way democratic nations think
about war. Democratic nations that have professional armies to do the fighting for them are often
enthusiastic about overseas wars. The Conservative-Unionist government that waged the South African War (against two states
with elected governments, I might add) enjoyed great popular support and won a huge majority in the “Khaki” election that followed.¶ As long
as it goes well and doesn’t have too many costs, war
can be quite popular, and even if the war is costly it may still
be popular if it is fought for nationalist reasons that appeal to a majority of the public . If the public is
whipped into thinking that there is an intolerable foreign threat or if they believe that their country
can gain something at relatively low cost by going to war, the type of government they have really is
irrelevant. Unless a democratic public believes that a military conflict will go badly for their military, they may be ready to welcome the
outbreak of a war that they expect to win. Setting aside the flaws and failures of U.S.-led democracy promotion
for a moment, the idea that reducing the number of non-democracies makes war less likely is just
fantasy. Clashing interests between states aren’t going away, and the more democratic states there are in
the world the more likely it is that two or more of them will eventually fight one another.
Latin American countries will not cooperate with US democracy efforts – Snowden proves.
Brewer, C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates, 13
(Jerry, 7/1/13, Mexidata.info, “Some Anti-USA Leaders in Latin America Disregard
Democracy,” http://www.mexidata.info/id3653.html, accessed 7/9/13, AS)
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And today, in the post Chavez era, these rogue leftist leaders are showing the learned behavior as they
continue to shun the US, its current leaders and way of life.¶ The recent case of Edward Snowden, who
leaked US top secret revelations to the world from his previous employment and sworn oath to the National Security Agency (NSA) and other
US intelligence community entities, shows
the true character of some anti-US nations. The rule of law is
apparently still not a factor in regards to world freedom and morality protected by democracies in
their necessary security measures.¶ As Snowden is mollycoddled and facilitated by notorious human rights abusers, such as China
and Russia, from US international extradition efforts for his serious crimes, even Ecuadorian officials have made it clear that they may grant
Snowden safe passage and shelter.¶ President Correa and some of his government minions have been openly defiant against the US in the
world media. Over the past several days, Ecuador
officials "have been blasting the US and praising Snowden's
leaks of NSA eavesdropping secrets as a blow for global human rights," according to media sources.¶ President
Correa's secretary of communications, Fernando Alvarado, "sarcastically suggested the US use the money to train
government employees to respect human rights" (Washington Post, June 27, 2013). This in response to
Washington lawmakers that suggested the US back out of a preferential trade pact of $23 million to
Ecuador. Ecuadorian officials claim that this is being used to blackmail their country if it were to grant
Snowden political asylum. The chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez, pledged to do all he
could to block trade benefits for Ecuador.¶ As the US continues to step up by engaging in more training and support for security in this
hemisphere against transnational organized crime and drug trafficking, it also
continues to face leftist rulers who will not
cooperate in enforcing the rule of law and efforts to rid their homelands of the death and violence
that is shared by many in South and Central America.¶ Harboring fugitives, as well as rejecting the mutual
assistance and cooperation of DEA in such critical matters in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, tends to clearly demonstrate their
repudiation of democratic values.
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AT: Us-Cuba Relations
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US-Cuba Relations FL
Cuba and the US work together behind the scenes in the status quo
Haven, staff writer for the AP, 13
(Paul, 4/10/13, Associated Press, “Under the radar, Cuba and U.S. often work together,”
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/under-radar-cuba-and-us-often-work-together, 6/30/13,
ND)
Indeed, diplomats and observers on
both sides of the Florida Straits say American and Cuban law
enforcement officers, scientists, disaster relief workers, Coast Guard officials and other experts work
together on a daily basis, and invariably express professional admiration for each other.¶ "I don't think the story
has been told, but there is a real warmth in just the sort of day-to-day relations between U.S. and Cuban
government officials," said Dan Whittle, who frequently brings scientific groups to the island in his role as Cuba program director for
the Environmental Defense Fund. "Nearly every time I talk to American officials, they say they were impressed by their
Cuban counterparts. There really is a high level of mutual respect."¶ Almost none of these technical-level
interactions make the headlines, but examples are endless. Just last week, Cuba's top environmental official Ulises
Fernandez and several island oil experts attended a conference in New York of the International
Association of Drilling Contractors after the State Department expedited their visas.¶ The American government
maintains a Coast Guard representative in Cuba, and the two countries work together to interdict suspicious
boats. A U.S. diplomat involved in the process said that security officials on both sides are on a first-name basis and
that the Cubans happily accept FBI and Coast Guard baseball caps as gifts.¶ "There are so many weird and abnormal
aspects of the relationship between Cuba and the United States, things that don't occur between other countries, that when something normal
happens it is a surprise," said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat.¶ He said Cuba
has in recent years taken a pragmatic
approach, more often than not cooperating on drug enforcement and judicial issues. "It is important to
highlight ... that in judicial matters there is a willingness to cooperate and that could open a path to other
types of cooperation," he said, citing the return of Joshua Michael Hakken and his wife, Sharyn, as a case in point.
No food impacts
Allouche 11, research Fellow – water supply and sanitation @ Institute for Development Studies, frmr
professor – MIT
(Jeremy, “The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the
interplay between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade,” Food Policy, Vol. 36
Supplement 1, p. S3-S8, January)
The question of resource scarcity has led to many debates on whether scarcity (whether of food or
water) will lead to conflict and war. The underlining reasoning behind most of these discourses over
food and water wars comes from the Malthusian belief that there is an imbalance between the
economic availability of natural resources and population growth since while food production grows
linearly, population increases exponentially. Following this reasoning, neo-Malthusians claim that finite
natural resources place a strict limit on the growth of human population and aggregate consumption; if
these limits are exceeded, social breakdown, conflict and wars result. Nonetheless, it seems that most
empirical studies do not support any of these neo-Malthusian arguments. Technological change and greater
inputs of capital have dramatically increased labour productivity in agriculture. More generally, the
neo-Malthusian view has suffered because during the last two centuries humankind has breached
many resource barriers that seemed unchallengeable. Lessons from history: alarmist scenarios,
resource wars and international relations In a so-called age of uncertainty, a number of alarmist scenarios
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have linked the increasing use of water resources and food insecurity with wars. The idea of water
wars (perhaps more than food wars) is a dominant discourse in the media (see for example Smith,
2009), NGOs (International Alert, 2007) and within international organizations (UNEP, 2007). In 2007,
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared that ‘water scarcity threatens economic and social gains
and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict’ (Lewis, 2007). Of course, this type of discourse has an
instrumental purpose; security and conflict are here used for raising water/food as key policy priorities
at the international level. In the Middle East, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have also
used this bellicose rhetoric. Boutrous Boutros-Gali said; ‘the next war in the Middle East will be over
water, not politics’ (Boutros Boutros-Gali in Butts, 1997, p. 65). The question is not whether the sharing
of transboundary water sparks political tension and alarmist declaration, but rather to what extent
water has been a principal factor in international conflicts. The evidence seems quite weak. Whether by
president Sadat in Egypt or King Hussein in Jordan, none of these declarations have been followed up
by military action. The governance of transboundary water has gained increased attention these last
decades. This has a direct impact on the global food system as water allocation agreements determine
the amount of water that can used for irrigated agriculture. The likelihood of conflicts over water is an
important parameter to consider in assessing the stability, sustainability and resilience of global food
systems. None of the various and extensive databases on the causes of war show water as a casus belli.
Using the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set and supplementary data from the University of
Alabama on water conflicts, Hewitt, Wolf and Hammer found only seven disputes where water seems
to have been at least a partial cause for conflict (Wolf, 1998, p. 251). In fact, about 80% of the incidents
relating to water were limited purely to governmental rhetoric intended for the electorate (Otchet,
2001, p. 18). As shown in The Basins At Risk (BAR) water event database, more than two-thirds of over
1800 water-related ‘events’ fall on the ‘cooperative’ scale (Yoffe et al., 2003). Indeed, if one takes into
account a much longer period, the following figures clearly demonstrate this argument. According to
studies by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), organized political bodies
signed between the year 805 and 1984 more than 3600 water-related treaties, and approximately 300
treaties dealing with water management or allocations in international basins have been negotiated
since 1945 (FAO, 1978 and FAO, 1984). The fear around water wars have been driven by a Malthusian
outlook which equates scarcity with violence, conflict and war. There is however no direct correlation
between water scarcity and transboundary conflict. Most specialists now tend to agree that the major issue
is not scarcity per se but rather the allocation of water resources between the different riparian states
(see for example Allouche, 2005, Allouche, 2007 and [Rouyer, 2000] ). Water rich countries have been
involved in a number of disputes with other relatively water rich countries (see for example
India/Pakistan or Brazil/Argentina). The perception of each state’s estimated water needs really
constitutes the core issue in transboundary water relations. Indeed, whether this scarcity exists or not in
reality, perceptions of the amount of available water shapes people’s attitude towards the
environment (Ohlsson, 1999). In fact, some water experts have argued that scarcity drives the process
of co-operation among riparians (Dinar and Dinar, 2005 and Brochmann and Gleditsch, 2006). In terms
of international relations, the threat of water wars due to increasing scarcity does not make much sense in
the light of the recent historical record. Overall, the water war rationale expects conflict to occur over
water, and appears to suggest that violence is a viable means of securing national water supplies, an
argument which is highly contestable. The debates over the likely impacts of climate change have again
popularised the idea of water wars. The argument runs that climate change will precipitate worsening
ecological conditions contributing to resource scarcities, social breakdown, institutional failure, mass
migrations and in turn cause greater political instability and conflict (Brauch, 2002 and Pervis and Busby,
2004). In a report for the US Department of Defense, Schwartz and Randall (2003) speculate about the
consequences of a worst-case climate change scenario arguing that water shortages will lead to
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aggressive wars (Schwartz and Randall, 2003, p. 15). Despite growing concern that climate change will
lead to instability and violent conflict, the evidence base to substantiate the connections is thin (
[Barnett and Adger, 2007] and Kevane and Gray, 2008).
No advantage UQ – Cuba’s biotech industry is slated to double its growth.
NY Daily News, 13
(NY Daily News, April 25th, 2013, NYDailyNews.com, “Cuban biotech industry expected
to double in five years.”
http://india.nydailynews.com/business/7895b15f186d3707d70ae40527992322/cuban-biotech-industryexpected-to-double-in-five-years, accessed 7/9/13, AS)
Havana, April 25 — Cuba's biotechnology industry is expected to double over the next five years,
bringing in more than $5 billion in export revenues, an official said.¶ There is increasing international
recognition of Cuba's biotech industry and the revenue for the 2013-17 period is projected to double
the $2.5 billion that earned in the last five years, said Jose Luis Fernandez Yero, vice president of the
country's biotech firm BioCubaFarma, in a recent TV interview.¶ Products manufactured by the biotech
industry are currently sold in more than 50 countries and authorities are working to expand the
market, reported Xinhua.¶ BioCubaFarma, said Fernandez, was founded in April 2011 after the Sixth
Congress of Cuba's Communist Party called for strengthening domestic pharmaceutical and
biotechnology industries to boost the economy as the sectors had the greatest export potential.¶
BioCubaFarma is to develop new products for the domestic market and help push Cuba towards a more
high-tech economy, Fernandez said.¶ The group manufactures generic drugs, therapeutic and
prophylactic vaccines, biomedicine, diagnostic systems and high-tech medical equipment. It also does
research on neuroscience and neurotechnology.¶ According to Fernandez, of the 881 generic drugs used
in Cuba, 583 are manufactured in the country.
Sanctions treat medicine differently – any company can sign a licensing agreement
with Cuba’s biotech industry.
Zimmerman, Independent Journalist, 5
(Eilene, June 1 2005, CNN Money, “The Cuban Cure A biotech startup figured out how to
cut federal red tape and become the first U.S. company to license cancer drugs from
Castro's Cuba,” http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2005/06/01/8261969/index.htm,
accessed 7/9/13, AS)
FORTUNE Small Business) – It was a hot summer afternoon in Havana. Executives from CancerVax, a
small biotech firm based in Carlsbad, Calif., waited nervously to sign a landmark licensing agreement
with the Cuban government. Everyone, including CancerVax CEO David Hale, was sweating--and not just
because of the heat. It had taken CancerVax three years of agonizingly complex negotiations to get to
this point, but Fidel Castro could quash the deal at any time.¶ At 1:30 P.M., El Jefe strolled in, wearing a
smart gray suit, white shirt, and conservative tie instead of his trademark fatigues. When Castro started
speaking about the importance of the agreement to the Cuban scientific community and to cancer
patients around the world, Hale finally knew the deal would happen. "With Castro you always worry
it's going to be a long political speech," he recalls. "But this time it wasn't." And on July 13, 2004, an
American company was granted permission to license three promising cancer vaccines from the
communist nation. It was the first such deal in the 41-year history of the U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba.¶ Unlike childhood vaccines aimed at preventing disease, cancer vaccines are administered to
people who already have cancer in an effort to slow its progress or stop it altogether. The three Cuban
drugs are now being readied for Phase II clinical trials in the U.S.¶ The most promising vaccine, a
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compound called SAI-EGF, is set to start its trial late this year or early in 2006. The drug targets a protein
known as epidermal growth factor, or EGF, which is the sustenance of many tumors. EGF exists benignly
in blood until a cancer tumor is present. It then locks onto the tumor's EGF receptor and stimulates its
growth. SAI-EGF causes the immune system to create antibodies that prevent EGF from latching onto
those receptors.¶ Independent analysts seem cautiously optimistic about the drug's prospects. "We
think there is a 40% chance that SAI-EGF will work, and that's about 10% better than average for a drug
in Phase I or Phase II trials," says Ben Weintraub, a biotech analyst with Hibernia Southcoast Capital in
New Orleans.¶ CancerVax first learned about SAI-EGF at the 2001 meeting of the American Society of
Oncology in San Francisco, where Hale saw the new research exhibited on a poster. It struck him as a
novel approach to targeting the EGF pathway, so he approached the poster's authors and discovered
that both scientists were from the Centro de Inmunologia Molecular (CIM) in Havana. "I was shocked,"
Hale says. "Then they told me that they had patents pending in Europe and Japan."¶ Hale decided to try
to license the vaccines for distribution in the U.S. But he faced the challenge of overcoming four
decades of U.S. government animosity toward Cuba. Hale hired two high-powered D.C. lobbyists--H.P.
Goldfield and Richard A. Popkin--to rally support on Capitol Hill. (Both declined to be interviewed.)
CancerVax's strategy was to stress the importance of developing a treatment for non-small-cell lung
cancer. "Politics shouldn't get in the way of saving lives," says Hale. ¶ There were plenty of bleak
statistics available to support CancerVax's argument. More Americans die of lung cancer than of colon,
breast, and prostate cancers combined, according to the American Cancer Society. Non-small-cell lung
cancer represents 87% of diagnosed lung cancer. Nearly 60% of patients die within one year. Almost
75% die within two years, and those numbers haven't improved in a decade.¶ CancerVax's lobbying team
took its case to Senators, Representatives, scientists, and public-interest groups. In December 2002 the
company applied to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for permission to negotiate with Cuba.
Two renowned cancer physicians wrote letters in support of the application. So did many members of
Congress, including Senators Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut) and Diane Feinstein (D-California). In
March 2003, CancerVax received its negotiating clearance.¶ Treasury Department spokesperson Molly
Millerwise wouldn't comment specifically on CancerVax but did say that OFAC "carefully reviews license
requests that promote activities that could save or prolong American lives." CancerVax's success,
however, was probably because of humanitarian considerations, says Pedro Freyre, a partner at the
Washington, D.C., law firm Akerman Senterfitt, who specializes in Cuban embargo issues. "If you read
the law applying to the embargo, there is a clear understanding that food and medicine should be
treated differently, just like visits to family in Cuba are treated differently," Freyre says.
Tons of alt causes to food prices – extreme weather, long-term supply/demand crunch, population growth, speculative
“futures” investing, disease, less available land, feedstock competition from the biofuels industry, warming
Wall 13 – personal finance reporter for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk, citing
Baring Asset Management (Emma, 03/02, “As the price of food rises, is there profit to be made?”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/9902374/As-the-price-of-food-rises-isthere-profit-to-be-made.html)
Noticed the price of sugar lately? Potatoes? Fresh fruit? A weak pound, US drought and one of the
wettest years on record for Britain have all contributed to the cost of your shopping basket soaring.
When sterling falls, your money buys fewer of the commodities that need to be imported. In fact, the
recent sharp falls probably haven't had their full impact in yet. But the story of rising food prices is about
much more than currency swings. And it provides tempting possibilities for investors. Extreme weather
in 2012 led to sharp price rises in the likes of corn, wheat and soya beans, and these prices look likely
to remain elevated for the next six months , according to Baring Asset Management. There is also a
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long-term crunch between supply and demand. In fact, food production must increase by at least 70pc
by 2050 to meet global demand. According to the United Nations, the world's population is forecast to
increase from 7 billion to 9.3 billion over the next 40 years, and to meet this demand investment in
food production is needed. The Ecclesiastical Investment Management Amity Insight report Hungry
Planet warned that our current food supply is just not sustainable in the medium to long term, and
can only be solved through extensive investment in global agriculture, which will help increase crop
yields. Neville White, socially responsible investment analyst at Ecclesiastical, said: "Increased food
production will have to be achieved with less land, water and people. Investing in companies with a
focus on mechanisation, crop production and fertilisation that aim to increase food production can not
only have a real impact on food but can also ensure that investors profit with principles." There are two
ways to invest in food: you can buy commodities through trading on the future price of a grain or crop
and/or buying an exchange-traded fund. Or you can buy shares in agriculture and food-production
related companies. Sarasin AgriSar invests in the entire supply chain, from grain to supermarkets. This
means that although you may miss out on large upsurges in the soft commodities market, growth
should be smoother. Henry Boucher, manager of the AgriSar fund, said that holding food-related shares
was a more ethical way of investing – handing your money to companies in the chain reduces their
capital cost and helps them invest to improve food supply. "Some speculators invest in food itself, which
takes supply out of the market [if they store it for later sale at higher prices]," said Mr Boucher.
"Commodity traders invest directly in corn, pork bellies, wheat and sugar. We're more interested in
finding companies that help improve global productivity." He cites investments like Japan's Kubota,
which makes small rice transplanters, or Indian company Syngenta, whose fertiliser and seed pre-mix is
designed to improve productivity by up to four times. "Both make products for the small farmer – they
can be used on land as little as one acre," he said. "This is not about mass-farming but helping the small
businesses left in the Asian countryside." Speculative "futures" investing in food markets can also be
more volatile . Futures are short-term punts – one bad crop season, due to disease or extreme
weather, may mean significant losses . Agriculture-related shares are held for longer and are less
affected by natural disasters. Jonathan Blake, manager of the Baring Global Agriculture fund, said last
year's weather had enhanced the investment appeal of those companies providing the likes of seeds,
herbicides and fertilisers, which will enable farmers to maximise their crop output. "It will take time to
address the shortfalls caused by the severe weather events of 2012, from droughts in America to
washout conditions in the UK and Europe," said Mr Blake. "We do, however, expect crop prices to come
down later in 2013, providing we have a year of 'normal' weather, as significantly improved output will
allow inventory levels to begin to be rebuilt." The Baring fund has a sizeable proportion of listed
fertiliser, herbicide and seed producers. "Crop production, through the continuous cycle of planting,
growing and harvesting, robs the soil of nutrients," said Mr Blake. "As a result, these nutrients need
replenishing through the application of fertilisers. Additionally, for many farmers these nutrients are
highly affordable given the current high prices farmers are able to get for their crops." Schroders Climate
Change manager Simon Webber also likes investing in companies that offer productivity solutions which
will help bring down the price of food through use of their products to increase farming production. He
also invests in Syngenta and US company Trimble Navigation, which provides solutions for levelling
fields. It is not just population growth that provides investment opportunities in the food sector, but the
change in global diets. As disposable incomes swell in emerging markets, diets tend to become more
Westernised. The AgriSar fund invests in Asian supermarket chain Dairy Farm, whose revenues have
risen as the expanding middle classes change their dietary and shopping habits. "Incomes in China are
increasing at 10pc a year," said Mr Boucher. "People are no longer going to the market daily but visit a
supermarket once a week, where they will be buying more meat, dairy products and imported
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vegetables." Mr Webber said that on top of the global demand for more agricultural produce are the
effects on supply, where available productive land is in decline, yield growth is reducing and there is a
growing competition from the biofuel industry for feedstock. "Climate change acts as a threat
multiplier to the sector on top of the dual impacts of increased demand and decreased supply,
presenting various investment opportunities. The sectors that will benefit from this are companies
involved in agricultural production as well as food retailers, whose share price will increase as food
prices inflate."
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AT: Food Security
Population growth alone swamps the internal link – so does ag slowdown – USDA forecast, 70100% increase in demand by 2050
Johnson 13 – writer for the Council on Foreign Relations (Toni, 01/16, “Food Price Volatility and
Insecurity,” http://www.cfr.org/food-security/food-price-volatility-insecurity/p16662)
The Global Food Market Just fifteen food crops make up 90 percent of the world's energy intake,
according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with rice, maize (corn), and wheat
comprising two-thirds of that number. The world grows more grains (PDF)--also known as cereals--than
any other crop type. Much of the global increase in food prices stems from staple grains, which in some
countries can represent more than half of calorie intake. According to the World Bank, due to an
incredibly dry summer in the United States and Europe, global corn and soybean prices reached all-time
highs in July 2012, while wheat soared to prices comparable to 2011 peaks. Because grains also
represent a major food source for livestock, higher grain prices have contributed to higher dairy and
meat prices. The USDA predicts that domestically, prices will continue to rise in 2013 at a rate of 3 to 4
percent. A June 2011 report to G20 agriculture ministers from ten major NGOs, including the World
Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the UN World Food Program, noted that by 2050, food
demand (PDF) will have increased by between 70 percent and 100 percent to meet a projected
population growth of at least 2.5 billion additional people. " This alone is sufficient to exert pressure
on commodity prices," the report said. Growth in agriculture production is largely expected to come
from increased crop yields and will primarily be located in developing countries, according to a 2009 UN
report (PDF). Experts say there is plenty of opportunity to improve farming techniques in the developing
world. Meeting projected demand will require increasing cereal production by an additional one billion
tons, up from more than two billion tons currently, and more than doubling meat production from
current levels. However, according to a 2011 report by the OECD, annual growth in agriculture
production (PDF) in the next decade is forecast to be a third less than the annual growth in the
previous decade. The report estimates that a 5 percent increase or decrease in harvest yield in major
grains can lead to as much as a 25 percent difference in price. Food Price Volatility According to the FAO,
price volatility has been extremely rare in agricultural markets, but the global food system is becoming
increasingly vulnerable to it. The 2011 NGO report argued that "volatility becomes an issue for concern
and for possible policy response when it induces risk-adverse behavior that leads to inefficient
investment decisions and when it creates problems that are beyond the capacity of producers,
consumers, or nations to cope."
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AT: Disease
Biotech co-operation with Cuba would be careless – we may be funding bioweapons.
Poblete, a trade security law expert on export control laws, economic sanctions, trade
agreements, 8
(Jason, December 15th, 2008, DC Dispatches, “Allegations of Biological Weapons
Research in Cuba Need Clearing Up,” http://jasonpoblete.com/2008/12/15/allegations-ofbiological-weapons-research-in-cuba-need-clearing-up/, accessed 7/9/13, AS)
One of many new “ideas” missing from these discussions appear to be clearing up the matter of
Cuba’s alleged activities with a biological weapons (“BW”) development program. ¶ Two weeks ago Cuba hosted a
Biotechnology Congress in Havana. Events leading up to this meeting included the opening of new vaccine plant and the signing of joint
biotechnology cooperation agreements with Russia, China, Mexico, and Brazil. The European Union also announced it would be donating
millions of dollars to Cuba for various programs including some money set aside for biotechnology research. Iran
is also heavily
invested in Cuba’s biotech research programs.¶ As in the case of nuclear research, developing countries always claim to be
the white hats in the field of genetic research. Cuba has given ”priority to this [biotech] field as there was a political will to work in this field and
give priority to biotechnology and pharmaceuticals and for these products to be used in the health field and agriculture and also to make it a
profitable business sector,” said Dr Eduardo Martinez of the Cuban Centre of Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) during the opening
conference in Havana. Say
what they will, Cuba’s research in this are remains a matter of concern. ¶ Dragged
kicking and screaming, Cuba’s supporters in the United States will, sometimes vehemently, deny that Cuba
has ever even had a biotechnology weapons research program. We are supposed to take their assurances at face
value. It would be impolite to do any different. The Cubans can be trusted. In reality, the U.S. does not have a very clear
picture of what Cuba is doing in this field and, that alone, should be cause for concern.¶ If Cuba has
nothing to hide, then it should open up its secretive biotechnology program to international
inspectors. But Cuba will not do that so long as the Communist Party of Cuba remains at the helm. Why? ¶ Former political prisoners for
one thing. There are many former political prisoners living in the United States, Europe, and throughout
Latin American that can attest to being used as guinea pigs by Cuban scientists and doctors that were
part of Cuba’s biotech program. ¶ Then there are the former Soviet scientist who claim biotechnology cooperation with Cuba
during the Cold War. Throughout the Cold War, and some experts allege to this very day, the Russians exported equipment and
manufacturing know-how to the Cubans. Some of these former Soviet scientists have explained in
very detailed and public accounts the location of some of the larger facilities in Cuba that were used
for biological weapons research and manufacturing.¶ Cuba’s past and current relations with countries
of proliferation concern. Based on published accounts by the Cuban government, it has engaged it what it calls
legitimate biotech research with Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria. To this day
Cuba and Iran maintain strong and close relations that include extensive cooperation in the biotech field. Both Cuba and Iran are state sponsors
of terrorism.¶ On December 2, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (“the
Commission”) issued its final report to the Congress. One
of its many findings was that more attention needed to be
placed by the U.S. on the prevention of biological weapon attacks, even more so than attacks from
nuclear devices.¶ One of the Commission’s action items includes having the Department of State engage in a global assessment of
biological threats. It also called on the government to implement a targeted global biological threat prevention program. There are many
other recommendations in the report that can be used as a foundation to deal with countries such as
Cuba that have to completely disclose its current capabilities and past research activities .¶ Before the
Obama team decides to intiate easing travel to Cuba or restrictions on remittances, it needs to take a closer look at issues that directly impact
U.S., regional, and global security. This
is one of several key issues that should be given prioriy consideration.
Such an approach would be consistent with a careful reading of U.S. laws regarding U.S.-Cuba
relations and would set a refreshing new tone in how we approach regional challenges.
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AT: IFI Loans
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Says No
Cuba will reject loans—international donors uniformly agree
Feinberg, former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security
Council, 11
[Richard E., November 2011, Brookings, “Reaching Out: Cuban’s New Economy and the International
Response,”
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/11/18%20cuba%20feinberg/1118_cub
a_feinberg, p.46-47, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
Uniformly, OECD cooperation experts report that Cuba is an unusually demanding environment ¶
within which to work. The constraints are political, procedural, and cultural as well as practical. ¶ Far
from instinctively welcoming foreign assistance, many Cuban ¶ officials view offers of cooperation
from Western donors with suspicion. Is there is a “hidden agenda”? To unravel Cuban socialism and ¶
implant Western-style free-market capitalism? To gather information in order to compromise Cuban intelligence? To bolster
individual dissidents, non-governmental organizations, and other non-state ¶ actors intent on subverting the authority of the Cuban state and ¶
the Cuban Communist Party?51 For
decades, the Cuban state has ¶ lived under a permanent “high alert” status,
and some officials fear ¶ that offers of foreign aid are but a Trojan Horse whose real intent ¶ is to
breach national security. “Many Cuban officials see donors as ¶ instruments of the enemy,” remarked
one senior donor representative.¶ From its birth, the Cuban revolution elevated politics high above
economics. What other government would place an Argentine medical doctor, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, at the head of its central ¶ bank and
czar of its economy?52 Fidel Castro (more than his younger brother, Raul) was renowned ¶ for making decisions based upon the requisites of
political power and ideology rather than economic productivity; it was Fidel who reversed the economic reforms of the 1990s, despite their ¶
tangible economic benefits for the population, when he feared they threatened his political project .¶ The architecture of the iconic Plaza de la
Revolucion in central Havana is a powerful visualization of regime priorities . At the head of the massive square is a towering column honoring
independence hero and martyr, Jose Marti. Surrounding the square are rectangle government buildings ¶ housing the ministries of defense,
internal security, and communications. Very large outlines of the ¶ faces of the guerrilla commanders “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos—
dramatically lighted ¶ at night—are grafted upon two of the otherwise drab state buildings (Figure 3 .1) . The Cuban Communist Party’s
powerful politbureau is housed just off the square. Hidden away to the side is the ¶ Ministry of Economy and Planning. A
regime that has
so radically privileged politics above economics, its own state security above ¶ firm productivity or
consumer welfare, makes for an usually difficult partner for international donors. As one seasoned aid
officer offered, “Cuba prefers to forfeit money rather than to lose status ¶ or control.”
[OECD is the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development]
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Alt Causes
Alt cause—Cuban debt means loan access is denied
Feinberg, former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security
Council, 11
[Richard E., November 2011, Brookings, “Reaching Out: Cuban’s New Economy and the International
Response,”
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/11/18%20cuba%20feinberg/1118_cub
a_feinberg, p. 14, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
An alarming indicator of Cuba’s economic status is its external debt picture. Cuba publishes only ¶ very partial and
delayed statistics on its external debts. According to Cuba’s central bank, as of ¶ 2007 the “active external debt” totaled $8 .9 billion, of which
$6 .9 billion was medium and long ¶ term. In addition, the Central Bank recognizes a “frozen debt” that has not been serviced or restructured
since 1986, of $7 .6 billion, of which 60 percent is official debt owed mainly to Paris Club ¶ creditors .¶ The European Union office based in
Havana has undertaken the yeoman work of pulling together a ¶ more complete picture of Cuba’s external obligations .¶ 17 The EU paper
explains, with regard to this ¶ “frozen debt,” that negotiations with Cuba’s credit group failed in 2001 and Cuba has not made ¶ any official
contact with the Paris Club since, seeking instead to negotiate bilateral deals . With regard to the “active debt,” the EU
report notes:
“Since January 2009, Cuba no longer honors over ¶ the majority of its commitments on active debt and
has blocked the transfer of foreign exchange ¶ (which amount to over $1 billion). Most creditors are only given the choice
between giving up their ¶ claim and their assets or restructure the conditions in Cuba.” Adding to its poor credit history, the ¶ Cuban
government does not acknowledge claims by Moscow and other former trading partners in ¶ Central and Eastern Europe regarding certain
large-scale debts originating in the Soviet era .¶ The
EU paper uncovered $3l .6 billion in Cuban external debt, as of
2008, with these major country ¶ creditors each owed $1 billion or more: Venezuela ($11 .4 billion), Spain ($3 .2 billion), China ($3 .2 billion),
Japan ($2 .8 billion), Argentina ($2 .0 billion), France ($1 .9 billion), Romania ($1 .2 billion), and ¶ post-Soviet Russia ($1 .1 billion) .¶ In short,
Cuba is both illiquid and insolvent. Cuba does not publish data on its international reserves, fearing exposure to U.S. sanctions,
but it is safe to assume that they are not large, as ¶ Cuba has frequently suspended service on international obligations asserting lack of
payments ¶ capacity. Is it any wonder that Moody’s rates Cuba “Caa1,” the category where “obligations are ¶ judged to be of poor standing and
are subject to very high credit risk”?18 Unable
to service or to ¶ renegotiate many of its outstanding debts, Cuba
is denied access to international capital markets ¶ (beyond secured short-term suppliers’ credits), compounding the
shortages of critical imports and ¶ investment capital. Absent recourse to normal commercial credits, Cuba must seek
government-to-government official financing for its priority development projects (see Section 2).
IFI loans are insufficient to solve—Cuban domestic issues trump
Feinberg, former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security
Council, 11
[Richard E., November 2011, Brookings, “Reaching Out: Cuban’s New Economy and the International
Response,”
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/11/18%20cuba%20feinberg/1118_cub
a_feinberg, p. 41, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
In principle, the emerging market strategy could be a viable course of action for Cuba, providing it
with a diverse and complementary set of international commercial partners and geopolitical allies .
Geography and the complementary strengths of the U .S . economy dictate that exchange with the
U .S . mainland would be the most efficient option, yet the South-South vision offers a reasonable
second-best solution . But no international economic strategy will work unless Cuba can transform
itself into a more efficient and reliable business partner. No set of geopolitical alliances will provide
Cuba with the capital and technology it needs unless it creates a more welcoming investment climate.
And no international alliances, by themselves, will be sufficient to provide the long-suffering
Cuban citizens with the labor productivity and decent employment they deserve. The ball is in the
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court of the Cuban policymakers.
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Squo Solves
Other things solve—Cuba can still receive loans despite US sanctions
Feinberg, former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security
Council, 11
[Richard E., November 2011, Brookings, “Reaching Out: Cuban’s New Economy and the International
Response,”
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/11/18%20cuba%20feinberg/1118_cub
a_feinberg, p. 61, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
Public debates regarding the relations between Cuba and the international financial institutions (IFIs)
have been laced with serious misconceptions. Contrary to common belief, the ¶ United States does not
hold veto power over IFI voting procedures on new memberships. And while ¶ it may have been true
in the past that Cuba was disinterested, this chapter presents fresh evidence ¶ that, today, Cuba may
be prepared to re-engage with the IFIs (pre-revolutionary Cuba was a member of the IMF and World
Bank) Often, it is assumed that the IFIs cannot engage with non-members .¶ In fact, there are
numerous precedents for extending technical assistance and even financial resources to non-member
states and ¶ entities, for example through the establishment of trust funds administered and financed
by third parties. As this section will argue, ¶ in the case of Cuba a gradual step-by-step process of
confidencebuilding, through various channels of technical assistance, is feasible and would be most
responsive to various political sensitivities .¶ Also contrary to conventional wisdom, Cuba’s nonparticipation in the ¶ Organization of American States (OAS) is not a legal obstacle to membership in
the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) . Nor is U.S.¶ voting power in the IDB sufficient to defeat
a vote on new members.¶ Furthermore, this section will explore another potential option, generally
overlooked, for multilateral ¶ assistance to Cuba: the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), where the
U.S. is not a member.
The IMF can find loopholes to provide assistance to non-members
Feinberg, former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security
Council, 11
[Richard E., November 2011, Brookings, “Reaching Out: Cuban’s New Economy and the International
Response,”
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2011/11/18%20cuba%20feinberg/1118_cub
a_feinberg, p. 71, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
There are plentiful precedents of the IMF providing technical assistance to non-member states ¶ and
territories. Recent cases include South Sudan, Kosovo, and West Bank/Gaza, and in earlier ¶ decades, the
former Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies .¶ 89 Often but not always such assistance has been
linked to expectations of future membership . Because IMF policy is to provide ¶ technical assistance
but not financial resources to non-members, to cover staff and administer ¶ costs the Fund sometimes
establishes trust funds, financed by third parties and at times managed ¶ by another international
entity.¶ For example, the IMF explained its policy toward South Sudan, not yet a member, thusly:¶ “In
view of South Sudan’s application for IMF membership, the IMF intends to seek donor ¶ contributions
to a special Trust Fund for IMF Capacity Building for South Sudan . This trust ¶ fund will provide
intense IMF technical assistance to the authorities in critical areas relevant to building the new
country’s macroeconomic institutions. Harnessing its expertise ¶ and infrastructure, the IMF would
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provide technical assistance in its areas of core expertise¶ to enable the design, implementation and
monitoring of sound macroeconomic policies, ¶ including by developing a fiscal framework,
establishing the central bank and its core activities, building statistical capacity and putting in place
the legislative framework required ¶ for effective economic and financial management. The trust fund
would total US$10 .6 million for just under four years and aims to mobilize quickly, given the urgency of
needs in ¶ South Sudan.”¶ 90
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Off-Case
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Reformed/Smart Sanctions CP
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1NC
Text: The United States federal government should create a transparency index for
State Sponsors of Terrorism and adopt definitions for each level of state sponsorship.
Creating a more indexed list to distinguish between indirect and direct support of
terrorism solves best
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 08
[Daniel L, professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
with a concurrent appointment with the Georgetown Department of Government, previous director of
Georgetown's Security Studies Program, May 2008, Saban Center @ the Brookings Institution, “The
Changing Nature of State Sponsorship of Terrorism”,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2008/5/terrorism%20byman/05_terrorism_
byman.pdf, accessed 7-5-13, GSK]
So what Washington should really do is adopt a new ¶ approach that recognizes the complex nature of
state ¶ sponsorship today. The first step should be to forge ¶ an international consensus on a broad
definition of ¶ what constitutes state sponsorship—a definition that ¶ encompasses not only errors of
commission, such as ¶ arming and training groups, but also errors of omission, such as unwillingness to
stop terrorist fundraising and recruitment. A good precedent to follow here ¶ is the effort to stop
money laundering: by forging an ¶ agreement among key states on financial accounting ¶ standards, the
United States and its allies have been ¶ able to make considerable progress on improving compliance and
reducing the number of countries with lax ¶ enforcement.¶ At a bilateral level, moreover, simple
embarrassment ¶ has proven surprisingly effective as a tool against some ¶ countries. The spotlight held
on Saudi Arabia after ¶ September 11 humiliated the kingdom’s royal family, making it scramble to at
least appear cooperative. The ¶ United States should consider creating a list of passive ¶ sponsors and
their activities in an attempt to “name ¶ and shame” them into better behavior, using as a model the
“transparency index” that measures the level of ¶ corruption in countries around the world.¶ If
diplomatic pressure has little impact, political and ¶ economic penalties should then be introduced.
Initially, such penalties should be mostly symbolic at first, ¶ embarrassing a regime in front of elites and
signaling ¶ to foreign investors and others that more harsh penalties are on their way. (Travel bans for
regime leaders ¶ fall into this category.) If those don’t work, more serious economic and other penalties
should come into ¶ play over time, tailored to the circumstances of each ¶ particular case and with care
taken to ensure that both ¶ sides understand what, exactly, the sanctions are linked ¶ to and what will
be required to have them lifted.¶ Together, such a package of measures would do much ¶ more to
combat the real problems of state sponsorship ¶ of terror that currently exist than does the outdated ¶
approach Washington employs today.
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Solvency Extensions
List requirement reform is necessary- inconsistency, terrorism credibility and human
rights
Litwak, vice president for programs and director of International Security Studies at
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2007
[Robert Litwak, 1/30/2007, “Regime Change: U.S. Strategy Through the Prism of 9/11”, JHU Press, p.
301, chip]
The State Department's 2003 report reveals significant differences in behavior among the seven
countries on the terrorism list.25 Iran remains an active state sponsor; there is evidence that
governmental operatives from the Revolutionary Guards and the Intelligence Ministry have played a
direct role in perpetrating terrorist acts. Syria's role has shifted from direct (as in a failed 1986 plot to
bomb an I-l Al flight) to indirect (through its continued harboring of Palestinian groups that have
conducted terrorist operations against Israel). Fidel Castro’s Cuba, which while rhetorically hostile to
the United States does not directly sponsor terrorism, remains on the list largely for U.S. domestic
political reasons. Once designated a sponsor, a state finds it politically difficult to get off the list, even
when it is motivated to do so (as Sudan, Libya, and even North Korea have been in recent years). The
change of behavior necessary to win Washington's "delisting" and the lifting of sanctions is often
unclear because of the frequent conflation of terrorism with other issues, particularly
nonproliferation and human rights. Terrorism expert Paul Pillar observed that the "incongruity
between the list of state sponsors and actual patterns of state support for terrorism invites cynicism.
It has also generated calls for reform to decouple the designation of a state from the automatic
imposition of economic sanctions, and to eschew linkages across policy areas. As a Clinton
administration counterterrorism official colorfully declared to a congressional committee, "If you have a
problem with Cuba on human rights, gel your own sanctions, don't use mine." Reform of the current
process would yield a slate- sponsored terrorism list that provides a truer picture of behavior. It would
also provide the president the requisite flexibility to pursue tailored strategies toward adversaries, as
well as toward notional allies that are part of the problem." Finally, a more credible terrorist list would
increase the U.S. ability to win allied support for tough international measures against state sponsors.
Reforming the list solves best—incentives and clear definitions for changing regime
policy and more indexing solve failures
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 08
[Daniel L, professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
with a concurrent appointment with the Georgetown Department of Government, previous director of
Georgetown's Security Studies Program, May 2008, Saban Center @ the Brookings Institution, “The
Changing Nature of State Sponsorship of Terrorism”,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2008/5/terrorism%20byman/05_terrorism_
byman.pdf, accessed 7-5-13, GSK]
Current U.S. lists regarding state sponsorship have four ¶ problems. First, they often list countries that
are not major sponsors of terrorism today while ignoring other ¶ sponsors. Cuba and North Korea,
while noxious regimes, are not major concerns for U.S. counterterrorism, while ¶ Pakistan should be on
the list if it is to truly reflect its ¶ government’s actions. Second, the list does not recognize important
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gradations in support. Iran and Syria ¶ are both “supporters,” but the scale of their activities is ¶ quite
different. Third, removal from the list is difficult ¶ and there are few rewards for improving behavior
short ¶ of a complete turnaround. As a result, regimes have little ¶ incentive to meet the United States
part-way. Finally, the ¶ lists ignore the tricky issue of passive sponsorship.¶ Lists should accurately
reflect the current level of state ¶ sponsorship. In addition, there should be clear criteria ¶ for entering
and exiting the list: there must be incentives for good behavior and punishments for acting ¶ badly. The
“not fully cooperating” list is an important ¶ part of judging passive sponsorship, but currently it is ¶ only
used selectively.
Revising the already existing sanctions can still ensure stability
O’Sullivan, Ph.D. in politics @ University of Oxford, 3
[Meghan L., Shrewd Sanctions Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism, p. 319-320, PR] YGS
In other instances, a sanctions regime—even one that may have some¶ benefits—should be discarded
or revised if a more useful option is at hand.¶ U.S. sanctions on Iran or Cuba are prime candidates for
such an assessment.¶ To advocate an alternative to a sanctions-dominated strategy in place is not¶ to
say that the sanctions regime has produced no benefits; in the case of¶ Iran, U.S. sanctions have kept
some resources away from Tehran, whereas¶ sanctions on Cuba have created some pressure on
Castro’s regime. Nor does¶ advancing an alternative to sanctions in these instances mean renouncing¶
U.S. goals to further democracy in Cuba or end Iranian support for terrorism,¶ pursuit of weapons of
mass destruction, or opposition to Israel. Rather,¶ discarding or reforming sanctions in favor of another
approach in these¶ cases would be a pragmatic shift, one that acknowledges that there are more¶
useful ways of pursuing, and achieving, the same objectives. A more open¶ economic and political
relationship between the United States and Cuba—¶ perhaps one that employs investment codes
rather than sanctions—would¶ almost certainly be a better way to bolster stability and prospects for
a¶ smooth democratic transition on the island. With Iran, a more nuanced approach toward Tehran
might remove the United States from the “third¶ rail” of Iranian domestic politics, thereby increasing the
chances of a bilateral¶ dialogue in which the United States could address its strategic concerns.¶ It could
also allow the United States to achieve many goals—regarding Iraq,¶ Afghanistan, and
counternarcotics—that are in the natural interests of the¶ United States and Iran.
It is possible to revise sanctions to make them more effective
O’Sullivan, Ph.D. in politics @ University of Oxford, 3
[Meghan L., Shrewd Sanctions Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism, p. 319-320, PR] YGS
In the decades ahead, policymakers will struggle to find the proper tools to¶ address the broad
challenges faced by the United States. Sanctions can and¶ should play an important role in these
efforts, but only if they are used to¶ greater effect than in the past. The necessary recalibration of
these tools holds particular importance for how the United States deals with the threat¶ posed by
states that both support terrorism and pursue weapons of mass¶ destruction. As the United States
continues its efforts to combat terrorism,¶ maintaining sanctions that are ineffective will carry
increasing costs: either¶ they will be insufficient to stem the threat posed by states that continue to¶
sponsor terrorism or they will be obstacles to striking more cooperative¶ relationships with countries
that are ready and able to put terrorism in their¶ past. As discussed in this chapter, making sanctions
more effective—in¶ either circumstance—will require rethinking both how the structure of¶
sanctions matches the goals pursued and how sanctions are coupled with¶ other foreign policy tools
to form coherent strategies
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Reforming the terrorist list will improve its credibility
O’Sullivan, Ph.D. in politics @ University of Oxford, 3
[Meghan L., Shrewd Sanctions Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism, p. 319-320, PR] YGS
The terrorism list—a mechanism through which many countries are¶ sanctioned—could also be
reformed to allow for greater flexibility. Currently,¶ once a country is designated a state supporter of
terrorism, an extensive¶ array of sanctions takes effect immediately and remains in place until¶ the
country is taken off the terrorism list.60 A more useful process would¶ allow for some separation of the
actual designation from the penalties associated¶ with it, either in a two-tiered process or through the
provision of¶ presidential waivers that would give the executive the authority to remove¶ sanctions
gradually. Abolition of the existing “all or nothing” approach¶ would have important advantages. First,
it would diminish the discrepancies¶ between the countries placed on the terrorism list and those
actually supporting¶ terrorism. The current system encourages the State Department to¶ shy away
from naming countries to the list that are at least as deserving of¶ the designation as Cuba and North
Korea (two countries currently considered¶ state sponsors) when sanctioning them could exacerbate
their terrorism¶ problem rather than mitigate it. Ending this double standard would¶ increase the
credibility of the terrorism list, and therefore, the opprobrium¶ associated with being placed on it and
its utility as a policy tool. More important,¶ allowing policymakers and counterterrorism officials to
calibrate¶ penalties to reflect the specifics of each situation would make for better pol-¶ icy. On one
hand, it would allow policymakers to dangle more tangible¶ inducements (in the form of lifting
sanctions) in front of countries seriously¶ seeking to shed the terrorist designation. On the other hand,
it would¶ provide the flexibility that policymakers need to address many of the complicated¶ scenarios
that will arise as the United States continues its efforts to¶ combat global terrorism; if the number of
countries that are viewed to provide¶ some support for terrorism grows beyond the small circle of socalled¶ rogue states, the United States will need a mechanism that allows it to apply¶ pressure to
countries that are struggling to address their terrorist problems,¶ without entirely cutting off contact
with them. At the very least, U.S. policymakers¶ should use the already available designation of “not
fully cooperating¶ with U.S. antiterrorism efforts” more aggressively.61 The only mandatory¶ sanctions
associated with this designation are restrictions on military¶ sales and assistance, although other
sanctions may be added at the discretion¶ of the president. If employed more regularly, this added
category could¶ provide a much-needed way station for countries either moving toward or¶ away from
a full-fledged state sponsor of terrorism designation.
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“Passive Support for Terrorism” NB
Passive sponsors of terrorism aren’t on the list and are the only ones that aid
terrorism in the state quo- reformed list solves
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 08
[Daniel L, professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
with a concurrent appointment with the Georgetown Department of Government, previous director of
Georgetown's Security Studies Program, May 2008, Saban Center @ the Brookings Institution, “The
Changing Nature of State Sponsorship of Terrorism”,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2008/5/terrorism%20byman/05_terrorism_
byman.pdf, accessed 7-8-13, chip]
The U.S. approach toward state sponsorship of terrorism rests on a flawed understanding of the
problem and an even more flawed policy response. The U.S. Department of State’s current formal list
of state sponsors includes Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. But Cuba and North Korea have
done almost nothing in this area in recent years, and Sudan has changed its ways enough that
elsewhere the Bush administration credits Sudan as a “strong partner in the War on Terror.” Of those
on the list, only Syria and Iran remain problems, and in both cases their involvement in traditional
international terrorism is down considerably from their peaks in the 1980s. What seems like a brilliant
policy success, however, is really an artifact of bad list management, because much of the problem of
state sponsorship today involves countries that are not on the list at all. Pakistan has long aided a range
of terrorist groups fighting against India in Kashmir and is a major sponsor of Taliban forces fighting the
U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. Hugo Chavez’s government in Venezuela is a major supporter
of the FARC. And several other governments, such as those in Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian
territories, create problems by deliberately looking the other way when their citizens back terrorist
groups. These new state sponsors are actually more dangerous to the United States and its interests
than the remaining traditional state sponsors, because some of them are tied to Sunni jihadist groups
such as al-Qa‘ida— currently the greatest terrorist threat facing the United States. The nightmare of a
terrorist group acquiring nuclear weapons is far more likely to involve Pakistan than it is Iran or North
Korea. The new state sponsors can also be harder to deal with than the old ones, not least because
they often have a more complicated relationship with terrorists. In many cases, the government in
question does not actively train or arm the terrorist group, but rather lets it act with relative
impunity—an approach that, in practice, allows the government to claim ignorance or incapacity. Thus it
can be hard to distinguish between Yemen’s willful inaction and cases like Jordan, where terrorist cells
also operate but do so despite a fierce regime counterterrorism campaign. Many of the new sponsors
are also U.S. allies. And some cooperate, albeit fitfully, with the U.S. war on terrorism even as they
surreptitiously allow terrorists to operate from their soil. Because of this complexity, the answer to the
problem does not lie only in updating the State Department’s state sponsorship list to reflect current
relationships— swapping out Cuba for Venezuela, say, or replacing North Korea with Pakistan. The very
concept of a binary list, with countries either on it or off, is flawed and often does more harm to U.S.
interests than good. Once a country is listed it is hard to remove even if it does not support terrorism
(as Sudan has found out), and the list provides little incentive for partial or incomplete
counterterrorism cooperation (which is all several countries are realistically likely to give).
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Reforming the list solves lack of standards for passive terrorism
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 05
[Daniel L. Byman, Feb 2005, “Confronting Passive Sponsors Of Terrorism”, The Saban Center For Middle
East Policy At The Brookings Institution,
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/analysis/byman20050201.pdf, chip]
Ensuring a common standard for what constitutes support for terrorism is necessary for an effective
strategy against passive sponsorship. Most important, we need the international community to
recognize that sponsorship includes far more than when a regime arms, trains, or hosts a group: it
should also include states that turn a blind eye when their citizens permit such activity. A better legal
standard is difficult due to disagreements over what constitutes passive support and the possible
infringement on legitimate political behavior. Nevertheless, considerable progress is possible. All
governments must prohibit any citizens’ support that knowingly goes toward a group using violence.
Any support for obviously violent activities, such as arms purchasing or military training, must also be
prohibited. To prevent groups from taking advantage of individuals’ ignorance (whether willful or not),
charities should be required to disclose the recipients of their patronage. The United States should also
establish a formal category for states that refuse to renounce passive sponsorship and link various
economic and diplomatic penalties to it.
Determining concrete standards for the list allow us to fight passive terrorism
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 08
[Daniel L, professor in the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
with a concurrent appointment with the Georgetown Department of Government, previous director of
Georgetown's Security Studies Program, May 2008, Saban Center @ the Brookings Institution, “The
Changing Nature of State Sponsorship of Terrorism”,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2008/5/terrorism%20byman/05_terrorism_
byman.pdf, accessed 7-8-13, chip]
Ensuring a common standard for what constitutes support for terrorism is necessary for an effective
strategy against passive sponsorship. Sponsorship includes far more than when a regime arms, trains,
or hosts a group: it should also include states that turn a blind eye when their citizens permit such
activity. States not only have a responsibility for their actions, but also for their inactions.
Unfortunately, there is no accepted international definition of terrorism (despite over thirty years of
attempts), let alone an accepted definition for what does and should constitute state support. Even if
a common definition can be found, gaining international support for stopping all dimensions of passive
support will be difficult because of the popularity many causes linked to terrorism enjoy and because
support is often linked to legitimate political acts. Two issues in particular stand out. First, groups and
individuals can and should be able to endorse a cause (such as the independence of Kurdistan or of the
Tamil parts of Sri Lanka) as part of the right to free speech. Second, aid for affiliated organizations that
do not use terrorism, particularly humanitarian ones that provide for widows or engage in other good
deeds that can also help sustain a terrorist organization, is a particularly murky area where prohibitions
have the potential to harm important humanitarian activities. Such problems are acute for governments
of all stripes. For example, radical groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas gain considerable support
among Lebanese and Palestinians respectively for their efforts to provide food to the poor, cheap or free
medical care, and other humanitarian activities. Few governments in the Middle East could stop
popular support to such Palestinian charities without losing legitimacy at home. The Saudi Arabian
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government faced the same dilemma that in the 1990s, when al-Qa‘ida exploited various nongovernmental organizations linked to legitimate humanitarian assistance in Bosnia and elsewhere.
Similarly, halting rhetorical support of legitimate causes linked to terrorists such as independence for
Chechnya will remain difficult for democracies, as support for non-violent ideas is a cherished part of
free speech and is thus well-protected in democratic countries and something to be encouraged
elsewhere.
Terrorism is now shaped by countries who lack of regulation or interference- active
support is rare
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 05
[Daniel L. Byman, Feb 2005, “Confronting Passive Sponsors Of Terrorism”, The Saban Center For Middle
East Policy At The Brookings Institution,
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/analysis/byman20050201.pdf, chip]
For many terrorist groups, a state’s tolerance of or passivity toward their activities is often as
important to their success as any deliberate assistance they receive. Open and active state
sponsorship of terrorism is rare, and it has decreased since the end of the Cold War. Yet this lack of
open support does not necessarily diminish the important role that states play in fostering or
hindering terrorism. At times, the greatest contribution a state can make to a terrorist’s cause is by
not policing a border, turning a blind eye to fundraising, or even tolerating terrorist efforts to build
their organizations, conduct operations, and survive. This passivity in the face of terrorism can be
deadly . In conducting the September 11 attacks, al-Qa’ida recruited and raised money in Germany
with relatively little interference, enjoyed financial support from many Saudis unobstructed by the
government in Riyadh, planned operations in Malaysia, and sent operatives to America. None of these
governments are “sponsors” of al-Qa’ida—indeed, several were and are bitter enemies of the
organization—but their inaction proved as important, if not more so, than the haven the group
enjoyed in Afghanistan in enabling al-Qa’ida to conduct the attacks. This Saban Center analysis paper
analyzes the vexing issue of passive support for terrorism by looking at four countries that have
passively supported, or at least tolerated, terrorism: Saudi Arabia’s backing of radical Islamist causes and
organizations, Pakistan’s indirect links to al-Qa’ida, Greece’s tolerance of the 17 November Organization,
and the United States’ blind eye for Provisional Irish Republican Army fundraising. In each of these
instances, the government allowed terrorists to operate, and at times flourish, despite being aware of
their activities.
Pakistan’s involvement in passive terrorism has escalated the Kashmir conflict
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 05
[Daniel L. Byman, Feb 2005, “Confronting Passive Sponsors Of Terrorism”, The Saban Center For Middle
East Policy At The Brookings Institution,
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/analysis/byman20050201.pdf, chip]
Pakistan’s links to al-Qa’ida cannot be separated from Islamabad’s efforts to support militants in
Kashmir against India and its relationship with the Taliban. Pakistan’s agenda in both regions
depended on militant groups that leaned heavily on al-Qa’ida for support. Pakistan was simultaneously
an active supporter of terrorist groups in Kashmir and a passive supporter of al-Qa’ida. For Islamabad,
the latter served the former: by allowing al-Qa’ida to operate with little interference, the regime could
serve its broader goals in Kashmir and use the jihadists to augment its own deliberate and massive
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support for various groups active in Kashmir. In both instances, Pakistani leaders appear to have
tolerated al-Qa’ida, hoping to exploit the movement for their own purposes. Numerous regime figures
active in Pakistan’s policy toward Afghanistan and Kashmir may have interacted with al-Qa’ida to
advance Islamabad’s interests in these areas. Even more important, Pakistani officials knowingly
allowed numerous substate groups, particularly Islamist ones, to work with al-Qa’ida with regard to
Kashmir and Afghanistan. Since the outbreak of violence in Kashmir that has claimed perhaps 60,000
lives, Pakistan has worked with a range of militant organizations active in Kashmir— most of them
Islamist ones—against Indian rule there. These militant organizations have regularly split, merged, and
changed names, but among the most important are Jaysh-e-Mohammad, Harkat-ulAnsar/Harkat-ulMujahedin, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Hizbul Mujhideen. With the support of the government, these jihadist
organizations raise money and recruit militants to fight in Kashmir and have access to training and
weapons for their volunteers. Equally important, these organizations have worked with Islamist political
movements in Pakistan, such as the Jamiat-e-Islami party, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islami (JUI) movement,
and others, many of which are associated with a particular interpretation of Islam. Although all these
groups were active in Kashmir, not all of them are composed entirely or largely of Kashmiris. ProPakistan groups that draw heavily on Kashmiris on the Pakistan side of the border and on foreign
fighters include Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Jaysh-e Mohammed, and Harkat-ul-Mujahedin. Lashkar-e
Tayyiba appears to draw primarily on Punjabis, not on Kashmiris.56
Passive terrorism enables huge terrorist attacks like 9/11
Byman, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the
Brookings Institution, 05
[Daniel L. Byman, Feb 2005, “Confronting Passive Sponsors Of Terrorism”, The Saban Center For Middle
East Policy At The Brookings Institution,
http://www.brookings.edu/fp/saban/analysis/byman20050201.pdf, chip]
Saudi leaders step gingerly in the world of Islamist politics. Jihadist causes, many of which are linked
directly or indirectly to al-Qa’ida, are popular in the Kingdom. Islamist insurgencies in Kashmir,
Uzbekistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere for many years were viewed as legitimate struggles that
deserved the support of fellow Muslims. The Palestinian cause enjoys particular sympathy. When
Islamists champion these issues, they stand with many Saudis behind them. The Saudi regime has
backed several of these causes, including supporting Islamic radicals in Afghanistan after the end of the
anti-Soviet jihad, in part to curry favor with Islamists at home. Riyadh also worked closely with
Islamabad for much of the 1990s, providing it with massive financial support and helping it support
jihadists in Kashmir and, initially, the Taliban and other radical groups in Afghanistan.26 In addition,
proselytizing is exceptionally important for Wahhabism and for the Saudi religious leadership. It is not
simply enough for believers to be just in their own lives: they must also turn others away from deviancy.
Because the religious elite is important for the regime’s legitimacy, the Al Saud have felt compelled to
please them on this key issue. The strength of this viewpoint comes in part from the widespread backing
given to the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s. The Saudi regime actively backed this struggle and it
encouraged other Saudis to provide financial support. It also praised many of the Saudis who fought in
Afghanistan, while more extreme elements of Saudi society lionized them. Thus, individual participation
in jihad was widely viewed as admirable. Support for al-Qa’ida itself appears strong in much of the
Kingdom. Indeed, the Interior Minister Prince Nayif himself declared that “we find in our country those
who sympathize with them,” an unusually candid reference from a regime that often denies any
domestic problems whatsoever.27 Saudis comprise one of the top nationalities within al-Qa’ida. The
carnage of the September 11 attacks appear to have had little impact, as donations to al-Qa’ida
reportedly increased after the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan began.28 Many of the organization’s
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arguments are widely accepted. Not only is U.S. support for Israel and intervention in Iraq condemned,
but many Saudis believe that in general the United States seeks to oppress and humiliate Muslims and
that many unpopular regime policies are done at Washington’s behest. A leading U.S. observer of the
Kingdom, F. Gregory Gause III, contends that “any elections in Saudi Arabia would now be won by
people closer to bin Laden’s point of view than to that of liberal democrats.” 29
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Decouple Sanctions CP
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1NC
Decoupling sanctions from the list provides a truer picture of state terror and allow for
individual tailored policies
Pillar, veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a member of the Center for
Peace and Security Studies, 2001
[Paul R. Pillar, 1/1/2001, “Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy”, Brookings Institution Press, p. 172, chip]
Meanwhile, State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Michael Sheehan
has pushed the sound concept that the
list of state sponsors of terrorism ought to be neither frozen nor held hostage to other issues. For
example, he told people on Capitol Hill that "if you have a problem with Cuba on human rights, get your own sanctions, don't use mine."14
The annual report on international terrorism that his office released in April 2000 had promising
language about the possible removal of states from the list of sponsors, which it described as "a primary focus of
U.S. counterterrorist policy." The report declared that "if a state sponsor meets the criteria for being dropped from the terrorism list, it will be
removed—notwithstanding other differences we may have with a country's other policies and actions."55 Fulfilling that promise will require
overcoming the obstacles to change mentioned above, as well as more specific domestic political impediments addressed in the next chapter.
The obstacles will be present to some extent with any system of designating supporters of terrorism; there will always be opposition to any
positive gesture toward anyone or anything ever labeled as "terrorist." The
designation of state sponsors would become a
more flexible and useful tool, however, if it were decoupled from the sanctions that currently are
automatically attached to it 3* Such a revised system of designation would maintain the advantages of
having an official list of state sponsors of terrorism (parallel to the advantages of designating FTOs): it would sustain
attention to the problem of terrorism, help to bring counterterrorist considerations to bear in foreign
policy decisions, and serve as a frame of reference in discussing counterterrorism with foreign
counterparts. It would also continue to be a mark of opprobrium that, coming from the world's leading power, would be
something worth avoiding even without material consequences directly linked to it. Detaching the designation
from the sanctions would lessen the most stultifying aspects of the current system. The list of state sponsors could be a truer
picture of actual terrorist-supportive behavior because decisions about listing would not be
surrogates for decisions about imposing sanctions. The complications that would arise from sanctions would no longer
deter the United States from calling any state, even an otherwise friendly one, to account for such behavior. A reluctance, based on other
grounds, not to confer rewards on a listed state would no longer deter the United States from removing the designation of state sponsor if the
state's reformed policies warrant it. A more honest and credible list would be a more useful frame of reference in coordinating counterterrorist
policies with allies. Most important, decoupling
would recognize the need to tailor policies to the individual
circumstances of each case. The current arsenal of sanctions could be available for use as a matter of executive discretion, but
they would not be applied in blanket fashion and should not be applied without a careful assessment
that particular sanctions were well- suited to the individual case. With or without the reform suggested, U.S.
policy toward each state sponsor needs to take account of all U.S. concerns—terrorism and other issues—in a
troubled bilateral relationship, as well as the prospects for change (in policies or leadership) in the target state and all of the circumstances that
make certain tools and strategies more, or less, promising in the case at hand. The positive incentives associated with strategies of engagement
need to be considered as much as the negative incentives of sanctions and isolation. Overall there
are almost certainly grounds
for more engagement with the states designated as state sponsors of terrorism than has occurred so
far.17 "Overall," however, matters less than individual cases. Sometimes the impetus for engagement will come mainly
from changes in the state's terrorist-related behavior; sometimes it will come from other
considerations.
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Executive Waivers CP
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Obama Can Waive Sanctions
Obama can unilaterally authorize a wide range of transactions
Jake Colvin, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, 2009
[Jake Colvin “The Case for Business,” “9 Ways for the US to Talk to Cuba and for Cuba to Talk to the US”,
Center for Democracy in the Americas, http://www.scribd.com/doc/10323598/9-Ways-for-US-to-Talkto-Cuba-and-for-Cuba-to-Talk-to-US#download, accessed 7/10/13, chip]
It is important to note that President Obama has the authority to alter these trade rules via the
licensing authority contained in the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, which state that the President
may authorize transactions with Cuba “by means of regulations, rulings, instructions, licenses, or
otherwise.” Liberalizing trade and related transactions — whether to allow imports of some Cuban
products like agricultural goods or more exports of American — would not require an Act of Congress.
The president can remove sanctions independently of removing them from the list
Meacham, director of the CSIS Americas Program, 2009
(Carl Meacham, director of the CSIS Americas Program, 2009, “Changing Cuba Policy -- in the United
States National Interest:¶ Staff Trip Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States
Senate”, P. 19, JF)
The President has authority to remove Cuba from various terrorist lists in U.S. law. Under Section 40A of the Arms
Export Con-¶ trol Act (P.L. 90-629; 22 U.S.C. 2781), the Secretary of State¶ makes an annual determination listing those countries that arc not¶
cooperating fully with U.S. antiterrorism efforts. Being
on the list¶ prohibits the export of defense articles and
defense services, but¶ the President may waive the sanction if he determines that the¶ transaction is
important to the national interests of the United¶ States. Cuba was added to the State Department's list of states¶
sponsoring international terrorism in 1982 pursuant to Section 6ij)¶ of the Export Administration Act 'P.L. 96-72). Exports of dual-use¶ good and
services require a license to any country identified as a¶ state supporter of terrorism. Being listed under Section 6(j) also¶ triggers other laws
that limit economic transactions. Pursuant to¶ provisions in the Act, the President may remove a country from the¶ list in two ways. The first
option is to submit a report to Congress¶ certifying, before the removal would take effect, that: (1) there has¶ been a fundamental change in
the leadership and policies of the¶ government; (2) the government is not supporting acts of inter-¶ national terrorism; and (3) the government
has provided assur-¶ ances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the¶ future. The second option is to submit a report at least
45 days be-¶ fore the removal of the country from the list certifying that: ID the¶ government has not provided any support for international
ter-¶ rorism during the preceding six-month period, and 121 that the gov-¶ ernment has provided assurances that it will not support acts of¶
international terrorism in the future.
Obama can unilaterally lift elements of the embargo- there is no legislation stopping
him
Mowry, Senior Counsel at Xerox Corporation, 1999
[David Mowry, “Lifting The Embargo Against Cuba Using Vietnam As A Model: A Policy Paper For
Modernity”, Brooklyn Law School, 25 Brooklyn J. Int'l L. 229, lexis, chip]
To begin, the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) does not appear to prohibit a President to unilaterally lift
the embargo. The FAA of 1961 was enacted by Congress and gave the President specific authority to
impose a trade embargo against Cuba, and like the TWEA, it follows that the President could
unilaterally lift any measures under the FAA. n195 However, the legislation, when examined closely,
shows that the Congress intended for the United States to deny assistance to any countries which
remained under Communist rule. n196 This would seem to indicate that the President would, at least,
have to make a report to Congress demonstrating that Cuba had taken measures to hold elections with
opportunity for participation by other political parties. The Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (CDA) was
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enacted by Congress to promote a "peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba." n197 The CDA covers
"limitations on trade with countries that: (i) receive assistance from the former Soviet Union (such as
Cuba); and (ii) trade with Cuba (in the form of foreign subsidiaries)." n198 There is a "two-track" policy
underlying it. n199 One track consists of the sanctions against Cuba. The other track, reminiscent of
Bush's Vietnam "road-map," is the U.S. resolve to assist Cuba if it decides to take on a democratic form
of government. n200 There are sections of the CDA that require the President to report to Congress
that Cuba has met the conditions of the Act. n201 The Congress would need to receive notice of the
President's intentions to lift the sanctions under it. n202 However, there is no provision in the CDA
that Congress could countermand the President if there was a disagreement. n203 [*258] Finally, the
most punitive measure regarding the Cuban embargo is LIBERTAD. n204 LIBERTAD is based on punitive
measures against foreign investors who "traffic" in expropriated property located in Cuba. n205 The
measures include the exclusion from the United States of foreign investors who "participate in the
trafficking." n206 The trafficking is defined as the purchase of property from Cuba that Castro has
confiscated in the past thirty-eight years. n207 To countermand the measures set forth in LIBERTAD, the
President would need to determine that Cuba has a transition government in place, and then report
to the Congress on his determination before the Act could be repealed. n208 Following a
determination by the President that all statutory requirements have been met, an executive order
could be issued instructing all the executive departments and agencies currently enforcing the
embargo to begin termination measures. n209 The obstacles that prevent a President from lifting the
embargo against Cuba arbitrarily would appear to be no more than a facade of legislation. n210 If the
President determines that it is prudent for the United States to once again open trade relations with
Cuba, then the President may, after the appropriate reports to Congress, lift the embargo. n211 Of
course the American Congress has the power to override a Presidential decree by a two-thirds majority,
and it seems that no President would take such a politically volatile step without extensive
consultation with, and acquiescence of, Congressional leadership. n212 Given the normalization of
relations with the Communist leadership of Vietnam, America's reasons for imposing the embargo
against Cuba can no longer be said to hinge on the Communist ideology of Cuba's leadership. Rather,
[*259] the final issue yet to be resolved, or discussed by the United States and Cuba, surrounds the
property claims resulting from the expropriation of property during the Castro revolution.
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Solves Oil Spills
Obama can unilaterally direct the coast guard and federal departments to clean up
Cuban oil spills
Marsie-Hazen, Howard University Fellow at Environmental Defense Fund, 2012
[Rahel Marsie-Hazen, 9/11/12, “Bridging the Gulf Report: Preparing for Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration
in Cuba”, ED Fish, http://blogs.edf.org/edfish/2012/09/11/bridging-the-gulf-report-preparing-foroffshore-oil-and-gas-exploration-in-cuba/, accessed 7/10/13, chip
If a major oil spill were to occur in Cuban waters anytime soon, the U.S. Coast Guard-as incident
commander-would be able to marshal the resources needed to address oil pollution after it enters our
waters. The agency has neither the authority nor the mandate, however, to support response and
clean-up activities in Cuban waters. Furthermore, the Cuban government would be hamstrung in its
ability to solicit direct help from private sector oil spill response companies in the United States.
Currently, only a few American companies are licensed by the U.S. government to work in Cuba (actual
names and numbers of license holders are not a matter of public record). The Obama Administration
could solve this problem by directing the Treasury Department to adopt a new category of general
licenses to allow U.S. individuals from qualified oil services and equipment companies to travel to
Cuba and provide technical expertise in the event of an oil disaster. The Administration should also
direct the Commerce Department to pre-approve licenses for the temporary export of U.S.
equipment, vessels, and technology to Cuba for use during a significant oil spill. The U.S. and Cuba
have laid an unprecedented foundation for cooperation on offshore oil safety and environmental
protection. They should continue their talks in earnest and produce a written agreement on joint
planning, preparedness and response as soon as possible.
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Remove Sudan CP
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Doesn’t sponsor terrorism/Should be Removed
Sudan’s placement on the list was politicized and impedes efforts at reconstruction
BBC ‘9
(7/31 , Cites Scott Gration- former Major General of the Air Force and policy advisor to Obama, worked
in special envoy to Sudan and served as ambassador of Kenya
“Envoy queries Sudan terror status” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8177573.stm, Accessed 7/7/13, DG)
Sudan envoy Scott Gration also said the US would have to "unwind" sanctions imposed as a result of
that status. A Sudanese official welcomed what he called "positive signals" from the US. The comments
came amid a debate in the US about policy over Darfur, where the UN says some 300,000 people have
died in the six years of conflict. The US is also trying to assist Sudan in implementing a 2005 peace
agreement that ended two decades of civil war between the north and south of the country. Talking to
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr Gration said the situation in Darfur had improved and that
sanctions were now hindering reconstruction efforts for South Sudan, citing bans on road building and
computer equipment. The BBC's James Copnall in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, says there have
been signs that the previously dire relationship between the two countries has been improving recently.
'Political decision' Mr Gration said keeping Sudan on a terrorism blacklist was "a political decision,"
and there was no intelligence to support including Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism. "There's
significant difference between what happened in 2004 and 2003, which we characterized as a
genocide, and what is happening today," he said. "At some point, we're going to have to unwind some
of these sanctions so we can do the very things we need to do." Sudan's ambassador to the UN AbdulMahmoud Abdul-Halim was quoted by the state news agency Suna as saying his country "appreciated
the positive signals". He condemned US sanctions and called for a new relationship "based on respect of
Sudan's choices" and in "the interest of the two nations".
Sudan has empirically been a victim of US state terrorism
Astill, reporter for the Guardian, ’01
(James Still, 10/1, The Guardian, “Strike one”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/02/afghanistan.terrorism3, Accessed 7/7/13, -DG)
The first thing Amin Mohamed knew about America's last war on international terrorism was when
the roof caved in. "Allah Akbar! It's the end of the world!" he screamed as 14 cruise missiles landed
next door to the sweet factory he was guarding. The 40-year-old ran with a broken leg for three miles
to the Nile, before realising that al-Shifa, Sudan's main pharmaceutical factory, was the only building
that had been hit. "The walls just disappeared," he says. "One moment I was lying down, listening to
the sound of planes. The next, everything was smoke and fire. I didn't know there were such
weapons." Three years on, the sweet factory has a new roof and Amin's leg has mended. Fadil Reheima,
also on duty that night, squats nodding and smiling beside him. Fadil, 32, cannot tell me what he
remembers, however, because he has been deaf and dumb since the attack. The missiles that
flattened al-Shifa were launched from a submarine in the Red Sea two weeks after 224 people were
killed by bomb blasts at the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Al-Shifa was part-owned
by Osama bin Laden, the main suspect for the attacks, and was producing nerve gas, Bill Clinton said.
Against the advice of appalled British diplomats, Tony Blair backed him to the hilt. But by the time the
first TV crews arrived in protective clothing, it was already clear that something was wrong. The
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fallout of aspirins, carpeting the sandy ground all around, gave it away. So did the fact, overlooked by
American intelligence, that the factory was privately owned, though part-financed, by a Kenya-based
development bank. "The evidence was not conclusive and was not enough to justify an act of war,"
concedes Donald Petterson, former American ambassador to Sudan. With a £35m compensation claim
working its way through the American courts, that is as much as any official will say on the record. The
evidence was supposed to consist of incriminating soil samples; they have never been produced.
Sudan's proposal that the UN should investigate was vetoed by America. And Washington is currently
trying to fight the case by pleading sovereign immunity. But shortly after filing his suit, the factory's
owner, Salah Idris, had his American bank accounts quietly unfrozen. Idris probably did have dealings
with Bin Laden. As one of Sudan's richest businessmen, it would have been difficult not to. Bin Laden
was based in Khartoum for five years, building bridges, roads and farms (and, of course, his al-Qaida
terrorist group). But he was ushered out of Sudan a good two years before al-Shifa was flattened with
such brilliant precision. Dr Idris Eltayeb, one of Sudan's handful of pharmacologists and chairman of alShifa's board, is still impressed by the mathematics of it. "To be able to pinpoint this little factory from
thousands of miles away - it's incredible," he says, walking around the mounds of rubble, left lying as it
fell, littered with thousands of vials of livestock antibiotic and strips of malaria tablets. But if Eltayeb is
alive to the absurdity of American hi-tech pitted against "a simple factory in one of the poorest
countries in the third world", he can also count the cost. Al-Shifa was one of only three medium-sized
pharmaceutical factories in Sudan, and the only one producing TB drugs - for more than 100,000
patients, at about £1 a month. Costlier imported versions are not an option for most of them - or for
their husbands, wives and children, who will have been infected since. Al-Shifa was also the only
factory making veterinary drugs in this vast, mostly pastoralist, country. Its speciality was drugs to kill
the parasites which pass from herds to herders, one of Sudan's principal causes of infant mortality.
Since the bombing, "people have gone back to doing without," says Eltayeb, with a shrug.
Sudan is wrongfully on the state sponsorship of terrorism list.
Ferrari, an attorney specializing in OFAC, 11
[Erich, August 23, Sanction Law, “Sudan Remains on List of State Sponsors for Terrorism Despite Facts
Suggesting Otherwise”, http://www.sanctionlaw.com/2011/08/23/sudan-remains-on-list-of-statesponsors-for-terrorism-despite-facts-suggesting-otherwise/, accessed 7/8, CC]
Prior to the released of this report many believed that Sudan would be released from the list of State
Sponsors of Terrorism. Unfortunately for Sudan, that was not the case. Moreover, it is unclear why
they remain on the list as the information regarding Sudan in the report does not denote any
sponsorship of terrorism and if anything shows that Sudan is working with the U.S. on a number of
counter terrorism efforts. For example, the report indicates that, “The Sudanese government has taken
steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist groups within Sudan and has worked hard to disrupt
foreign fighters’ use of Sudan as a logistics base and transit point for violent extremists going to Iraq”
and that “Sudan was generally responsive to the international community’s concerns on terrorism and
was generally supportive of international counterterrorism efforts.” Regardless, the report noted,
“elements of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, including al-Qa’ida inspired terrorists,
remained in Sudan, as gaps remained in the Sudanese government’s knowledge of and ability to identify
and capture these individuals as well as prevent them from exploiting the territory for smuggling
activities.” In other words, the State Department maintains Sudan on the list of State Sponsors of
Terrorism because although they are cooperating and working hard to counter terrorist efforts, they do
not have sufficient ability to identify and capture terrorists that remain in their country. I am not a
terrorist expert by any stretch of the imagination, however, that sounds less like sponsorship and more
like ineptitude. I am not entirely clear how Sudan’s inability to capture terrorists in their country
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correlates to their sponsorship of such terrorists. I would be happy to hear from anyone who can
maybe clear this up for me.
Sudan is not a state sponsor of terror.
Goodenough, editor of CNS news, 11
[Patrick, 2-8-11, CNS News, “Obama Administration Links Sudan’s Removal From Terror-Sponsor List to
Non-Terror-Related Issue”, http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-administration-links-sudan-sremoval-terror-sponsor-list-non-terror-related-issue#sthash.pbr3r3Bp.dpuf, accessed 7-7, CC]
(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration has started the process of removing Sudan from the shrinking
list of countries designated as state-sponsors of terrorism, linking the move directly to Khartoum’s full
implementation of a peace agreement that ended the long civil war between the north and south.¶
Following the finalization of a referendum on independence for southern Sudan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday the process of
delisting Khartoum would now begin with the initiation of a review.¶ In line with statutory requirements, the
president will have to
certify to Congress that Sudan has not provided any support for international terrorism during the
preceding six-month period. A 45-day notice period is required.¶ Sudan also will have to provide assurances that
it will not support terrorism in the future.¶ But apart from those legal criteria for any country to be taken off the terrorsponsor list, President Obama last November also tied the move to an issue unrelated to support for international terrorism – Sudan’s
compliance with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the long and brutal civil war between the Islamist-ruled,
mostly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian and animist south.¶ Both the president and Clinton on Monday reiterated that linkage.¶
“For
those who meet all of their [CPA] obligations, there is a path to greater prosperity and normal
relations with the United States, including examining Sudan’s designation as a state sponsor of
terrorism,” Obama said in a statement.¶ For her part, Clinton said that in order to be taken off the list, Sudan must both meet the legal
requirements relating to international terrorism and fully implement the CPA, including reaching a political solution with the south on the
future of the disputed oil-rich Abyei region.¶ President Omar Al-Bashir talks shortly before the final declaration of the result of the Sudanese
referendum at the Republican Palace in Khartoum on Monday, Feb. 7, 2011. (AP Photo/Abd Raouf)¶ The Jan. 9 referendum on possible
secession of the south was a key element of the CPA. According to official results released Monday more than 98 percent of ballots cast were in
favor of independence.¶ Linking removal from the terror-sponsor list with issues not related to international terrorism has been controversial in
the past.¶ When in 2008 the Bush administration was reported to be considering offering to remove Khartoum from the list in exchange for
regime concessions on the Darfur conflict raging at the time, then presidential candidate Sen. Obama called the move “reckless and cynical.”¶
“[N]o country should be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism for any reason other than the existence of verifiable proof that the
government in question does not support terrorist organizations,” Obama said in a statement that April.¶ Asked
at a briefing
Monday what the referendum had to do with not sponsoring terrorism, State Department spokesman
Philip Crowley replied, “In our dialogue with the government of Sudan, where Sudan has made clear it
wants more normal relations with the United States, this is one of the issues that is an issue between
our two countries.”
Sudan is no longer sponsoring terrorism and wants to be removed from the terrorism
list.
Klug, editor for AP, 9
[Foster, 7-30-9, Huffington Post, “Sudan Not A State Sponsor Of Terrorism: Obama Sudan Envoy”,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/31/sudan-not-a-state-sponsor_n_248505.html, accessed 7-7,
CC]
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's special envoy to Sudan said Thursday that there is no
evidence to back up the U.S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.¶ Scott Gration told
lawmakers at a Senate hearing that the U.S. sanctions linked to that designation hinder his and others'
work to rebuild the war-torn African country's infrastructure and to help people suffering in camps. ¶
"It's a political decision," Gration said of the terror designation.¶ Gration's comments underscored an
ongoing debate in the Obama administration about how to deal with the government in Khartoum
about Darfur, where up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced, and how to keep
a separate conflict between the country's north and south from re-igniting.¶ Gration recently irked
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Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, when he said the situation in Darfur was no longer
a "genocide" but reflected the "remnants of genocide."¶ He did not back away from those comments
Thursday. "There's significant difference between what happened in 2004 and 2003, which we
characterized as a genocide, and what is happening today."¶ The level of violence in Darfur, Gration
said, is not coordinated and is not as bad as in some other areas of the country, though he added that
it "must end." He called the disagreement with Rice an "honest debate" over a "definitional issue."¶
"Right now, we're focusing on saving lives," he said. "It really doesn't matter what we call it, in my view;
what matters is that we have people living in dire, desperate conditions."¶ Sudan is pushing for stronger
diplomatic ties with the United States, the lifting of sanctions and its removal from the U.S. list of
states said to sponsor terrorism.¶ Gration says that the Khartoum government has been helpful in
stopping the flow of weapons and in dealing with key members of the terror group al-Qaida.¶
Sudan has been a cooperative counterterrorism partner.
Sudan tribute 12
[July 31, “US says Sudan a ’cooperative counterterrorism partner’ but keeps on terror list”,
http://www.sudantribune.com/U-S-says-Sudan-a-cooperative,43420, accessed 7-7, CC]
July 31, 2012 (WASHINGTON) – The United States praised the cooperation of Sudan in countering
terrorism during 2011, but fell short of clearing the East African nation from the terrorism sponsoring
label it has held since 1993.¶ Washington’s annual assessment of global terrorism submitted to
congress, as required by law, that was released today, described Khartoum as a "cooperative
counterterrorism partner" of the US¶ According to the report, the Sudanese government continued to
work last year on limiting activities of Al-Qaeda inspired groups operating in Sudan, while also
disrupting foreign fighters’ use of Sudan as a "logistics base and transit point for violent extremists going
to Iraq and Afghanistan". But as in previous annual reports, the US said that "gaps" remained in Sudan’s
knowledge of and ability to identify and capture the extremists. "There was some evidence to suggest
that former participants in the Iraqi insurgency have returned to Sudan and are in a position to use their
expertise to conduct attacks within Sudan or to pass on their knowledge. There was also evidence that
Sudanese extremists participated in terrorist activities in Somalia, activities that the Government of
Sudan has also reportedly attempted to disrupt,". Washington also noted visits to Khartoum by top
leaders of the Palestinian Islamic militant Hamas group which now controls the Gaza strip and their
meeting with senior Sudanese officials including president Omer Hassan al-Bashir. It also highlighted
Sudan’s relationship with Iran which is also designated by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism. The US
report also acknowledged that Sudan has made "significant progress" in the establishment and
development of its Anti-Money Laundering/Counterterrorist Finance regime. “Toward the end of
2011, Sudan introduced an inspection program for banks. Sudan has not yet implemented adequate
procedures for identifying and freezing terrorist assets, or ensured an effective supervisory program for
AML/CTF compliance. Sudan’s Financial Intelligence Unit is not fully functional".
Sudan is not sponsoring terrorism.
OFFICE OF THE COORDINATOR FOR COUNTERTERRORISM 11
[8-18-11, U.S. Department of State, “Chapter 3: State Sponsors of Terrorism”,
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2010/170260.htm, accessed 7/7, CC]
Overview: Designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1993, Sudan remained a cooperative partner
in global counterterrorism efforts against al-Qa’ida (AQ) in 2010. During the past year, the
Government of Sudan worked actively to counter AQ operations that posed a potential threat to U.S.
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interests and personnel in Sudan. Sudanese officials have indicated that they viewed continued
cooperation with the United States as important and recognized the potential benefits of U.S. training
and information-sharing.¶ 2010 Terrorist Incidents: The Sudanese government has taken steps to limit
the activities of foreign terrorist groups within Sudan and has worked hard to disrupt foreign fighters’
use of Sudan as a logistics base and transit point for violent extremists going to Iraq. Nonetheless,
elements of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations, including al-Qa’ida-inspired terrorists, remained
in Sudan, as gaps remained in the Sudanese government’s knowledge of and ability to identify and
capture these individuals as well as prevent them from exploiting the territory for smuggling activities.
Some evidence suggested that individuals who actively participated in the Iraqi insurgency have
returned to Sudan, and may be in a position to use their expertise to conduct attacks within Sudan or to
pass on their knowledge. Sudanese officials continued to view Hamas members as representatives of
the Palestinian Authority. Hamas members conducted fundraising in Sudan, and Palestine Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) maintained a presence in Sudan.¶ The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) continued to operate in the
region, though there was no reliable information that corroborated allegations that the Government
of Sudan provided support to the LRA. Operating in small cells, the LRA carried out attacks in areas
where the borders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, and Southern
Sudan intersect. The UN estimated that in 2010, LRA attacks displaced 25,000 southern Sudanese. In
October, the African Union (AU) announced that Uganda, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo
and the Central African Republic will form an AU-backed joint brigade to pursue the LRA.¶ Legislation and
Law Enforcement: On June 11, four Sudanese men sentenced to death for the January 1, 2008, killing
of two U.S. Embassy staff members escaped from Khartoum's maximum security Kober prison. One
police officer was reportedly killed and another was injured in an exchange of fire at a checkpoint
following the breakout. Police subsequently intercepted the get-away car and arrested the driver, but
the four fugitives escaped on foot. On June 22, Sudanese authorities confirmed that one of the four
convicts was recaptured. The whereabouts of the other three convicts remained unknown at year’s end.
The Sudanese government cooperated with the United States in efforts to bring the four to justice.¶
Countering Terrorist Finance: The Central Bank of Sudan and its financial intelligence unit circulated to
financial institutions a list of individuals and entities that have been included on the UN 1267 al-Qa’ida
and Taliban sanctions committee's Consolidated List. Through increasing cooperation with the Financial
Action Task Force (FATF), Sudan took steps in 2010 to meet international standards in combating
money laundering and terrorist financing. The most significant achievement was passage of the
Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Act of 2010, approved by the Council of Ministers in
January 2010 and ratified by Parliament in June 2010. Sudan continued its cooperation with the U.S.
government in investigating financial crimes related to terrorism. ¶ Regional and International
Cooperation: Sudanese officials regularly discussed counterterrorism issues with U.S. counterparts.
Sudan was generally responsive to the international community’s concerns on terrorism and was
generally supportive of international counterterrorism efforts.
Sudan’s listing on the terrorism list is political and unjustified.
Arab News 12
[November 3, “Sudan says US reneged on promise to lift curbs”, http://www.arabnews.com/sudan-saysus-reneged-promise-lift-curbs, accessed 7/7, CC]
KHARTOUM: Sudan has accused the US of reneging on commitments to remove sanctions, after
Washington extended the 15-year-old trade restrictions.¶ Then-president Bill Clinton imposed the
embargo in 1997 over Sudan’s support for international terrorism, efforts to destabilize neighboring
governments, and human rights violations.¶ President Barack Obama has approved the sanctions for
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another year, saying the actions of the Sudanese government “continue to pose an unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”¶ This year’s
sanctions renewal came one week after Sudan accused Israel of sending four radar-evading aircraft to
strike a military factory, which exploded and burned in the heart of Khartoum at midnight on Oct. 23.¶
Sudan’s Foreign Ministry called the US sanctions “basically political,” with the aim of hindering the
country’s development. It said the embargo benefits armed rebel groups while violating international
law.¶ “Many times the American administration agreed that Sudan is meeting its commitments but
they are always retreating from their promises to remove the sanctions,” the ministry said in a
statement.¶ “The Sudanese government repeats its strong rejection of the sanctions renewal and
strongly condemns the behavior of the American administration.”¶ From 1991 to 1996 Sudan hosted AlQaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who was killed in Pakistan by US Navy SEALS last year.¶ The US State
Department continues to list Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism but, in a July report, said Khartoum
was “a cooperative counterterrorism partner” last year.¶ Except for Hamas, the government “does not
openly support the presence of terrorist elements within its borders,” the report said.
Sudan should be removed from the terrorism list – has met all of the requirements.
Ahmed, Professor @ Omdurman Islamic University, 11
[Dr. Osama Ahmed Idrous, 9/10, Sudan Times, “Why Does Sudan Remain in The List of Terror?”,
http://news.sudanvisiondaily.com/details.html?rsnpid=200449, accessed 7/8, CC]
To quote from Suzanne Goldenberg[1]: "Khartoum is probably the only government in the Arab League
that has¶ contributed in a major way to the protection of US forces and citizens in Iraq". Nevertheless,
since 1993, Sudan¶ annually appears in the United States Department of State list of State Sponsors
of Terrorism or¶ Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Presence on the list bars a country from receiving U.S.
arms exports, controls sales of¶ items with military and civilian applications, limits U.S. aid and requires
Washington to vote against loans to the country¶ from international financial institutions.¶ Definitely,
Sudanese-American relations are far more complex than to be analyzed by security cooperation¶ alone.
However, the contradictions that these relations show in this field is astonishingly amazing. The¶
Department of State report in 2010 indicates that, “The Sudanese government has taken steps to limit
the¶ activities of foreign terrorist groups within Sudan and has worked hard to disrupt foreign
fighters’ use of¶ Sudan as a logistics base and transit point for violent extremists going to Iraq” and
that “Sudan was¶ generally responsive to the international community’s concerns on terrorism and
was generally supportive¶ of international counterterrorism efforts”.¶ Many reports has confirmed
that Sudanese government tried repeatedly to turn over Bin Laden to either the Saudis or¶ the U.S.
Eventually, Sudan forced Bin Laden to move to Afghanistan in 1996, and offered cooperation on¶
counter-terrorism efforts with the White House and the FBI. Gestures from Khartoum were rebuffed
even¶ as it offered its services against an emerging al-Qaida. In 1999, Sudan again signaled its willingness
to¶ cooperate with global counterterrorism measures. The Sudan government signed the International
Convention for the¶ Suppression of Financing of Terrorism and ratified the International Convention
for the Suppression of Terrorist¶ Bombing in 2000. These moves prompted the UN Security Council to
lift its terrorism-related sanctions against¶ Khartoum in 2001.Sudan has also worked with neighboring
states to combat terrorism in the region. In¶ 2003, it ratified the African Union’s Convention on the
Prevention and Combating of Terrorism and had¶ signed additional counterterrorism agreements with
Algeria, Yemen, and Ethiopia.¶ Only during the year 2000 that the United States and Sudan entered
into a counterterrorism dialogue.¶ Sudan was emerging as a surprisingly valuable ally in the global
war on terror. Intelligence cooperation has¶ produced significant results ranging from information
sharing, suspects detention and interrogation, evidence¶ recovery, to extremists expulsion and
disruption of foreign fighters' use of Sudan as a logistics base and transit¶ point. Reports also noted
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that Sudan took steps to meet international standards in combating money laundering¶ and terrorist
financing .A senior State Department official commended that Sudan has "given us specific¶
information that is ... important, functional and current". These efforts have prompted the United
States¶ to commend Sudan for its counterterrorism practices. In 2007, the U.S. State Department called
Sudan a “strong¶ partner in the War on Terror,” and praised Sudan for aggressively pursuing terrorist
operations that threatened U.S.¶ interests.¶ In light of this progress, Sudan has been intensively lobbying
the US so it can be removed from the terrorism list.¶ Many officials in the ruling party feel that they
alienated their Islamic base by cooperating with Washington in¶ areas like Somalia and Iraq without
getting anything in return. The Obama administration announced earlier this¶ year that it initiated the
process of delisting Sudan to reward Khartoum for facilitating the South's referendum¶ and later
recognizing its results. A key condition for removing Khartoum from the US blacklist is that it¶ does
not "directly or indirectly" support terror groups. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a separate
statement,¶ said that the "Removal of the State Sponsor of Terrorism designation will take place if and
when Sudan meets all¶ criteria spelled out in US law," she said. The de-listing process however, appears
to have been stalled by reasons¶ other than terrorism support. Strange enough, the US government
cited clashes that erupted in South Kordofan¶ between the Sudanese army and Sudan People Liberation
Army (SPLA) units as well Khartoum's military takeover of Abyei¶ which is a contested oil-rich region that
lies on the North-South borders as an excuse to keep Sudan in the list of¶ condemned. ¶ The U.S. special
envoy Scott Gration said at a Congress hearing in 2009 that the terrorism designation for Sudan is¶ no
longer valid, and called it a "political decision". Many specialists questioned the US government offer to
delist¶ Sudan in the first place, stressing that the only legitimate basis for delisting Sudan would be if it
has ended its involvement in terrorism, not as a quid pro quo for holding the referendum. Many
American journalists wonder whether the US
government keep countries on the list because they're genuinely sponsors of terrorism, or because
the administration want¶ to punish these governments for other reasons?. ¶ This analysis is the tip of
the iceberg of contradictions that govern Sudanese-American relations not only in the¶ security field but
in other aspects too. A closer reading will reveal that Sudan has fulfilled its political and other¶
obligations, working hard towards achieving peace and stability regionally and within its borders. At
the same time,¶ the country faces daily disappointment from broken American promises with regard
to support and normalization¶ of relations, especially after American brokered peace deals in Nifasha
and Abuja. The upcoming papers will discuss these¶ matters in details.
Sudan should be delisted- US has shifted the goalposts
Sudan Tribune ‘12
(8/1, “US says Sudan a ’cooperative counterterrorism partner’ but keeps on terror list”
http://www.sudantribune.com/U-S-says-Sudan-a-cooperative,43420, Accessed 7/7/13-DG)
The inclusion of Sudan in the list this year comes as no surprise given the U.S. administration’s
insistence that Khartoum make progress in resolving its internal conflicts. The U.S. also said it wants
Sudan to resolve outstanding post-secession issues with South Sudan which have been dragging on for
years with no breakthrough. Sudanese officials accuse Washington of raising the bar by attaching
additional conditions. Last year the US administration announced that it initiated the process of
delisting Sudan to reward it for facilitating South Sudan’s referendum and later recognizing its results.
But new crisis spots that were created in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile states appeared to have
put the process on hold. Last week, the Sudanese foreign minister, Ali Karti, summoned the top US
diplomat in the country to protest at Washington’s policy towards Sudan over the last two decades.
Karti warned that the US will not be able to extract concessions from Sudan through pressure. The US
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added Sudan to its state terror list in 1993, accusing Khartoum of harboring local and international
militants including, for a time, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Countries on the list of state sponsors
of terrorism cannot receive aid or buy weapons from the US and face a raft of restrictions on financial
and other dealings. The list currently includes Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Over the last decade, the
Sudanese government have fostered strong and intimate counterterrorism relations with the US,
particularly after the September 11 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. The United States has so
far taken some small initial steps to lift export controls on agricultural machinery to help Sudan’s
struggling food sector, but has stressed that further progress in normalizing ties is contingent on
Khartoum’s behavior.
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A2 Darfur
Sudan has met all the standards to be removed from the SST – takes into account
Darfur.
Waller, staff officer in the United States Army National Guard, 11
[Jason, July 6, small wars journal, “The Terrorist Climate of Sudan¶ Forecasting Effects of the Southern
Secession”, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-terrorist-climate-of-sudan, accessed 7/8, CC]
Sudan has made significant progress in limiting the terrorist presence inside its borders, despite
contradictory pressures in the government and conflicts within the country (Shinn, 62). In 2004, the
United States removed Sudan from a list of countries considered non-cooperative in the Global War
on Terror; they remain on the state sponsor of terrorism list (Dagne, CRS-14). According to the
Department of State, “Sudanese officials have indicated that they view their continued cooperation
with the U.S. government as important and recognize the potential benefits of U.S. training and
information-sharing” (Country Reports on Terrorism 2009). With the exception of Hamas, which the
United Nations does not consider a terrorist organization, the government of Sudan no longer
supports the presence of extremist elements within the country.¶ The most significant development
in Sudan’s status with the United States took place on 9 July 2011, when the southern portion of the
country seceded to become South Sudan. Following an overwhelming ballot in January where the
south voted for independence, U.S. President Barak Obama stated that if the Khartoum government
abides by the south’s decision then the United States will begin to remove the country from the state
sponsors of terrorism list (Landler). This is noteworthy also because the conflict in Darfur is removed
from consideration in the overall decision. Previously, a resolution in Darfur was declared by the
administration to be a necessary part in removing Sudan from the list (Sen). Separate economic
sanctions directly related to Darfur, however, remain in place. Although the Sudanese government
formally recognized the independence of South Sudan, there is still contention over the oil-rich border
provinces (Sen).
Sudan is trying to prevent Darfur conflict.
Basheri, Sudan Vision reporter, 13
[Shadia, 2-27, Sudan Vision, “Sudan Committed to Counter Money Laundering, Financing Terrorism”,
http://news.sudanvisiondaily.com/details.html?rsnpid=219969, accessed 7/8, CC]
Khartoum – The Minister of Finance and National Economy, Ali Mahmoud, has confirmed the ministry's
eagerness to combat money laundering and financing terrorism, particularly money laundering that
supports rebels in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. “These groups are outlaws and terrorists
which receive funding from South Sudan and other countries,” he said. ¶ Mahmoud affirmed the
ministry's continued support for the administrative committee to combat money laundering and the
funding of terrorism in all forms. He called for the mechanism to be strengthened with laws to carry
out its task. ¶ The Minister of Finance made the remarks at a meeting with a delegation from the
administrative committee, headed by Esam Al-Din Abdul Gadir, president of the committee and
members. ¶ Mahmoud called for a technical committee to follow up on the work of the mechanism and
underlined the importance of a special meeting and briefing the cabinet on the mechanism’s work of
combating money laundering and financing terrorism. ¶ Meanwhile, the head of the administrative
mechanism said the Minister of Finance is the competent person tasked to supervise the state's
policies on money laundering and financing terrorism. He said Sudan is part of a regional group (the
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Middle East and North Africa) which seeks to develop standards and find ways to combat money
laundering and financing terrorism, stating that Sudan has made great strides to that end. ¶ He said the
group will hold a meeting in Khartoum in May which will be addressed by the Minister of Finance,
because Sudan is the current president of the group. He expressed hope that the conferees will come
up with recommendations to address these issues. ¶ In the same vein, the Ministry of Finance said they
are keen to review and assess the 3-year programme by considering economic developments. ¶
Mahmoud, at a meeting yesterday of the 3-year programme’s technical committee said the ministry is
trying to sustain the economy and remove all obstacles. He said the state is eager to motivate the
private sector to attract additional investments to promote economic stability.
They’re democratizing now and separate sanctions would solve any Darfur claims
Sudan Tribune ‘10
(11/7, “Obama offers Sudan’s removal from ‘terrorism sponsor’ list by July 2011”
http://www.sudantribune.com/Obama-offers-Sudan-s-removal-from,36861, Accessed 7/7/13, DG)
The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in North and Sudan people Liberation Movement (SPLM) in
South have yet to agree on contentious post-referendum arrangements for South Sudan including
border demarcation, wealth sharing, water, citizenship and national debt. All these issues are
considered extremely thorny and it is not clear what is the status of discussions between the two sides
on these items. Obama’s carrots to Khartoum may include more than just getting of the terrorism list.
On Saturday Kerry met with Sudanese minister of Finance and National Economy, Ali Mahmood
Hassanein to discuss the country’s $35.7 billion debt and ways to get a relief. Sudan state media said
that the US Senator promised the establishment of a committee comprising the Sudanese and US sides
to deliberate and arrive at a resolution to Sudan’s foreign debts. A well-placed source in Khartoum told
Sudan Tribune on Friday that Western diplomats in the capital believe that Kerry may also offer U.S.
support for deferring the arrest warrant against Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir through the
UN Security Council for one year that can be renewed indefinitely. But U.S. officials today emphasized
that separate U.S. sanctions imposed over Darfur — which Obama extended for another year on Nov.
1 — would remain until Khartoum improved conditions in the region, where the United Nations
estimates up to 300,000 people died following a revolt in 2003, they said. "Those ... sanctions remain in
place and they are the ones that have a significant effect on Sudan’s economy and on the government of
Sudan itself," said another official, who added that future steps such as debt relief and an exchange of
ambassadors would all depend upon progress in Darfur.
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Avoids Politics
Republican senators support removal.
Thai News Service 9
[July 31, “United States/Sudan: US Sudan Envoy Testifies to Congress”, lexis, 7-8, CC]
Two senators, Republicans Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson, asserted that the assistance Sudan has
provided to counter-terrorism efforts supports calls to remove that country from the U.S list of
nations designated as state sponsors of terrorism.¶ "The fact is that there is no evidence today,
despite the atrocities that we are all aware of, there is no evidence that Sudan is involved as a state
sponsor of terror. None," said Corker.¶ Gration called U.S. sanctions against Sudan "a political
decision" that hampers humanitarian and development efforts throughout the country.
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Politics Links
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Wall
The plan is contentious with Cuban-Americans and will continually be obstructed
Feinberg, former Senior Director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security
Council, 11
[Richard E., November 2011, “The International Financial Institutions and Cuba: Relations with NonMember States,” Cuba in Transition, Volume: 22, p. 44,
http://www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume22/pdfs/feinberg.pdf, date accessed
6/27/13, YGS]
What, then, accounts for the anomaly of the empty¶ Cuban seat at these international organizations?
The¶ principal answer is as simple as it is disturbing: a relatively small but well placed and hardcharging community of Cuban-American exiles. As will be explained toward the end of this section,
U.S.¶ legislation mandates the U.S. Executive Director in¶ the IFIs to oppose the admission of Cuba,
and to¶ withhold U.S. payments to the IFIs should they approve assistance to Cuba over U.S.
opposition.¶ Moreover, influential congressional representatives¶ stand ready to hold legislation or
personnel confirmations of interest to the executive branch hostage to¶ their Cuba-related concerns.
To a remarkable degree,¶ the unyielding Cuban-American lobby has bullied¶ the U.S. executive
branch and the IFI leadership into¶ submission, even as many of their economists and¶ staff
understand that excluding Cuba—or any country, for that matter—on political grounds runs¶ counter
to U.S. strategic interests and core IFI¶ norms. In U.S. debates on Cuba policy, there is no¶ equally
insistent counter-lobby to balance the hardline pro-sanctions faction.
Plan kills Obama’s political capital-Cuban Americans have massive clout
Williams, Los Angeles Times writer, 5/3/13 (Carol J. Williams, 5/3/13, “Political calculus keeps
Cuba on U.S. list of terror sponsors”, http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-cuba-usterror-list-20130502,0,2494970.story, accessed 6/24/13, KR)
Politicians who have pushed for a continued hard line against Cuba cheered their victory in getting the
Obama administration to keep Cuba on the list. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a South Florida
Republican whose efforts to isolate and punish the Castro regime have been a central plank of her
election strategy throughout her 24 years in Congress, hailed the State Department decision as
“reaffirming the threat that the Castro regime represents.”¶ Arash Aramesh, a national security analyst
at Stanford Law School, blamed the continued branding of Cuba as a terrorism sponsor on politicians
“pandering for a certain political base.” He also said President Obama and Secretary of State John F.
Kerry have failed to make a priority of removing the impediment to better relations with Cuba.¶ “As
much as I’d like to see the Castro regime gone and an open and free Cuba, it takes away from the State
Department’s credibility when they include countries on the list that aren’t even close” to threatening
Americans, Aramesh said.¶ Political considerations also factor into excluding countries from the “state
sponsor” list, he said, pointing to Pakistan as a prime example. Although Islamabad “very clearly
supports terrorist and insurgent organizations,” he said, the U.S. government has long refused to
provoke its ally in the region with the official censure.¶ The decision to retain Cuba on the list surprised
some observers of the long-contentious relationship between Havana and Washington. Since Fidel
Castro retired five years ago and handed the reins of power to his younger brother, Raul, modest
economic reforms have been tackled and the government has revoked the practice of requiring Cubans
to get “exit visas” before they could leave their country for foreign travel.¶ There was talk early in
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Obama’s first term of easing the 51-year-old embargo, and Kerry, though still in the Senate then, wrote
a commentary for the Tampa Bay Tribune in 2009 in which he deemed the security threat from Cuba “a
faint shadow.” He called then for freer travel between the two countries and an end to the U.S. policy of
isolating Cuba “that has manifestly failed for nearly 50 years.”¶ The political clout of the Cuban
American community in South Florida and more recently Havana’s refusal to release Gross have kept
any warming between the Cold War adversaries at bay.¶ It’s a matter of political priorities and tradeoffs, Aramesh said. He noted that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last year exercised
her discretion to get the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen Khalq, or MEK, removed from the
government’s list of designated terrorist organizations. That move was motivated by the hopes of some
in Congress that the group could be aided and encouraged to eventually challenge the Tehran regime.¶
“It’s a question of how much political cost you want to incur or how much political capital you want to
spend,” Aramesh said. “President Obama has decided not to reach out to Cuba, that he has more
important foreign policy battles elsewhere.”
Plan unpopular-Cuban American legislators
LDN, staff writers, 4/27/13 (Latino Daily News, 4/27/13, “Cuban-American Legislators Want Cuba
Kept on “Terror List” While North Korea Off List”, http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/latinodaily-news/details/cuban-american-legislators-want-cuba-kept-on-terror-list-while-north-korea/24133/, accessed 6/24/13, KR)
Numerous Cuban-American legislators, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, want Cuba kept on
the U.S. terror list in spite of the island nation not having sponsored recent acts of terrorism.¶ Beside
Rubio, Reps Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Joe Garcia, Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and (D-FL) Albio Sires (DNJ) are drafting a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry to insist Cuba still meets the critieria to be
labeled a sponsor of terrorism. In addition Cuban Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Robert Menendez (DNJ) have voiced support for keeping Cuba on the list.
Plan kills political capital- angers electorally important Cuban exiles and will be spun
as a victory for Castro. The link only goes one way- keeping them listed costs nothing.
Metzker, reporter @ IPS interpress service, 2013
[Jared Metzker, 6/13/13, “U.S.: CRITICS OF U.S.-CUBA POLICY DISMAYED AT ISLAND'S RE-LISTING AS
'TERROR SPONSOR'”, Interpress Service, lexis, chip]
Both Muse and Bilbao concluded that Cuba's continued presence on the State Department's terrorism
list arises less from these shaky legal justifications than from political calculations. Others have arrived
at similar conclusions for years. In 2002, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton suggested that
maintaining Cuba on the list keeps happy a certain part of the voting public in Florida - a politically
important state with a large Cuban exile population - and "it doesn't cost anything". Muse disagreed
with the latter part of that statement, however. He noted that by behaving arbitrarily in what should be
a strictly legal matter, the United States was damaging its "credibility on the issue of international
terrorism" and diminishing its "seriousness of purpose" in using the term "terrorism" in a meaningful
manner. Proponents of the status quo argue the opposite, saying that by removing Cuba the United
States would damage its credibility by effectively making a concession. Bilbao explained to IPS that
those such views focus on the "spin" of the Cuban government rather than on the actual consequences
of taking Cuba off the list, a move he believes would ultimately benefit the United States. "I think the
priority of the U.S. government should be to determine what's in its best interests," he told IPS. Muse
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went a step further, saying the list itself is a problem. He noted that even while the list includes
countries that don't deserve to be on it, proven sponsors, such as Pakistan, of international terrorism albeit those with friendly relations with the U.S. - are absent from it.
Cuban-American lobby has massive clout
Stieglitz, Research fellow at Cornell, 11 (Matthew, 2011, Cornell University, “Constructive
Engagement: The Need for a Progressive Cuban Lobby in Obama’s Washington”,
http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/Fellows2011/Stieglitz-_Final_Paper.pdf, accessed 6/26/13, KR)
Reflecting upon the Castro reign during the 20 century, two themes emerge: the prominence of the
Cuban-American community, and the actions of US presidents towards Cuba. The clout of the CubanAmerican lobby cannot be understated, as the 2000 presidential election showed us. President George
W. Bush secured his victory as president in no small part due to the Cuban-American vote, which he
and Al Gore campaign vigorously for. As such, the Gore and Bush campaigns remained relatively silent
on the Elian González case, leaving the matter to the courts so as not to risk any back lash from the
Cuban-American community. After his victory, President Bush tightened restrictions on Cuba much like
his Republican predecessors. He further restricted travel to the island for Cuban- Americans, reduced the
amount of remittances that could be sent to the island, placed Cuba on terror-watch lists after 9/11, and
maintained that Cuba was a strategic threat to national security (Erlich, 2009). Further, cultural and
academic exchanges were suspended, and many Cuban and American artists found themselves unable
to attain visas to travel between Cuba and the United States to share the rich culture of both nations. By
the time President Bush left office, the only Americans legally allowed to enter Cuba were journalists,
family members (who could only go once every three year s), and those visiting the island for religious
reasons. While President Bush’s actions were clearly a reflection of partisanship, they represented a
greater component of managing the Cuban-American electorate, lobby, and agenda. Essentially,
Congressional Cuban-American leadership maintains a stance of isolationism towards Cuba that
American presidents have not risked challenging since President Carter . Every president, regardless of
party affiliation, has had to become adept at catering to the Cuban-American lobby, and this continues
to this day. It reached its apex with Jorge Mas Canosa and CANF, but in recent years has waned slightly.
Nevertheless, the power dynamics of the Cuban-American vote have been too risky to challenge,
especially with Florida’s electoral votes hanging in the balance for every presidential election. From a
financial perspective, the campaign contributions of Cuban- Americans highlight how Cuban-American
issues will not be ignored, and have kept them in the limelight despite other, more pressing, foreign
policy debates in recent years. Historically, the Cuba lobby could use Cold War tactics of distaste for
communism to drive American inaction towards the island. Recently, this has shifted towards heavily
criticizing Cuba for its deplorable human rights record, which has been a legitimate complaint since the
1960s. In recent years, Cuba has imprisoned political activists, often without cause, which raised
awareness for Cuba’s government-sponsored infringements upon civil rights in the form of limited or
non-existent due process and freedom of speech is (Erickson, 2009). These contemporary issues are
paramount to any future dialogue with Cuba, and transcend partisan politics in Washington.
th
Obama will push and hardline Cuban-American backlash outweighs progressive
influence
Stieglitz, Research fellow at Cornell, 11 (Matthew, 2011, Cornell University, “Constructive
Engagement: The Need for a Progressive Cuban Lobby in Obama’s Washington”,
http://www.thepresidency.org/storage/Fellows2011/Stieglitz-_Final_Paper.pdf, accessed 6/26/13, KR)
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Normalization of relations with Cuba may come as a result of younger Cuban-Americans, who along with
recent arrivals from Cuba prefer a policy of engagement with Cuba (Eckstein & Barbería , 2002). This is
a stark contrast from the older generation, which is problematic because the older generation has
maintained a well-funded and well-planned approach to controlling the Cuba debate. This makes
President Obama the best candidate for reform given his predisposition to bipartisan collaboration.
Illustrating this are the campaign promises to address Cuba that President Obama made prior to his
election, and some of the issues he has addressed through policy changes and discourse during his
administration. Moving forward, th ere will be opportunities to bring conservative and liberal CubanAmericans in to the discussions regarding the future of US-Cuba relations, the only problem being the
way in which this is accomplished. To date, the Obama Administration has taken some steps to 11
constructively engage Cuba, but there still remains room for the engagement of progressive CubanAmericans on the issue.
Plan unpopular-Cuba lobby
Goldberg, Bloomberg writer, 12 (Jeffrey, 1/16/12, Bloomberg,
“Don’t Lump Cuba With Iran on U.S. Terror List: Jeffrey Goldberg”,
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-17/don-t-lump-cuba-with-iran-on-terror-list-commentaryby-jeffrey-goldberg.html, KR)
In reality, though, the list is hopelessly corrupted by politics. If it was an exercise in analytical honesty,
Cuba would be the first country removed. But no administration would risk the wrath of the Cuba
lobby in Washington by doing so. This is to our detriment, as much as it is to Cuba’s.
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AT: No Link- Executive Action
Executive action doesn’t shield the link-Still angers the Cuban-American lobby
Thale, Washington Office of Latin America program director, and Anderson, Senior
Associate for Cuba at the Latin America Working Group 5/24/13 (Geoff Thale and Mavis
Anderson, 5/24/13, WOLA, “Cuba, the Terrorism Report, and the Terrorist List,”
http://www.wola.org/commentary/cuba_the_terrorism_report_and_the_terrorist_list, accessed
6/29/13, KR)
Importantly, the State Department will have many opportunities over the course of the year to take
the sensible step of removing Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. In fact, it is because of
this possibility that opponents of change are working so hard to convince the administration to sit on
its hands. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Albio Sires recently sent a letter to
Secretary of State John Kerry asking him to keep Cuba on the list.
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Rubio
Rubio opposes the plan
Hudson, Foreign Policy Writer, 6/3/13 (John Hudson, June 3, 2013, The Cable, Foreign Policy,
“Rubio: Cuba belongs on the ‘state sponsors of terrorism' list”,
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/03/rubio_cuba_belongs_on_the_state_sponsor_of_t
error_list, accessed 6/24/13, KR)
"The Castro regime sponsors terrorism abroad and against their own people, and removing a country
from the list of nations that sponsor terrorism requires evidence of reform," Rubio said. "We have not
seen such evidence in Cuba." ¶ In its annual Country Reports on Terrorism released last week, the State
Department acknowledged that some conditions on the island were improving, but maintained three
reasons for keeping Cuba on the list: Providing a safe haven for some two dozen members of Basque
Fatherland and Liberty (ETA), a Spanish rebel group charged with terrorist activity; providing aid to
Colombia's rebel group the FARC "in past years" -- Cuba no longer supports the group today; and
providing harbor to "fugitives wanted in the United States." ¶ "It remains clear that Cuba is the same
totalitarian state today that it has been for decades," Rubio told The Cable. "This totalitarian state
continues to have close ties to terrorist organizations."
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Ros-Lehtinen
Ros-Lehtinen hates the plan-she wants a more inclusive list-and there’s bipartisan
opposition
Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Representative, 5/1/13 (Ileana, 5/1/13, Press release, Office of Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen “No Change in Cuba’s Designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism Reaffirms the Threat
Posed by the Castro Regime, Says Ros-Lehtinen”, http://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/press-release/nochange-cuba%E2%80%99s-designation-state-sponsor-terrorism-reaffirms-threat-posed-castro, accessed
6/24/13, KR)
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee, made
the following statement on the State Department’s recommendation to not change Cuba status on the
State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) list. Statement by Ros-Lehtinen:¶ “The State Department’s
announcement yesterday that it intends to keep Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) list
reaffirms that the Castro regime is, and has always been, a supporter and facilitator of terrorism. The
unlawful actions against our nation include the Castro regime’s order of the Brothers to the Rescue
shootdown in 1996 which caused the deaths of U.S. citizens over international waters.¶ “The Cuban
tyranny continues to undermine our interests at every turn and provides a safe haven for members of
terrorist organizations like the FARC and ETA. The Castro brothers have long been collaborators with
fellow SST members Iran and Syria, and Cuba acts as a sanctuary for fugitives from our country,
including Joanne Chesimard wanted for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. Cuba also continues
to operate its vast spy network within the United States, posing a direct threat to our national security. ¶
“While I’m pleased that the State Department isn’t taking Cuba off the SST list, I am disappointed it
has not indicated a willingness to re-designate North Korea as an SST country. Removing North Korea
form the SST list was a poor decision and it has not stopped the Pyongyang regime from undermining
U.S. interests and from continuing its support to other SST members such as Iran and Syria. The illicit
actions by the regimes in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Sudan all warrant their inclusions on the
SST list. ¶ Note: This week, a bipartisan group of Congressional Members (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario
Diaz-Balart, and Albio Sires) sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry explaining the reasons why
Cuba should remain on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
The plan alienates Ros-Lehtinen and other Cuban-Americans
Kasperowicz, The Hill writer, 5/30/13 (Pete Kasperowicz, 5/30/13, “State keeps Cuba on terror
sponsors list”, The Hill, http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/americas/302609-cuba-remains-a-statesponsor-of-terror-despite-some-improvements, accessed 6/24/13, KR)
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said in reaction to the report that it rightfully keeps Cuba on the list,
and noted Chesimard. "The report reaffirms that the Cuban dictatorship provides safe haven to foreign
terrorist organizations such as the FARC and ETA and harbors fugitives wanted in the United States,
one of them being Joanne Chesimard who is wanted for the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper," she
said.¶ Decisions by the government to remove countries from the list of state sponsors of terrorism can
be made at any time by the president. These decisions are independent of the Country Reports on
Terrorism, which always review actions from the prior year.¶ To remove a country from the list, the
president must give notice to Congress by submitting a report outlining why this change is being made.¶
Cuban-American lawmakers last month had pressed the White House to ensure that Cuba had
remained on the terror-sponsor list.¶ The decision also comes as Cuba continues to hold an American
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citizen Alan Gross in prison, the latest hurdle to efforts to improve relations between the two countries.¶
Gross is serving a 15-year sentence after being convicted on charges of trying to subvert the
government. The White House and lawmakers have called on Cuba to release the 63-year old Maryland
man, who is said to be suffering health problems.¶ Ros-Lehtinen said she is "disappointed" that the
report does not mention Cuba's imprisonment of Gross, Cuba's cooperation with Iran and Syria, or
Cuba's spy network in the United States. She said these omissions amount to concessions.
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Castro DA
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Unique Links- Democracy Coming, Lifting Sanctions Kills It
Only the aff reverses the trend toward democratization-new revenue bails out Castro
Carbonell, International public affairs consultant, 9
(Nestor, April 2009, Foreign Policy, “Think Again: Engaging Cuba”,
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/engaging.htm, accessed 7/8/13, KR)
Depends. Some would say the embargo hasn't worked because Cuba's totalitarian regime remains in
power. But it's also exhausted and weaker. The regime today faces disgruntled apparatchiks, cracks
within its system, a critical economic and financial situation, and growing restlessness and dissent
among the population. ¶ The embargo is the only leverage the United States has to ensure a
democratic transition, if not under the Castro brothers, then with their successors. Why give up
something for nothing? The European Union did that by unilaterally lifting its diplomatic sanctions
against the Cuban regime, but Europe's hopes for human rights improvements have so far been in vain.
Despite striking out yet again during his trip to Havana last month, European commissioner for
development and humanitarian aid, Louis Michel, said that "Cuba-EU relations may go very far." He also
hailed the importance of boosting collaboration between both sides. All this while more than 300 Cuban
political prisoners remain behind bars under brutal conditions. ¶ Cuba today is virtually bankrupt, with a
huge external debt it is unable to serve or repay. According to the Paris Club group of creditors, Cuba
owes close to $30 billion to its trading partners -- the second-highest level of indebtedness reported by
the group. Given the sharp decline in oil prices, it is unlikely that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
will be able to maintain the current level of subsidies and other financial assistance granted to Cuba (to
the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually). ¶ Under these circumstances, the Castro regime has
embarked on a charm offensive with a single objective in mind: a U.S. bailout. The regime is looking to
Uncle Sam for additional dollars via American tourists, plus commercial lines of credit and access to
international banks and monetary funds for the renegotiation or cancellation of its external debt. That
is leverage the United States could guardedly use -- not to provide life support to a battered tyranny, but
to secure meaningful changes that will hasten the democratization of Cuba.
Cuban democracy activism is on the rise but it’s fragile-lifting sanctions would collapse
the resistance
Tyler, Washington Times State Department correspondent 7/4/13 (Guy, July 4, 2013,
Washington Times, “Private talks hint at change in U.S.-Cuba relationship”,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/4/private-talks-hint-at-change-in-us-cubarelationsh/?page=1&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=RSS_Feed, accessed 7/8/13, KR)
The State Department has quietly been holding talks with a small but diverse cadre of Cuban natives in
Washington — including democracy activists offering insider views of the communist island’s politics
— that analysts say could send shock waves through the long-standing debate about what a future
U.S. policy toward Cuba should look like.¶ Obama administration officials are mum on the closed-door
meetings, including one held at Foggy Bottom last week with renowned Cuban hunger-striker Guillermo
Farinas, who came bearing a somewhat paradoxical message: Most pro-democracy activists now
operating in Cuba, which has been a Communist dictatorship and a U.S. enemy for more than a halfcentury, oppose lifting the long-standing U.S. embargo on trade with their nation.¶ Such realities may
not surprise close Cuba watchers, who say U.S. officials have known for years that ending the embargo
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might unleash a flow of badly needed foreign cash to the government of President Raul Castro —
enhancing its ability to crush the island’s fragile pro-democracy movement.
The Castro regime is crumbling-only concessions could revitalize the regime
Lullo and Rueckert, Research associates at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 6/30/13
(Rebecca Lullo and Phineas Rueckert, June 30, 2013, “Edward Snowden May Be Cuba or Latin America
Bound … Cuba Keeps Earning its Place on the State Sponsors of Terror List”,
http://cubaconfidential.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/edward-snowden-may-be-cuba-or-latin-americabound-cuba-keeps-earning-its-place-on-the-state-sponsors-of-terror-list/, accessed 7/8/13, KR)
Study the history of modern, and not so modern dictatorships, and one thing stands out: they crumble
sooner or later. The Castro brothers have lasted longer than most because Cuba is an island. Literally, an
island in the middle of the Caribbean. In prior times, Cuba was important for Western Hemisphere geostrategic purposes, but the U.S. can make due with the status quo. Just look at the last five decades. The
U.S. has managed just fine without Cuba and, as a bonus, we even maintain a military base there. We
can argue ad nauseam who was right and what policy was not, but we won. That is all that matters. It is
now up to the regime to decide how it wants to spend its waning days. Why do some people insist on
handing over to Cuban one propaganda victory over another over another? That is what we do every
time the U.S. weakens some component of U.S. policy. The have been trying to do so since the Bush
Administration. If Edward Snowden is headed to Cuba, he will become yet another token of the regime’s
resistance to the U.S. The thing is, the Cuban people on the island are growing very impatient and the
regime is running out of political tricks. We should take advantage of this political pressure cooker and
increase economic sanctions once and for all. Then and only then will the Cubans regime come to its
senses. And, if Snowden is not going to Cuba but to some other country in the Western Hemisphere, I
can all but guarantee that Cuba is somehow lending a hand to make it so.
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Uniqueness- Democracy Movements Up/Regime Collapsing
Democracy coming now-massive momentum
Carbonell, International public affairs consultant, 9
(Nestor, April 2009, Foreign Policy, “Think Again: Engaging Cuba”,
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/engaging.htm, accessed 7/8/13, KR)
“U.S. Engagement with the Castro Regime Is the Best Hope for a Democratic Cuba.”
Not at all. The hope lies primarily with the silent majority on the island, which is no longer so silent. It
includes the brave members of the dissident and human rights movements who remain at the
vanguard; the political prisoners who from their cells remain undaunted; the wives of those prisoners
parading and demanding the release of their loved ones; intellectuals challenging the Communist
Party's rewrite of Cuban history; the priest who sent an open letter to Raúl Castro demanding drastic
reforms; tourism workers objecting to stifling taxes; comedians making fun of the government;
bloggers debunking the lies spread by the regime; and the Cubans who, during a recent art fair in
Havana, went up to the podium, shouted "Freedom!", and were warmly applauded by the audience.
This surging dissident movement, conscious of its rights and determined to be the protagonist of Cuba’s
future, needs to be encouraged and supported by the United States and others as Solidarity was in
Poland: with sufficient funds and tools for civic, peaceful resistance, and with enlightening radio and TV
transmissions that can overcome the regime's jamming and provide the same impetus for change that
Radio Free Europe did in the 1980s.
This dissident movement, part of the larger civil society, will eventually coalesce with reformists from
within the government's ranks and pave the way for a democratic transition in Cuba. Forget the Castro
brothers; these are the Cubans the United States must engage with.
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Link: Delisting Strengthens Castro
Removing Cuba from SST rewards and strengthens the Castro regime—holding a
strong hand will lead to the governments downfall in time
Poblete, Federal Government Law & Strategy/Policy Analyst attorney, 13
[Jason, 6-23-13, DC Dispatches, “Edward Snowden May Be Cuba or Latin America Bound … Cuba Keeps
Earning its Place on the State Sponsors of Terror List,” http://jasonpoblete.com/2013/06/23/edwardsnowden-may-be-cuba-bound-cuba-keeps-earning-its-place-on-the-state-sponsors-of-terror-list/,
accessed 6-29-13, PR]
Interestingly, not once throughout the CSIS panel did any of the speakers discuss that U.S. law toward Cuba requires a two-prong approach: (1)
helping the Cuban people and (2) isolating the Cuban regime. They focused only on prong (1). We could go on and on. Reach your own
conclusions. Folks
who support removing Cuba from the list are mainly people who oppose current U.S.
policy. It is that simple. They are trying to make it political because it advances, in their minds, a path
forward to ease sanctions on the regime. The reality is that the political ball is in Cuba’s court, not the
United States. The regime knows what it has to do and it choses not to change its ways. For now, a “small
sector in Miami and DC” (as people said several times during the CSIS conference) will continue to advance efforts to isolate the Cuban regime
as well as support the people of Cuba. That is a good thing. If we
want to reach agreement on outstanding questions
such as U.S. property claims against Cuba, Cuba’s debt, and much more (see my list as to why Cuba
should stay on the terrorism list), we need to maintain a firm hand. Study the history of modern, and not so modern
dictatorships, and one thing stands out: they crumble sooner or later. The Castro brothers have lasted longer than most because Cuba is an
island. Literally, an island in the middle of the Caribbean. In
prior times, Cuba was important for Western Hemisphere
geo-strategic purposes, but the U.S. can make due with the status quo. Just look at the last five
decades. The U.S. has managed just fine without Cuba and, as a bonus, we even maintain a military base there. We can argue ad nauseam
who was right and what policy was not, but we won. That is all that matters. It is now up to the regime to decide how it
wants to spend its waning days. Why do some people insist on handing over to Cuban one
propaganda victory over another over another? That is what we do every time the U.S. weakens some
component of U.S. policy. The have been trying to do so since the Bush Administration. If Edward Snowden
is headed to Cuba, he will become yet another token of the regime’s resistance to the U.S. The thing is, the Cuban people on the
island are growing very impatient and the regime is running out of political tricks. We should take
advantage of this political pressure cooker and increase economic sanctions once and for all. Then and
only then will the Cubans regime come to its senses. And, if Snowden is not going to Cuba but to some other country in
the Western Hemisphere, I can all but guarantee that Cuba is somehow lending a hand to make it so.
Removing Cuba wouldn’t stop the sanctions- but would hand Castro a major
diplomatic victory.
Claver-Carone, Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law , 4-2-13
(Mauricio Claver-Carone, Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law @ Georgetown
University Law Center, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening”,
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-29-13, JF)
Cuba has been on the state sponsors of terrorism list since 1982 due to its hostile acts and support of
armed insurgency groups. While being on the list of terrorist sponsors imposes sanctions such as prohibiting the United States from
selling arms or providing economic assistance, removing Cuba from that list would have little effect on these
sanctions, as these were separately codified in 1996. However, it would certainly hand the Castro
brothers a major – and unmerited – diplomatic victory. The Castros have long protested and sought to
escape the ostracism associated with the terrorism listing, while refusing to modify the egregious
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
behavior that earned them the designation. They are also hoping the change could improve their standing
among otherwise reluctant members of Congress and lead to an unconditional lifting of sanctions in the near
future.¶ Pursuant to the statutory criteria stipulated under Section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act (as currently re-authorized under the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act), Cuba can only be removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list in two ways:¶ Option one is
to have the U.S. president submit a report to Congress certifying that there has been a fundamental change in the leadership and policies of
Cuba’s government, that Cuba no longer supports acts of international terrorism, and that Cuba has provided “assurances” that it will not
support acts of international terrorism in the future.¶ It
would be disingenuous for anyone to argue that there has
been a “fundamental change” when the Castros have ruled Cuba with an iron fist for 54 years. Option
one does not pass the laugh test.
Removing Cuba from the terror list rewards and strengthens the Castro regime—
holding a strong hand will lead to the governments downfall in time
Poblete, Federal Government Law & Strategy/Policy Analyst attorney, 13
[Jason, 6-23-13, DC Dispatches, “Edward Snowden May Be Cuba or Latin America Bound
… Cuba Keeps Earning its Place on the State Sponsors of Terror List,”
http://jasonpoblete.com/2013/06/23/edward-snowden-may-be-cuba-bound-cuba-keeps-earning-itsplace-on-the-state-sponsors-of-terror-list/, accessed 6-29-13, PR]
Interestingly, not once throughout the CSIS panel did any of the speakers discuss that U.S. law toward
Cuba requires a two-prong approach: (1) helping the Cuban people and (2) isolating the Cuban regime.
They focused only on prong (1). We could go on and on. Reach your own conclusions. Folks who support
removing Cuba from the list are mainly people who oppose current U.S. policy. It is that simple. They
are trying to make it political because it advances, in their minds, a path forward to ease sanctions on
the regime. The reality is that the political ball is in Cuba’s court, not the United States. The regime
knows what it has to do and it choses not to change its ways. For now, a “small sector in Miami and
DC” (as people said several times during the CSIS conference) will continue to advance efforts to isolate
the Cuban regime as well as support the people of Cuba. That is a good thing. If we want to reach
agreement on outstanding questions such as U.S. property claims against Cuba, Cuba’s debt, and
much more (see my list as to why Cuba should stay on the terrorism list), we need to maintain a firm
hand. Study the history of modern, and not so modern dictatorships, and one thing stands out: they
crumble sooner or later. The Castro brothers have lasted longer than most because Cuba is an island.
Literally, an island in the middle of the Caribbean. In prior times, Cuba was important for Western
Hemisphere geo-strategic purposes, but the U.S. can make due with the status quo. Just look at the
last five decades. The U.S. has managed just fine without Cuba and, as a bonus, we even maintain a
military base there. We can argue ad nauseam who was right and what policy was not, but we won. That
is all that matters. It is now up to the regime to decide how it wants to spend its waning days. Why do
some people insist on handing over to Cuban one propaganda victory over another over another?
That is what we do every time the U.S. weakens some component of U.S. policy. The have been trying
to do so since the Bush Administration. If Edward Snowden is headed to Cuba, he will become yet
another token of the regime’s resistance to the U.S. The thing is, the Cuban people on the island are
growing very impatient and the regime is running out of political tricks. We should take advantage of
this political pressure cooker and increase economic sanctions once and for all. Then and only then
will the Cubans regime come to its senses. And, if Snowden is not going to Cuba but to some other
country in the Western Hemisphere, I can all but guarantee that Cuba is somehow lending a hand to
make it so.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
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Delisting Cuba wouldn’t stop the sanctions- but would hand Castro a major diplomatic
victory.
Claver-Carone, Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law , 4-2-13
(Mauricio Claver-Carone, Master of Laws in International and Comparative Law @ Georgetown
University Law Center, 4-2-13, The American, “Cuba Sees an Opening”,
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism, accessed 6-29-13, JF)
Cuba has been on the state sponsors of terrorism list since 1982 due to its hostile acts and support of
armed insurgency groups. While being on the list of terrorist sponsors imposes sanctions such as
prohibiting the United States from selling arms or providing economic assistance, removing Cuba from
that list would have little effect on these sanctions, as these were separately codified in 1996.
However, it would certainly hand the Castro brothers a major – and unmerited – diplomatic victory.
The Castros have long protested and sought to escape the ostracism associated with the terrorism
listing, while refusing to modify the egregious behavior that earned them the designation. They are
also hoping the change could improve their standing among otherwise reluctant members of Congress
and lead to an unconditional lifting of sanctions in the near future.¶ Pursuant to the statutory criteria
stipulated under Section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act (as currently re-authorized under the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act), Cuba can only be removed from the state sponsors of
terrorism list in two ways:¶ Option one is to have the U.S. president submit a report to Congress
certifying that there has been a fundamental change in the leadership and policies of Cuba’s
government, that Cuba no longer supports acts of international terrorism, and that Cuba has provided
“assurances” that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.¶ It would be
disingenuous for anyone to argue that there has been a “fundamental change” when the Castros have
ruled Cuba with an iron fist for 54 years. Option one does not pass the laugh test.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
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Link: Concessions
Unilateral concessions to Cuba embolden the regime, cause violent repression, and
undermine Cuban democracy movements
Gutierrez-Boronat, Professor at Florida International University, 10 (Orlando, 9/15/13,
Quarterly Americas, “Concessions to the Cubans would Embolden the Regime”
http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/1816, accessed 6/29/13, KR)
We shouldn't make unilateral concessions to the Castro regime because it will cost lives.
Fundamentally fragile, totalitarian dictatorships interpret all policy actions through the narrow lens of
regime survival. That means they unfailingly construe unilateral concessions as weakness. That is a
very dangerous message to send to Raúl and Fidel Castro in the zero-sum game they play with their
own people.¶ Simply put: to retain power, the Castros must deny Cubans the very freedoms they
overwhelmingly want. Therefore, if a morally and economically bankrupt, violence-prone, half-century
old dictatorship is led to believe that it can kill without any significant response, it will unhesitatingly
do so.¶ Take a recent example: the July 2010 deal between Cuba and the Roman Catholic Church,
brokered by the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to free 52
dissidents. Such unilateral coddling along with the support received from a coterie of left-wing Latin
American leaders and the decision by the Organization of American States to rescind Cuba’s expulsion
made the Castros think that they could once again get away with murder. (And any careful review of
how the regime proceeded to methodically break the health of imprisoned civil rights activist Orlando
Zapata Tamayo leaves no doubt that it was murder with the mistaken belief that killing a defiant black
laborer would stymie the resistance of his fellow activists while passing unnoticed by the international
community.)¶ Why did the regime then sit down with Cardinal Jaime Ortega and then deport some
political prisoners? Because as the Cardinal himself has recognized, the spike in internal civic defiance
and the international condemnation caused by Zapata's murder threatened the fragile status quo in
which the regime survives.¶ The Castro dictatorship is facing a non-violent civic insurgency. Resistance
is a fact. The Regime must suppress it to survive. This is why the regime continues to attack, arrest and
imprison freedom activists. Only perceived losses in terms of international standing and foreign
economic aid and investment can limit the dictatorship’s decision to repress.¶ Because of this, for the
first time, the regime has sat down with the Catholic Church to work out a solution to a national issue. It
cannot stabilize the country without the acquiescence of the resistance. However, the Castros fear that
dealing directly with the resistance would somehow recognize that their monopoly over Cuba’s national
life is swiftly ending.¶ There are two paths from here: one fraught with danger, the other rich with hope.¶
The first: steadily normalizing relations with a failed and spent dictatorship through the progressive
unilateral lifting of sanctions. Would that be wise? Wouldn’t that tell the regime that it can continue to
ignore its opposition and repress it precisely when that opposition has shown that it can bring the
regime to the negotiating table? We can be sure of this: neither the desire for power of the Castros and
their acolytes nor the growing resistance to it can be ignored. Unwarranted flexibilities with the Castros
will undermine the island’s grass roots pro-democracy movement because they will directly decrease
the political cost of repression for the regime.
Unilateral concessions to Cuba embolden the regime, cause violent repression, and
undermine Cuban democracy movements
Gutierrez-Boronat, Professor at Florida International University, 10
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
(Orlando, 9/15/13, Quarterly Americas, “Concessions to the Cubans would Embolden the Regime”
http://www.americasquarterly.org/node/1816, accessed 6/29/13, KR)
We shouldn't make unilateral concessions to the Castro regime because it will cost lives.
Fundamentally fragile, totalitarian dictatorships interpret all policy actions through the narrow lens of
regime survival. That means they unfailingly construe unilateral concessions as weakness. That is a
very dangerous message to send to Raúl and Fidel Castro in the zero-sum game they play with their
own people.¶ Simply put: to retain power, the Castros must deny Cubans the very freedoms they
overwhelmingly want. Therefore, if a morally and economically bankrupt, violence-prone, half-century
old dictatorship is led to believe that it can kill without any significant response, it will unhesitatingly
do so.¶ Take a recent example: the July 2010 deal between Cuba and the Roman Catholic Church,
brokered by the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to free 52
dissidents. Such unilateral coddling along with the support received from a coterie of left-wing Latin
American leaders and the decision by the Organization of American States to rescind Cuba’s expulsion
made the Castros think that they could once again get away with murder. (And any careful review of
how the regime proceeded to methodically break the health of imprisoned civil rights activist Orlando
Zapata Tamayo leaves no doubt that it was murder with the mistaken belief that killing a defiant black
laborer would stymie the resistance of his fellow activists while passing unnoticed by the international
community.)¶ Why did the regime then sit down with Cardinal Jaime Ortega and then deport some
political prisoners? Because as the Cardinal himself has recognized, the spike in internal civic defiance
and the international condemnation caused by Zapata's murder threatened the fragile status quo in
which the regime survives.¶ The Castro dictatorship is facing a non-violent civic insurgency. Resistance
is a fact. The Regime must suppress it to survive. This is why the regime continues to attack, arrest and
imprison freedom activists. Only perceived losses in terms of international standing and foreign
economic aid and investment can limit the dictatorship’s decision to repress.¶ Because of this, for the
first time, the regime has sat down with the Catholic Church to work out a solution to a national issue. It
cannot stabilize the country without the acquiescence of the resistance. However, the Castros fear that
dealing directly with the resistance would somehow recognize that their monopoly over Cuba’s national
life is swiftly ending.¶ There are two paths from here: one fraught with danger, the other rich with hope.¶
The first: steadily normalizing relations with a failed and spent dictatorship through the progressive
unilateral lifting of sanctions. Would that be wise? Wouldn’t that tell the regime that it can continue to
ignore its opposition and repress it precisely when that opposition has shown that it can bring the
regime to the negotiating table? We can be sure of this: neither the desire for power of the Castros and
their acolytes nor the growing resistance to it can be ignored. Unwarranted flexibilities with the Castros
will undermine the island’s grass roots pro-democracy movement because they will directly decrease
the political cost of repression for the regime.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Impact- Oppression
Decreasing sanctions towards Cuba will lead to the repression of Cuban citizensempirics prove
Diaz-Balart, political science PhD, 12
[Maria, 8-21-12, Fox News Latino, “Mario Diaz-Balart: Obama Has Policy of Appeasement Toward Castro
Regime,” http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/08/21/mario-diaz-balart-obama-has-pursuedpolicy-appeasement-toward-castro-regime/, accessed 6-24-13, PR] YGS
Since he took office in January 2009, President Obama has pursued a policy of appeasement toward the
totalitarian Cuban dictatorship. Despite the Castro brothers’ harboring of international terrorists and
their increasingly relentless oppression of the Cuban people, President Obama weakened U.S.
sanctions and has increased the flow of dollars to the dictatorship. In response, the Castro brothers
amped up their repression of the Cuban people and imprisoned American humanitarian aid worker
Alan Gross for the “crime” of taking humanitarian aide to Cuba’s small Jewish community. Clearly,
President Obama is not concerned about the threat posed by the Cuban dictatorship, nor has he
manifested genuine solidarity with the pro-democracy aspirations of the Cuban people. The Cuban
people are protesting in the streets and demanding freedom. But rather than supporting the growing,
courageous pro-democracy movement, President Obama instead has chosen to appease their
oppressors. While President Obama claims that his policies aim to assist the oppressed Cuban people,
his actions betray that he is not on their side. You cannot credibly claim to care about the oppressed
while working out side deals with their oppressors and welcoming the oppressors’ elite into the United
States with open arms. And you cannot claim to support political prisoners while increasing the flow of
dollars to their jailers.
Cuba’s government is oppressing its people and restricting their freedom of speech
Gonzalez, Heritage Foundation communications vice president, 11
[Mike, 7-26-11, The Foundry, “Media Fails to Report on Castro Regime’s Brutal Oppression,”
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/26/media-fails-to-report-on-castro-regimes-brutal-oppression/,
accessed 6-24-13, PR] YGS
Last week, just outside Cuba’s holiest Catholic shrine, government thugs attacked in plain daylight a
group of opposition women — beating them, stoning them and stripping them naked to the waist. The
women, mostly black and middle-aged, suffered this public humiliation because they were trying to find
a dignified way to bring attention to the plight of their husbands, who are in prison for freely speaking
their minds. The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba has condemned the attack. You can find an eyewitness
account in Spanish in the above video. It should make for poignant watching today, the anniversary of
the start of the Cuban Revolution. Unfortunately, there’s nothing unusual in this grotesque attack on
the Damas de Blanco (or Ladies in White, the harassed association of wives of political prisoners) on the
street outside the shrine of Our Lady of La Caridad del Cobre. It’s routine for Cubans to be publicly
degraded, brutalized and imprisoned when they dare speak their minds. Their daily existence has
been one of fear and wretched suffering for 50 years now. Yet the chances are that you probably
haven’t heard about this story. A quick Google search of the attacks on the Damas de Blanco turned up
only about five hits, none from a major publication. Why? Not because it’s a dog-bites-man story
(literally, in this case), as some journalists might have you believe. No, it’s simply because the media
don’t report the daily attacks on the Cuban dissidents. All the major international news wires, and at
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
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least two TV networks, have bureaus in Cuba. But they’re either so afraid of being expelled, or have so
bought into the regime’s propaganda, that all they report is how Raul Castro is bringing economic
reforms to Cuba. So little is the story of Cuba’s oppression known outside that island prison that, were
the constant repression reported occasionally, it might actually cause a stir. Clearly, Raul—Fidel’s
brother, who was handed the day-to-day reins of the island when his elder brother fell ill a couple of
years back—has no intention of doing anything that will threaten communism’s firm grip on Cuba.
Otherwise, his goons would feel no need to terrorize and drag a bunch of older women naked through
the streets.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
Impact- Latin American Stability
Cuban democracy solves Latin American stability
Cereijo, University of Miami engineering professor, 6
(Manuel, 11/14/06, “DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM IN CUBA,” La Nueva Cuba,
http://www.lanuevacuba.com/archivo/manuel-cereijo-130.htm, KR)
We are told that freedom cannot be imposed from the outside and that any attempt to do so will only
backfire, further fanning the flames of hatred. This is a false premise. All peoples desire to be free.
Cubans desire to be free. Freedom in Cuba will make Latin America, and the world, safer. I am
convinced that the United States, and all democratic nations, has a critical role to play in returning
Cuba to democracy and freedom. ¶ There are dangers involved in the transition to democracy. This
transition can be long and arduous: the transformation of a fear society to a free society, where the
basic right of dissent is protected, to a fully democratic society, where the institutions that protect
dissent and sustain freedom are well established, can take a few years. However, the discussion should
be on how democracy can best be established in Cuba and not over if democracy should never be
established at all. ¶ If Cuba’s tyranny were to be transformed into a genuinely free society, the world
would be more secure. The entire Latin America region would achieve stability, freedom, and
prosperity.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
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Impact- Human Rights
Cuba’s government is oppressing its people and restricting their freedom of speech
Gonzalez, Heritage Foundation communications vice president, 11
[Mike, 7-26-11, The Foundry, “Media Fails to Report on Castro Regime’s Brutal Oppression,”
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/26/media-fails-to-report-on-castro-regimes-brutal-oppression/,
accessed 6-24-13, PR] YGS
Last week, just outside Cuba’s holiest Catholic shrine, government thugs attacked in plain daylight a group of
opposition women — beating them, stoning them and stripping them naked to the waist. The women,
mostly black and middle-aged, suffered this public humiliation because they were trying to find a dignified way to bring attention to
the plight of their husbands, who are in prison for freely speaking their minds. The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba has condemned the attack.
You can find an eyewitness account in Spanish in the above video. It should make for poignant watching today, the anniversary of the start of
the Cuban Revolution. Unfortunately, there’s
nothing unusual in this grotesque attack on the Damas de Blanco (or Ladies in
White, the harassed association of wives of political prisoners) on the street outside the shrine of Our Lady of La Caridad del Cobre. It’s
routine for Cubans to be publicly degraded, brutalized and imprisoned when they dare speak their
minds. Their daily existence has been one of fear and wretched suffering for 50 years now. Yet the chances
are that you probably haven’t heard about this story. A quick Google search of the attacks on the Damas de Blanco turned up only about five
hits, none from a major publication. Why? Not because it’s a dog-bites-man story (literally, in this case), as some journalists might have you
believe. No, it’s simply because the media don’t report the daily attacks on the Cuban dissidents. All the major international news wires, and at
least two TV networks, have bureaus in Cuba. But they’re either so afraid of being expelled, or have so bought into the regime’s propaganda,
that all they report is how Raul Castro is bringing economic reforms to Cuba. So
little is the story of Cuba’s oppression
known outside that island prison that, were the constant repression reported occasionally, it might
actually cause a stir. Clearly, Raul—Fidel’s brother, who was handed the day-to-day reins of the island when his elder brother fell
ill a couple of years back—has no intention of doing anything that will threaten communism’s firm grip on
Cuba. Otherwise, his goons would feel no need to terrorize and drag a bunch of older women naked
through the streets.
Decreasing sanctions towards Cuba will lead to government violence towards civiliansempirics prove
Diaz-Balart, political science PhD, 12
[Maria, 8-21-12, Fox News Latino, “Mario Diaz-Balart: Obama Has Policy of Appeasement Toward Castro
Regime,” http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/08/21/mario-diaz-balart-obama-has-pursuedpolicy-appeasement-toward-castro-regime/, accessed 6-24-13, PR] YGS
Since he took office in January 2009, President Obama has pursued a policy of appeasement toward the totalitarian Cuban dictatorship. Despite
the Castro
brothers’ harboring of international terrorists and their increasingly relentless oppression of the Cuban
people, President Obama weakened U.S. sanctions and has increased the flow of dollars to the
dictatorship. In response, the Castro brothers amped up their repression of the Cuban people and
imprisoned American humanitarian aid worker Alan Gross for the “crime” of taking humanitarian aide to Cuba’s small Jewish
community. Clearly, President Obama is not concerned about the threat posed by the Cuban dictatorship, nor has he manifested genuine
solidarity with the pro-democracy aspirations of the Cuban people. The
Cuban people are protesting in the streets and
demanding freedom. But rather than supporting the growing, courageous pro-democracy movement, President Obama instead has
chosen to appease their oppressors. While President Obama claims that his policies aim to assist the oppressed Cuban people, his actions
betray that he is not on their side. You cannot credibly claim to care about the oppressed while working out side deals with their oppressors
and welcoming the oppressors’ elite into the United States with open arms. And you cannot claim to support political prisoners while increasing
the flow of dollars to their jailers.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
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Turns Case- Impacts are Castro’s Fault, not Sanctions
Castro’s regime, not the embargo, results in violence and a lack of freedomempirically proven
Montaner, Cuban-born journalist and writer, 6
[Carlos Alberto, 12/27/06, Foreign Policy, “Was Fidel Good for Cuba?”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2006/12/27/was_fidel_good_for_cuba?page=0,1, Accessed
7/8/13, ML]
In spite of political differences, all human beings have the same hopes: They prefer freedom to
oppression, human rights to tyranny, peace to war, and they want their living conditions to improve
for themselves and their families. This statement is as true in Hungary as it is in Cuba. Cubans want the
same changes that repressed peoples have always fought for. And when Fidel Castro's passing provides
them a chance to make those changes, they will seize it.¶ Just look at the facts. At cubaarchive.org,
Cuban economist Armando Lago and his assistant, Maria Werlau, have compiled a balance sheet that
explains why Castro's regime forced 2 million Cubans (and their descendants) into exile. Under Castro,
there have been roughly 5,700 executions, 1,200 extrajudicial murders, 77,800 dead or lost raftsmen,
and 11,700 Cuban dead in international missions, most of them during 15 years of African wars in
Ethiopia and Angola. Castro's legacy will be one of bloodshed and injustice, not one of Latin "solidarity"
and reform.¶ You blame the United States and its embargo for the Cuban people's material problems.
But your analysis ignores the devastating impact that collectivism and the lack of economic and
political freedoms -- not the United States -- had upon Soviet Bloc countries, ultimately leading to their
demise. And statistics on Cuba’s economic growth are highly suspect. The official Cuban numbers for
Castro's economic and social achievements are so poorly regarded that the Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean opted not to take them into account when it compiled its own statistics
on the true measures of Cuban society. And the idea that Cuba is now more independent than ever is
laughable, considering that much of the economic growth that you cite is buoyed by $2 billion a year in
Venezuelan subsidies.
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AT: Reforms Now/Regime has Changed
The only that has changed is rhetoric- Cuba continues to brutally repress dissent.
Murray 12 (Andrew, 2/7/12, “Despite Castro’s Words, Hope and Change Not Likely to Define Cuba
Anytime Soon”, http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/07/despite-castros-words-hope-and-change-notlikely-to-define-cuba-anytime-soon/, accessed 7/8/13, KR)
Anyone hoping to see serious changes to Cuba’s ruling system was again disappointed on January 28
when Raul Castro spoke. In a speech marking a critical conference, the Cuban leader promised change,
term limits, economic reform, and a willingness to move younger party members to a more elevated
status. Yet, as Raul Castro made many promises to his people during his 48-minute address, one could
not help but notice the disparity between his words and the reality of Cuban life and politics. At one
point, he boasted that Cuba is one of the safest and most peaceful nations in the world “without
extrajudicial executions, clandestine jails or tortures…[Cuba has] basic human rights that most people on
Earth can’t even aspire to.” He forgot to point out that in a police state, law and order usually reign—at
least on the surface. If Cubans have enviable human rights, then why must the government repress
nearly all forms of dissent? Why, according to Human Rights Watch, “does the regime continue to
enforce political conformity using short-term detentions, beatings, public acts of repudiation, forced
exile, and travel restrictions”? How does it explain the brutal treatment of Cuban women, “las Damas
de Blanco” (“the Ladies in White”) who speak for those unjustly jailed by Cuban authorities? Or why
does it still hold American Alan Gross, who was jailed in 2009 after donating computer equipment to
Cuban Jews? Castro railed at corruption but ignored the fact that its causes are rooted in the
malfunctioning economy and the bureaucratic tyranny of the totalitarian state. And while he may want
to jettison ration books in his “egalitarian” society, he fears letting go of the censorship of books and
information or permitting free travel. He warned party loyalists that “opening up” did not give them a
right to “meddle in decisions that should be left up to the government officials.” As for democracy and
consent of the governed, Castro justified the 52-year-old dictatorship in the following manner: “to
renounce the principle of a one-party system would be the equivalent of legalizing a party, or parties,
of imperialism on our soil.”
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Cap K Cards
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Links
CTS fails to achieve its goals—prioritizes epistemology over ontological issues and
ignores the importance of material social relations.
Joseph, School of Politics and International Relations @ University of Kent, 11
[Jonathan, 4-8-2011, “Terrorism as a social relation within capitalism: theoretical and emancipatory
implications”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 24, GSK]
As the final point suggests, a serious problem with the attempts to justify CTS is that¶ they are not true
to critical theory and in fact are closer to some of the confused notions¶ prominent in critical
international relations (IR) theory rather than the critical theory (CT)¶ tradition associated with the
Frankfurt School. This piece suggests that CTS makes a clean¶ break with prevailing views within IR
theory to be truer to CT. Rather than building on the¶ post-positivist turn in IR, CTS needs a more
ontological approach if it is to truly challenge¶ the dominant approaches to the study of terrorism. As
is implied by the four stated aims, the¶ detrimental influence of the post-positivist turn in IR theory has
been a ‘critical’ approach¶ founded on the privileging of epistemological concerns, an opposition to
‘positivism’ and¶ ‘objectivism’ by privileging constructivist and intersubjective social ontologies; and
thus a¶ highly selective reading of critical theory and a failure to link this to a historical materialist¶
account of social relations.¶ Although Jackson talks of terrorism studies as having the potential to
develop into its¶ own unique field of study akin to criminology or Middle East studies (2009, p. 66), in
fact,¶ the danger is that CTS will repeat the exact same mistakes that have afflicted the discipline¶ of
IR. Because of its institutional associations, it is too concerned with trying to build¶ something akin to
critical security studies (CSS) based on a ‘Welsh School’ understanding¶ of critical theory. To be as
attractive as possible, it tries to be as broad as possible and¶ follows the post-positivist turn to give
itself this broad appeal and legitimacy. As a result,¶ it imports a number of errors from post-positivist
IR, including trying to be too pluralistic¶ at the expense of theoretical clarity, allowing too broad a
church without giving clear definitions¶ of main principles, prioritising epistemological concerns over
ontological ones and¶ showing lack of attention to social relations.
CTS’ focus on terrorism as a social construction rooted in discursive practices excludes
materialist analysis
Joseph, School of Politics and International Relations @ University of Kent, 11
[Jonathan, 4-8-2011, “Terrorism as a social relation within capitalism: theoretical and emancipatory
implications”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 24, GSK]
Jackson’s argument is similarly askew when he decides to dip into IR constructivism¶ to make a point
that closely resembles Wendt’s argument that structure should be seen in¶ social rather than material
terms, where the basis of sociality is shared knowledge and culture¶ (Wendt 1999, p. 20). Jackson’s
argument is that terrorism is a social rather than a brute¶ fact. He says it is something constructed
through speech acts and constituted through a set¶ of discursive practices (Jackson 2009, p. 75). What
both Jackson and Wendt are doing is¶ defining the social in opposition to a very crude, physicalist
notion of the material. Wendt’s¶ argument in effect argues that the material cannot also be social and
ignores the work of¶ Marxists who argue that things like economic relations of production, for
example, are¶ bound up with complex social practices and discourses. By saying that terrorism is not a¶
brute fact, Jackson wants to suggest that terrorism is not something that just happens ‘out¶ there’. Of
course, the violent act might be considered ‘out there’, but this is only rendered meaningful when
discursively articulated as ‘terrorism’. Such a view is very similar to that¶ articulated by Laclau and
Mouffe when they claim that they do not deny that objects exist,¶ but they reject the idea that objects
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can meaningfully constitute themselves outside of discourse¶ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, p. 108; for a
critique, see Joseph 2002, pp. 111–113).¶ This then justifies the predominantly discourse-based study
of terrorism found in CTS.¶ But, as our conclusion will go on to argue, terrorism is in part ‘out there’ and
that ‘out¶ there’ must be at least partly constitutive or else there would be nothing for the speech acts ¶
and discursive practices to construct or constitute. But saying that terrorism is somehow¶ ‘out there’ is
not the same as saying that it is a ‘brute fact’ or a physical ‘thing’. Terrorism¶ is ‘out there’ as a social
relation just as much as it is socially ‘in discourse’.
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Alt Solves Terrorism/State Terrorism
Capitalism is the root cause of economic terrorism—controls international institutions
McKeown, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies @ University of
Bristol, 11
[Anthony, 4-8-2011, “The structural production of state terrorism: capitalism, imperialism and
international class dynamics”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 80, GSK]
Restructuring, on the other hand, indicates ‘a sideways move, from one form of capitalism¶ to another’
(e.g. from import substitution industrialisation to neo-liberalism) (Ashman¶ and Callinicos 2007, p.
123). As it is used here, this concept indicates shifts in the form¶ of capitalist organisation in both urban
and agricultural sectors of a country’s economy.¶ Colombia is a good example of how these processes
have exacerbated state terrorism. Neoliberal¶ restructuring in the country began in earnest in the
1990s, having been initiated at¶ the tail end of the Virgilio Barco administration (1986–1990). In contrast
to many of its¶ Latin American neighbours, Colombia’s ‘apertura’ process (political and economic
opening)¶ was not initially driven by substantial debt problems in the 1980s, but the country was ¶
nonetheless unable to avoid the regional contagion of capital flight, which reflected reduced¶ investor
confidence. This was matched by declining terms of trade and an overvalued currency¶ (Edwards 1998),
both of which served to worsen the country’s economic prospects¶ and increase the leverage of the
international finance and development organisations in¶ effecting policy restructuring and
recommodification.¶ The increasingly unpropitious context in which Colombia’s state managers and
capitals¶ operated effectively forced the country into accepting a World Bank Trade Policy and¶ Export
Diversification Loan (TPED) in 1985, which facilitated the International Monetary¶ Fund’s monitoring of
the country’s economy. As the World Bank notes, the TPED, ‘despite¶ its name . . . was basically a
structural adjustment loan’ supplied in response to pressure on¶ the country’s balance of payments and
the threat of a pull-out by the country’s commercial¶ creditors (World Bank 2001). It called for a
reduction of the public sector deficit, a slowdown¶ in monetary expansion in an effort to curb inflation,
a devaluation of the country’s¶ currency to increase its export potential, trade liberalisation and a
‘scaling down of (global)¶ external borrowing targets’ in light of reduced credit conditions following the
regional debt¶ crisis (World Bank 2001). This was an early process at recommodification and
restructuring,¶ reflected as such by the World Bank’s review of the TPED, which summarised that,¶
although much progress was made, ‘it would probably have been difficult for the Bank to¶ obtain a real
commitment to trade liberalization in the context of these two loans’ (World¶ Bank 2001).
Capitalism is the root cause of terrorism—even if they win that capitalism can’t
explain all instances of terror, we still access their specific instance
Herring, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies @ University
of Bristol, and Stokes, School of Politics and International Relations @ University of
Kent, 11
[Eric and Doug, 4-8-2011, “Critical realism and historical materialism as resources for critical terrorism
studies”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 14-15, GSK]
As indicated above, capitalism has an inherent dynamic of change – Particular elements¶ of the capitalist
ruling class – composed of alliances of owners and managers of capital,¶ state elites and wider social
elites seek to resist or work with that dynamic of change¶ while protecting and advancing their own
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interests. There are numerous situations in which¶ terrorism may be deployed as an instrument of the
capitalist ruling class, and here we¶ briefly outline four which may overlap and interact in reality.¶ First, it
can be used as part of a process of shattering social formations that are¶ pre-capitalist or capitalist in
ways that are resistant to the more rapid circulation of capital.¶ For example, terrorism, deployed by
the state, by corporations or by fractions of elites in¶ alliance with elements of urban or rural labour
and reaffirmed through the use of the law,¶ may be particularly useful for overcoming the hindrance
to capital accumulation posed¶ by small-scale subsistence farming. This process of breaking up such
social formations¶ to separate labour from the ownership of land and other means of production was
called¶ ‘primitive accumulation’ by Marx and rethought by Harvey as ‘accumulation by dispossession’¶
(Marx [1890] 1990, Part 8; Harvey 2005, Maher and Thomson 2011, McKeown¶ 2011). It can be seen
immediately that the distinctions between state and non-state terrorism¶ and between the political
and economic violence get in the way of understanding this,¶ as such violence blurs all of these
boundaries.¶ Second, the ruling class of rentier states and in rentier economies can be inclined¶ towards
using terrorism domestically, whether generally or selectively. Rentier states¶ rely substantially on
income received from foreign sources such as by exporting natural¶ resources and by accepting aid
payments, whereas rentier economies are composed¶ of a significant degree of rentier state
expenditure (Beblawi and Luciani 1987). The ruling¶ class in such cases can more readily employ terror
tactics because they are relatively¶ free from the constraints of having to root themselves in, and
hence not alienate, domestic¶ society. This rentier position gave Saddam Hussein a relatively free hand
in Iraq, for example,¶ in deploying terror to cow the population generally and in relation to the Kurdish
and¶ Shia rebellions. Repression in post-invasion Iraq continues to be facilitated by the rentier¶ position
of elites.¶ Third, the use of domestic terrorism may be part of an essentially domestic response¶ of a
ruling-class formation to being destabilised by external pressure to neoliberalise¶ and, in particular, to
deregulate and privatise the economy and reduce welfare provision¶ (McKeown 2011). Despite the
neoliberal ideology that this is merely freeing individuals to¶ act entrepreneurially and choose how to
spend their own money rather than have it spent¶ for them by the state, the process of
neoliberalisation produces many losers. Ruling-class¶ formations within particular states can use terror
as one of their means of dealing with¶ actual or potential opposition to that process. For example,
although the wars in the former¶ Yugoslavia and Rwanda are often seen primarily in relation to ethnicity,
the ruling elites¶ of both states faced severe political problems due to requirements for them to engage
in¶ structural adjustment towards neoliberalism (Woodward 1995, Prunier 1995). These ruling¶ elites
responded to their inability to deliver in financial, service and programmatic terms¶ by redirecting
hostility from themselves towards identity-based others and licensing the¶ most socially marginal
(Mueller 2000) to go on the rampage, terrorising and dispossessing¶ anyone who might even potentially
oppose those elites.¶ Fourth, the use of domestic terrorism by a ruling-class formation can be
conducted¶ as part of a strategic alliance in which an external actor plays a powerful role. This can be¶
seen in the case of the conduct in recent decades of US-backed state terrorism in Colombia,¶ although
the state is formally liberal democratic (Stokes 2006, Maher and Thomson 2011).¶ This kind of USbacked class-based terrorism involving state, corporate and paramilitary¶ actors to promote an
appropriate climate for United States and wider international capitalist¶ investment has a long history
across Latin America, but also elsewhere such as¶ Indonesia under Suharto or Iran under the Shah
(Chomsky and Herman 1979, Blakeley¶ 2009, McKeown 2011).
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The alternative solves the aff—CTS oversimplifies terrorism to conflict between state
and non-state actor while ignoring the role of class relations in creating the problems
to begin with
Herring, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies @ University
of Bristol, and Stokes, School of Politics and International Relations @ University of
Kent, 11
[Eric and Doug, 4-8-2011, “Critical realism and historical materialism as resources for critical terrorism
studies”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 13, GSK]
HM seeks to analyse the dominant discourses that have enabled state and non-state¶ terrorism and the
costly, repressive practices of much of so-called counterterrorism. HM¶ also seeks to relate these
discursive practices to sustained analysis of the class and other¶ interests and social relations within
capitalism. This includes consideration of how they¶ are used deliberately and instrumentally.
Furthermore, adoption of an HM perspective can¶ facilitate a shift from Western-centrism and statecentrism to looking at multiple perspectives,¶ with the state re-theorised in the context of the
internationalisation of capitalism¶ and class relations at all levels, from the local to the global. CTS
scholars have made¶ commendable efforts to put state terrorism (including that used or sponsored by
liberal¶ democracies) on the agenda, while also not losing sight of the use of terrorism by Western,¶
non-Western and anti-Western non-state actors (e.g. Blakeley 2010).3 The state needs to¶ be put on
the agenda in a particular way, that is, in the context of a wider analysis of¶ class and capital that
considers all of them as part of the historically specific dynamics of¶ neoliberal capitalist globalisation
(e.g. Blakeley 2009, Herring 2010, Maher and Thomson¶ 2011, McKeown 2011). In this way, we can
move beyond simplistic, static, decontextualised¶ dichotomies of state versus non-state terrorism, the
political versus the economic¶ and terrorist political violence versus criminal economic violence. All
these dichotomies¶ feature strongly in terrorism studies, both mainstream and critical. HM-informed
analysis,¶ as Anthony McKeown (2011) demonstrated, moves the focus away from seeing terrorism¶
and counterterrorism as involving discrete events to be compared towards understanding¶ the events
as part of an interconnected, dynamically unfolding process of remaking social¶ relations.
Capitalism ensures economic terrorism escalates—economic incentives ensure
violence against the opposition
McKeown, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies @ University of
Bristol, 11
[Anthony, 4-8-2011, “The structural production of state terrorism: capitalism, imperialism and
international class dynamics”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 81, GSK]
Alongside these mechanisms were measures of a more dubious, though nonetheless¶ structurally
inscribed, bent. Drugs cartels, for example, were pacified by agreeing to the¶ reforms in exchange for a
promise to empower them to take advantage of privatisation to¶ legalise their operations (by buying
into legal concerns) and by the suggestion that financial¶ reform would allow them to circulate their
capital more freely. The flipside to this approach¶ – unmentioned in the mainstream literature on
reform – was an increase in the use of¶ state terrorism against those fundamentally opposed to the
agenda (see e.g. Stokes 2005,¶ Avilés 2006, Raphael 2010), such as the country’s union movement. It is
a commonly noted¶ fact that Colombia is the world’s most dangerous place to be a trade unionist, with
nearly¶ 4000 people killed between 1986 and 2003 (Solidarity Center 2006, p. 11), and the policy¶
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paradigm of global competitiveness intensifies these conflicts by encouraging a radical ¶ shift in the
capital–labour relation in favour of the former.¶ As William Aviles mentions, trade unionists have been
at the forefront of resistance¶ to recommodification and restructuring, which has led to them being
subject to state terror¶ (Avilés 2006, p. 22). Sam Raphael, too, notes, citing a report authored by Human¶
Rights Watch, that state and paramilitary terror against unions and other left-wing groups¶ ‘continue[s]
to be the country’s most serious human rights problem’ (Human RightsWatch,¶ cited in Raphael 2010, p.
167). For Raphael, increased state violence (including terrorism)¶ remains firmly rooted in the country’s
ongoing conflict between the Colombian oligarchy¶ and the country’s resistance movements. State
terrorism is, he argues, ‘the product of a concerted¶ attempt by the state and sections of the economic
and landholding elite to defend¶ the political and economic status quo from significant challenge’
(Raphael 2010, p. 170).
Capitalism is the root cause of state terror—commodification of markets and imperial
logic
McKeown, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies @ University of
Bristol, 11
[Anthony, 4-8-2011, “The structural production of state terrorism: capitalism, imperialism and
international class dynamics”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 78-79, GSK]
Driven by a capitalist logic that demands deepening commodification worldwide¶ through ‘the
pervasive penetration of the private profit motive in all spheres of human existence’,¶ and in all
countries (Overbeek 2004, Abstract), state terrorism is motivated from¶ ‘above’ by an imperial logic of
power that imposes, through law, a neo-liberal paradigm that¶ (re)produces conditions in which
particular acts of state terrorism are embedded. These¶ imperial mechanisms are graphically illustrated
in Figure 1. As depicted in Figure 1, imperial¶ law imposes four general policies that tend to intensify
social (class) conflict and,¶ in the right circumstances, produce or intensify practices of state terrorism:
deregulation,¶ which removes impediments to the functioning of markets; privatisation and
commodification,¶ which opens up new areas for capital accumulation; the liberalisation of trade¶ and
finance, which opens up dominated social formations to inflows of foreign goods and¶ capital; and
decentralisation, which encourages ‘tightly controlled and carefully delimited¶ forms of marketsupporting [social] activity as empowerment’ (Cammack 2003, p. 12). In states beset with social
conflict, the denationalisation of the state also tends to reinforce the¶ role of para-state actors in
(re)producing capital accumulation in what might be termed,¶ to borrow a phrase from Robert Mandel,
‘domestic security substitution’ (Mandel 2002).¶ Together, these policies set the scene for societal
‘creative destruction’; as the World Bank¶ puts it in its World development report 2005: a better
investment climate for everyone, this¶ involves instituting in developing countries¶ [l]ow barriers to the
diffusion of ideas, including barriers to importing modern equipment¶ and the way work is organized.
And an environment that fosters the competitive processes¶ that Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative
destruction’ – an environment in which firms have¶ opportunities and incentives to test their ideas,
strive for success, and prosper or fail. (World¶ Bank 2004, pp. 2–3)
Market structure ensures only the alt can solve state and economic terror
McKeown, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies @ University of
Bristol, 11
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Lundeen/Pointer/Spraker
[Anthony, 4-8-2011, “The structural production of state terrorism: capitalism, imperialism and
international class dynamics”, Critical Studies on Terrorism, volume: 4:1, p. 82-83, GSK]
The incapacity of the Colombian state certainly precedes neo-liberalisation, but the policy¶ paradigm
propagated by the international organisations nonetheless exacerbates the state’s¶ inability to
administer a centralised monopoly of organised coercion. In this scenario,¶ increased militarisation
coupled with decentralised violence has facilitated the ‘enhancement¶ of the state’s administration of
violence and repression’ (Hristov 2009). Raphael¶ rightly pointed to the fact that the state’s use of
paramilitary forces in Colombia stems¶ from its historical context (a context, it should be noted, itself
rooted in a previous imperial¶ context: colonialism), and that parcelling out the state’s terrorism
apparatus to those¶ forces enables the state to maintain a façade of innocence (Raphael 2010, p. 165).
But¶ this does not necessarily mean that the majority of state agents view paramilitary terrorism¶ as the
‘best of all possible worlds’ in terms of domestic governance3; instead, deepening¶ paramilitarism is a
structurally inscribed strategic governance mechanism driven by both¶ the country’s historical balance
of class forces and the destabilising processes set in train¶ through the deepening imperial control of
the country’s political economy.¶ Increased violence in the agricultural sector is often an indirect result
of the increasing¶ dominance of US agricultural exporters and multinationals (empowered through
neoliberal¶ reforms that structurally privilege US capitals), leading to vast increases in food¶ imports
from the United States, fuelling a corresponding rise in poverty, unemployment and¶ social unrest
(Avilés 2006, p. 90). The structural power of the US farming lobby is acknowledged¶ as a fact of life by
Jeffrey J. Schott, in a study of a proposed US–Colombia Free¶ Trade Agreement. Schott blithely notes
that all US trade partners ‘need to make a virtue¶ out of a necessity’ and ‘accommodate increased US
imports’ by ‘foster[ing] alternative sources of income and employment in rural areas’ (Schott 2006, p.
12). As a consequence,¶ any trading gains for Colombia will require ‘significant restructuring . . . due to¶
the increased competition’, in both public and private sectors (Schott 2006, p. 13). In these¶ conditions,
an inability to resist US demands has also contributed to the weakening of state¶ capacity and
‘worsened the prevalent climate of violence’ (Ahumada and Andrews 1998,¶ p. 462).¶ The upshot is that
the increased use of paramilitary terrorism to achieve the state’s¶ objectives is driven not so much by
an urge to defend the status quo per se; instead, it derives¶ from what Antonio Gramsci termed a
‘passive revolution’, described by Robert Cox as ‘an¶ attempt to introduce aspects of revolutionary
change while maintaining a balance of social¶ forces in which those favouring restoration of the old
order remain firmly entrenched’ (Cox¶ 1987, p. 192). This is a subtle distinction, but it is one that is
attentive to the dynamic and¶ changing configuration of class forces as the Colombian economy is
internationalised; in¶ other words, the increase in state terror through paramilitary violence stems, in
part, from¶ an attempt by the Colombian elite to retain continuity within change, where that change¶
is more or less imposed through depoliticised development agreements that in reality both¶ express
the dominance of imperial power and ripen the conditions in which state violence¶ will be increasingly
terroristic.4