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***A2 – Egalitarianism**
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Egalitarianism Frontline (1/2)
1. Distributive justice leads to global poverty
Carl Knight – P.h.d International Studies 2008, 34, 713–733, British International Studies Association “A pluralistic
approach to global poverty”
But Rawls’ masterpiece also presents some obvious obstacles to global poverty alleviation. A Theory of Justice
explicitly states that the theory is only to be applied within a society. Furthermore, in those few places where the book off ers
some tangential discussion of transdomestic justice, it is characterised as a question of ‘the justice of the law of nations and of relations between
states’.16 Hence, in a discussion occasioned by his analysis of conscription and conscientious refusal, Rawls suggests that ‘one may extend the
interpretation of the original position and think of the parties as representatives of diff erent nations who must choose together the fundamental
principles to adjudicate conflicting claims among states’.17 He com- ments that this procedure is ‘fair among nations’, and that there would be ‘no
surprises’ in the outcome, ‘since the principles chosen would . . . be familiar ones’ ensuring treaty compliance, describing the conditions for just
wars, and granting rights of self-defence and self-determination – the latter being ‘a right of a people to settle its own aff airs
without the intervention of foreign powers’.18 This is, then, a thoroughly nationalist conception of justice:
social justice applies only within a state or nation. Rawls’s radical principles of distributive justice, such as the diff erence
principle, would only hold transdomestically where, improbably, states had signed treaties to this eff ect. Given that such wide ranging
internationally redistributive treaties have never been signed, A Theory of Justice provided a rationale for the
Western general public’s impression that their duties to the global poor are, at most, those of charity. Rawls’
full expression of his views in this area came nearly three decades later in The Law of Peoples.19 Here Rawls again uses the notion of a
transdomestic original position, arguing that it is an appropriate instrument for selecting laws to govern relations
between both liberal societies and ‘decent non-liberal societies’, especially those which are ‘decent hierarchical societies’, being non-aggressive,
recognising their citizens’ human rights, assigning widely acknowledged additional rights and duties, and being backed by genuine and not
unreasonable beliefs among judges and other officials that the law embodies a ‘common good idea of justice’.20 This Society of Peoples would
agree to be guided by eight principles constituting ‘the basic charter of the Law of Peoples’.21
2. Focusing exclusively on the poor stigmatizes the issue—no solvency
Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald – Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana State, January 1999 “Misfortune, welfare
reform, and right-wing egalitarianism”
Yet nobody in the welfare debate, as far as I know, invoked the Charles Murray of The Bell Curve rather than the Murray of Losing Ground.
Moreover, while many right-wing arguments are neutral about questions of class distinctions, others actually seem to be grounded in a kind of
relational egalitarianism. For example, conservatives sometimes argue that welfare stigmatizes recipients. As we have already heard Gingrich
(1995, 71) say, "The welfare state reduces the poor from citizens to clients." This argument raises a serious issue
for relational egalitarians: How can the poor be given material aid with- out others thinking less of them? The stigma of being on
the receiving end of welfare may create the very divisions in society that the relational egalitarian seeks to
avoid. If government programs designed to help the poor stand in the way of citizens relating to each other
non-hierarchically, maybe we should abolish such programs in the interest of a society in which citizens stand as
equals.
3. Egalitarianism does not equate society
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
Egalitarianism forces persons who exceed the average, in the respect deemed by the theorist to be relevant, to
surrender, insofar as possible, the amount by which they exceed that average to persons below it. On the face of it,
therefore, egalitarianism is incompatible with common good, in empowering some people over others: roughly,
the unproductive over the productive. The former’s interests are held to merit the imposition of force over others,
whereas the interests of the productive do not. Yet producers, as such, merely produce; they don’t use force against
others. Thus egalitarianism denies the central rule of rational human association. What could be thought to
justify this apparent bias in favour of the unproductive, the needy, the sick, against the productive – the healthy,
the ingenious, the energetic? What are the latter supposed to have done to the former to have merited the egalitarian’s
impositions? The answer can’t be, ‘Oh, nothing – they’re just unlucky!’ or ‘We don’t like people like that!’ A
rational social theory must appeal to commonvalues. By definition, those have not been respected when a
measure is forced upon certain people against their own values.
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4. “Principles of justice” cement the political sphere—erode the possibility for real change
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 “Between Justice and Legality: Derrida on Decision”,
Political Research Quarterly, http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341
In Rawls’s (1993: 157) universe, consensus is cemented into the political founding and overrides all other issues.
26 Anything that triggers political conflict is excluded from the public sphere: “A liberal view removes from the
political agenda the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social
cooperation.” Difficult issues may be interesting but, for Rawls, they are not the stuff of politics. They threaten
consensus and must be excluded or contained in the private sphere. Politics is about tinkering, not controversy.
The only truly political moment in Rawls’s work, then, is laying the ground for justice as fairness in the original position. Once the principles of justice as fairness are established, however, the political sphere is essentially closed.
Efforts to re-open the foundation are a threat to political stability. The range of acceptable political issues is framed
by principles that are not up for debate. Hence, citizens are prevented from pursuing those modes of civic
involvement that would open the political sphere to real contestation. Given the imperative of consensus, the regime
must protect its political founding from interrogation. Narrowing the range of acceptable political issues exacts a
high cost from citizens. Space for dissent is eliminated. The range of political possibilities is restricted to one
(and only one) that will be fixed “once and for all” (Rawls 1993: 161). Once the principles of justice are instituted,
only the support of the status quo is possible (Alejandro 1998: 144). For Rawls, all citizens affirm the same public
conception of justice (1993: 39). Public discussion about alternative political possibilities is not necessary.31
Since a critical disposi- tion toward the founding moment of justice as fairness would risk destroying consensus, it is
better to treat it as a monument before which one genuflects. Rawls, however, does not purge all conflict from his
model of politics in the name of consensus. Some level of reasonable disagreement is permitted in his liberal utopia. It
arises from the “burdens of judgment.” The causes of these burdens are formidable:
5. Inequality inevitable—capitalism
Stuart White 2k, “ReviewArticle: Social Rights and the Social Contract – Political Theory and the New Welfare Politics”
Cambridge University Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30, 507–53
How Much Equality of Opportunity Does Fair Reciprocity Require? I have presented only a very intuitive account of
the conditions of fair reciprocity; I have not formally presented a full conception of distributive justice and
demonstrated how each condition follows from this conception, something one might attempt in a lengthier analysis.
However, I do wish to examine one general philosophical issue that arises when we come to think about the
conditions of fair reciprocity. Assume that distributive justice is centrally about some form of equal opportunity.
The notion of equality of opportunity can, of course, be understood in a number of different ways. But assume, for the
moment, that we understand it in the radical form defended in contemporary egalitarian theories of distributive
justice.40 Equal opportunity in this sense requires, inter alia, that we seek to prevent or correct for inequalities in
income attributable to differences in natural ability and for inequalities in capability due to handicaps that people
suffer through no fault of their own. The question I wish to consider can then be put like this: How far must society
satisfy the demands of equal opportunity before we can plausibly say that all of its members have obligations
under the reciprocity principle? One view, which I shall call the full compliance view, is that the demands of equal
opportunity must be satisfied in full for it to be true that all citizens have obligations to make productive
contributions to the community under the reciprocity principle. The intuition is that people can have no obligation to
contribute in a significant way to a community that is not (in all other relevant respects) fully just – at least if they are
amongst those who are disadvantaged by their society’s residual injustices. Reciprocity kicks in, as it were, only when
the terms of social co-operation are fair, where ‘fairness’ requires (inter alia) full satisfaction of the demands of
equal opportunity. If equal opportunity is understood in our assumed sense, however, then this full compliance
view effectively removes the ideal of fair reciprocity from the domain of real-world politics. For there is no
chance that any advanced capitalist (or, for that matter, post-capitalist) society will in the near future satisfy
equal opportunity, in our assumed sense, in full. And so, following the full compliance view, we should, if we are
egalitarians in the assumed sense, simply abandon the idea that there can be anything like a universal civic
obligation to make a productive contribution to the community.
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XT 1 – Poverty Turn
Egalitarian theory addresses social inequality within the boundaries of our society. This analysis
fails to consider the impact we have on other societies—this is proven by the disad, We can
sacrifice the world in a nuclear war as long as we narcissistically fix our society
Turns Case: For every person we equalize into our society we marginalize 10 more. Suddenly,
people in china, Africa, and chad don’t matter to is—all that is important is our own society.
Prefer our EV, Knight has a P.h.D in international world—he is educated about the effect domestic
policies have on global poverty
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XT 2 – Stigma
Giving social services exclusively to the poor stigmatize the issue. It’s empirically proven with
Welfare aid – this stigma creates social divisions in society that undermine egalitarian efforts.
That’s Fitzgerald 99
Other ways to defend welfarism without Egalitarianism
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
In fact, I deny welfarism too, but that is not necessary for denying egalitarianism. I suspect that most who
profess egalitarianism are really safety-netters at heart. That is one of many confusions behind
egalitarianism; the question, ‘But what will you do about ragged families starving in the streets?’ is simply
beside the point here. Too often, welfarism is equated with egalitarianism. But wrongly. If welfarism is to be
defended, better reasons should be found.
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XT 3 – Egal Ø Equality
Egalitarianism is incompatible with the common good, since it empowers certain people over
others; This violates the rules of rational human association.
It unnecessarily empowers the unproductive—don’t let them give you the “there just unlucky” or
society “marginalizes” them, our author s willing to be straight up—we have to protect the
common good. That’s Narveson 97
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XT 4 – Public Sphere
The Egalitarian view is totalitarian—it prefeces its values overriding all other domain issues; It
removes important political question in the name of “justice.” This leaves us with no other option
but the status quo because we are in fear to even suggest an idea to “change to society” because it
might get coopted. That’s Sokoloff ‘5
As an intellectual—err on the side of protecting argument plurality
Martha C. Nussbaum ‘01 – P.h.D @ Harvard “Political Objectivity” Vol. 32, No. 4, Objectivity in Ethics,
Politics, and Aesthetics (Autumn, 2001), pp. 883-906
But the project of political liberalism constrains the search for objectivity. One of the things about which people
reasonably disagree is what type of objectivity we are able to attain in judgments about fundamental ethical/political
matters. Different comprehensive doc- trines give different verdicts on this matter. The comprehensive doctrine of
Roman Catholic Christianity, for example, gives a very different answer from that supplied by postmodernism,
Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and, even, Protestant Christianity. I shall explore the implications of this fact for the role a
concept of objectivity can and should play in the political sphere. I shall argue that respect for pluralism indeed constrains us here. Although each of us in our ethical and scientific lives will have some view about the issues addressed
in the present symposium, we ought not to build our fundamental political principles around a particular
contested conception of objectivity, for example Allen Wood’s conception, or the conception of self-evident truth
used in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. On the other hand, we are not entirely at a loss: for we can articulate
and defend a specifically political conception of objectivity that can itself be the object of an overlapping consensus
among comprehensive doctrines. To indicate the direction of my argument very briefly, think what it would be like to
live in a nation that built its fundamental political principles around the view that Allen Wood’s view of objectivity is
correct, and that anyone who holds otherwise is simply mistaken. I admire Wood’s arguments. I think that something
close to this is probably true. But still, to build basic political principles on Wood’s view10 seems problematic. Even if
the doctrine did not have any specific consequences for political life, as it probably would, still its public recognition
itself poses a problem. All those Americans who hold to some revealed religion, and ground their understanding of
objectivity on the idea of revelation, as well as all those skeptical or relativist or neo- Humean Americans who think
that Wood is wrong on other grounds, would be put in the position of second-class citizens.11 Because they donot
share the true doctrine, their vision of truth and objectivity does not get to count in what shapes the polity, even
though, let us suppose, it is a liberal regime and their freedom of speech would in no way be curtailed. We would
not like such a way of proceeding even in the classroom: we philosophers think that all the major positions should
be studied and debated, and treated with respect, and none should be an unexamined cornerstone for the entire
enterprise. How much worse, then, if the foundations of a nation itself were built in ways that show disrespect for
the views of many people about what truth is and where it lies. Although I disagree with more or less everything
Richard Rorty says, and think that on the matters where he and Wood disagree Wood is right and Rorty is wrong,
still, I would not like to live in a nation built around the denial of Rorty’s epistemological and metaphysical view, any
more than in one built around the denial of my own. He is a reasonable man, and a fellow citizen; the disagreements
we have are reasonable disagreements. Political respect for his reason requires respecting his comprehensive
doctrine, and that, in turn, requires not building the polity on the contradiction of that doctrine.12
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XT 5 – Inegal Inevitable
The Call for distributive justice fails because of capitalism—The affirmative is nothing but a bandaid solution that does not correct the inherent dominance of the capitalist structure. Reject their
civic obligation claims—society will never reach full equality. That’s White 2k
Additionally,
Hierarchies’ are inevitable even after the redistribution of wealth
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
Egalitarians can only defend their view by reference to values that many or most people do not have. People
below the mid-point of the proposed redistributional scale will, of course, have some reason to rejoice at their
unearned egalitarian windfalls – temporarily. Meanwhile, people from whom they are wrested have the
opposite motivation, so common good is out the window from the start. Nor can equality relevantly be held to
be an ‘objective’ or an ‘absolute’ value – a value in itself, that doesn’t need to be held byanybody (except
the theorist himself, of course). That is intuitional talk, which has already been dismissed. Do real people
(as opposed to theorists) care about equality as such? No. They want better and more reliable food on the
table, nicer tables to put it on, TV’s, theatres, motorcars, books, medical services, churches, courses in
Chinese history, and so on, indefi- nitely. Equality is irrelevant to these values: how much of any or all of
them anyone has is logically independent of how much anyone else has. People are rarely free of envy, to be
sure. Most people would like to be better than others in some way – and some will pay others to let them look
down on them. But few will make themselves worse off in order to make some other people equally badly off.
Values that can be improved by human activity are not independent in any other way, though, for
production is cooperative, requiring arrangements agreed to by a great many people – work- ers, financiers,
engineers, customers. Nobody can attain to wealth, insofar as the free market obtains, without others likewise
benefiting. These are truisms, though I am aware that they will be seen by many readers as ‘ideological’ –
even at the present time, when the absurdities of alternative views of economics have been so completely
exposed.13
3 things prevent equality:
1. Everything is temporary—equality isn’t a concept that can be solidified for the rest of history
2. Desire—People don’t want equality they want better TV’s, Theatres, motorcars; the human
condition makes them want what the don’t have.
3. Equality is impossible—envy
Jon Mandle 2k “Reviwed: Liberalism, Justice, and Markets: A Critique of Liberal Equality by Colin M. Macleod”
The Philosophical Review, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 601-604 Duke University Press. Jstor
Here, I can only illustrate one of Macleod's many distinct criticisms of Dworkin's use of idealized markets. Dworkin
argues that the initial division of resources (prior to adjustments made in light of differences in individual ambition)
should satisfy an "envy test": "No division of resources is an equal division if, once the division is complete, any
[person] would prefer someone else's bundle of resources to his own bundle" (Dworkin 1981b, 285). And the
mechanism he proposes to satisfy this test is a hypothetical auction in which individuals bid on resources using some
counter (itself without value and equally distributed). This market-based solution values resources entirely in
terms of the preferences that individuals express in the auction. Macleod recognizes that a great strength of
Dworkin's auction is that it is sensitive to the opportunity costs to others of giving some re- source to a particular
individual. As Macleod helpfully points out, "The resources a person can acquire are a function not only of the
importance she attaches to them but also of the importance attached by others to them .... Phrased in the
language of opportunity costs, the auction ensures that aggregate opportunity costs are equal" (26).
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Egalitarianism Biased
Egalitarian claims are biased
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
Further reflection on this leads to an important further point against egalitarianism: that it is essentially certain to be
counterproductive as well – to defeat the very values whose equalization is required by the theor y. Forced transfers
from rich to poor, from capitalists to proletarians, will worsenthe lot of the poor even as it decreases the wealth of
the rich. Not only is egalitarianism biased, but the particular people against whom it is biased are the
productive– the source of what the people it is biased in favour of hope to receive in consequenc e. It is not too
much to say, even, that egalitarianism is a conspiracy against those it claims to be trying to help.
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Must Define Poverty
Poverty must be defined to evaluate egalitarianism
Stuart White 2k, “Review Article: Social Rights and the Social Contract – Political Theory and the New Welfare Politics”
Cambridge University Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30, 507–53
So exactly how high ought this ‘high threshold of equal opportunity’ to be? I shall conspicuously evade offering a
straightforward answer to that perfectly proper question here. All I wish to claim is that, for the purpose of
evaluating the justice of welfare contractualism in our own societies here and now, this is indeed the sort of
question we should focus on. We should think about what this threshold is, how far our society currently is from
satisfying it, and what reforms would take us to this threshold level of equal opportunity. My discussion of the
four intuitive conditions of fair reciprocity, and of the types of policy that may be necessary to satisfy these
conditions, only indicates, in a very preliminary and incomplete way, what I think satisfaction of this threshold is
likely to involve.
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Evaluate the D/A
Evaluate the Disad:
Otherwise Egalitarianism dominates the political sphere and makes us powerless to the abuses of
elites
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 “Between Justice and Legality: Derrida on Decision”,
Political Research Quarterly, http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341
If Rawls’s appeal to the burdens of judgment seems disingenuous insofar as the founding moment of justice as
fairness is somehow protected from them, his underlying notion of citizenship also leaves much to be desired. Even
though he claims “citizens learn and profit from conflict and argument” (Rawls 1993: lvii), he methodically closes
spaces for the types of dissent, conflict and argument that nurture democratic citizenship. If citizens with
competing comprehensive doctrines happen to meet on the street in Rawls’s liberal utopia, they nervously grimace at
each other and then retreat to the private sphere, simply shrugging shoulders in silence during encounters. Both the
immediate impact and the intergenerational effect of Rawls’s neutralization of public dialogue will produce a
society of inarticulate shoppers on Prozac: “By taking Prozac, they may be able to alleviate their angst, which
might be a disruptive force to the liberal order” (Alejandro 1998: 13). Citizens will not only be unable to contest
abuses of power but they will be incapable of negotiating encounters with others in substantive ways. Rawls’s
allergy to even mild modes of political conflict results in a de-politicization of politics under the banner of
neutrality.35 He evacuates all political content from public discussion: “We try to bypass religion and philosophy’s
pro- foundest controversies so as to have some hope of uncover- ing a basis of a stable overlapping consensus”
(Rawls 1993: 152).36Much to his credit, Rawls acknowledges the great deal of indeterminacy of decision in the
burdens of judgment but this indeterminacy is somehow absent from his image of political society. The
indeterminacy of decision in Rawls is mitigated by his de-politicization of political foundations. The
indeterminacy of politics is precisely what Rawls seeks to expel from the political horizon. Political liberalism
purges politics from politics and encloses the political field under the terror of uniformity.37The value Rawls
ascribes to pluralism is disingenuous. It is incompatible with the imperative of unanimity on basic principles.
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A2 - Moral Egalitarianism
Moral calls for egalitarianism are self defeating
Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald – Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana State, January 1999 “Misfortune, welfare
reform, and right-wing egalitarianism”
How will democratic decision makers choose which welfare policy to endorse? They will speculate. The average
voter, for example, will have no option other than guessing which policy has the best long- term
consequences, and the average elected representative is probably in no better position. In speculating about
long-term consequences they may be inordinately swayed by any number of prejudices or pre- conceived
ideas. When the truth does not present itself clearly, it is easy to seize on the evidence that supports one's
ideological presuppositions. The consequence of applying equality of fortune to the welfare debate is not
usefully neutral in the sense that it avoids blind ideological presuppositions or commitments. It is tragically
neutral in the sense that it provides democratic voters and their representatives with no reason to challenge
their blind ideological commitments. For equality of fortune would focus the debate on the empirical questio n
that did, in fact, command the lion's share of attention: Which policy is best for the poor? Answers to this
question will be determined by prejudice and mood more than reasoned deliberation or real debate. If this
consequence is inevitable, then the implications for the ideal of equality are dismal : it would appear impotent
as a political ideal, for it requires democratic bodies to make decisions based on speculation about economic
effects over the course of decades or even generations.
Err on the side of combining political consequences with humanitarianism
Thomas Weiss ‘99, Presidential Professor of Political Science @ CUNY Graduate Center, "principles, politics, and
humanitarian action"
Political actors have a newfound interest in principles, while humanitari- ans of all stripes are increasingly aware
of the importance of politics. Yet, there remain two distinct approaches—politics and humanitarianism as selfcontained and antithetical realities or alternatively as overlapping spheres. Nostalgia for aspects of the Cold War
or other bygone eras is perhaps under- standable, but there never was a “golden age” when humanitarianism was
insulated from politics. Much aid was an extension of the foreign policies of major donors, especially the
superpowers. Nonetheless, it was easieq conceptually and practically, to compartmentalize humanitarianism and
politics before the present decade. Then, a better guide to action was provided by an unflinching respect for
traditional princi- ples, although they never were absolute ends but only intermediate means. In today’s world,
humanitarians must ask themselves how to weigh the political consequences of their action or inaction; and
politicians must ask them- selves how to gauge the humanitarian costs of their action or inaction. The calculations are tortuous, and the mathematics far from exact. However, there is no longer any need to ask whether
politics and humanitarian action intersect. The real question is how this intersection can be managed to ensure
more humanized politics and more effective humanitarian action. To this end, humanitarians should be neither
blindly principled nor blindly pragmatic.
Moral views of egalitarianism are self serving
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
2. Our subject concerns normative political theory, which I take to be part of morality. The subject is not
depiction of a ‘way of life,’ a formula for individual happiness, or a view of the mean- ing of life, but rather,
rules for the (large) community, or better (as assumed henceforth), everybody. In the words of Aquinas, a
moral theory imposes a uniformity. It proposes a set – a single set, however complicated – of rules, declaring
that all should adhere to it. But this uniformity need not be egalitarian in the sense defined above. The one
basic set of directives to which everyone ought to adhere , and by reference to which the conduct of anyone may
be called to account, could be wildly inegalitarian (as with slave moralities.) Universality – sameness of rules
for all – is a defining feature of morals; egalitarianism is not.
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XT – A2 - Moral Egalitarianism
Government deliberation over equality inevitably collapses to an ideological discussion based upon
preconceived prejudices of the poor; speculation of what policy will generate equality will fail as a
result.
Egalitarianism collapses the discussion to empiricism—this effects the way we approach and
implement policies. That’s Fitzgerald ‘99
Our risk calculus necessarily doesn’t exclude humanitarian concerns, but it urges political input—
yes these calculations can be difficult but their importance is significant. The costs of Political
inaction or action have consequential importance. That’s Weis
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A2 Democratic Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism isn’t democratic—inevitable dilemma
Fabienne Peter – Ph.D. in Economics – 13 November 2006 “The Political Egalitarian’s Dilemma” Springer Link
The dilemma is the following. If, on the one hand, the substantive constraints on the deliberative process are kept to a
minimum, only a weak criterion of political equality can be imposed on the deliberative process. This criterion may
fail to ensure the effective equality of participants in the deliberative process, which undermines the legitimacy of the
outcomes of such a process. If, on the other hand, political equality is interpreted comprehensively, many
substantive judgments will be packed into the conditions imposed on the deliberative process. They will be
treated as exempt from deliberative evaluation. The stronger the criterion of political equality, the more emphasis
is placed not just on general political resources, but on people’s abilities to make effective use of these resources,
the narrower the scope for democratic scrutiny. This, again, jeopardizes democratic legitimacy. Thus, a strong
criterion of political equality, which focuses on people’s possibilities to participate in the deliberative process as
effectively equals, will fail to ensure democratic legitimacy because it will exempt too many value judgments
from deliberative democratic scrutiny. A weak criterion of political equality will fail to ensure democratic
legitimacy because many will not have been able to participate in the deliberative process as effectively equals. In
other words, the political egalitarian’s dilemma reveals a clash between the attempt to ensure equal possibilities
to participate in the democratic process and the requirement of subjecting substantive judgments to
deliberative evaluation.
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A2 Radical Egalitarianism
Forced attempts at equality perpetuate inequality
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
The conclusion stands, then, that egalitarians propose measures incompatible with Common Good, conceived
in liberal terms. Appeals to ‘equity’ that are not simply question-begging fail; appeals to moral intuitions are
useless; appeal to the arbitrariness of nature is irrelevant; appeals to marginal utility are of questionable basic
relevance, and exactly wrong insofar as they are relevant. Society , I conclude, should make no interference in
the free actions of individuals in using their resources as they see best, by their own lights, within the
constraints of a no-harm-to-others rule. There is no socially acceptable case for forced equality .
Egalitarianism hurts the poor
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
Further reflection on this leads to an important further point against egalitarianism: that it is essentially
certain to be counterproductive as well – to defeat the very values whose equalization is required by the
theory. Forced transfers from rich to poor, from capitalists to proletarians, will worsen the lot of the poor
even as it decreases the wealth of the rich. Not only is egalitarianism biased, but the particular people against
whom it is biased are the productive– the source of what the people it is biased in favour of hope to receive
in consequence. It is not too much to say, even, that egalitarianism is a conspiracy against those it claims to
be trying to help. There is a reason for this, whose incomprehension by philosophers even to this day
should be a matter of astonishment. A free economy is one in which no one forcibly intervenes against the
property rights of any other – all are free to use their resources as they judge best, including engaging in
commercial exchanges. In such a system, the only ways to achieve wealth are by means which improve the
situations of others. Successful businesspeople become so by organizing or financially supporting the
production of things that other people want, and want more than the existing alternatives – since those
people, having no obligation to buy, would not otherwise buy them. The only other possibilities are fairly
uninteresting: gift, and the discovery or ‘original acquisition’ of valuable things. But gift, as such, is pure
transfer and does not create wealth, except in the form of good will. We may praise occasional acts of
charity, but if everyone were only charitable and unproductive , all, including the poor and sick, would quickly
die. And as to acquisition, if we would attain to wealth, those items must be harnessed to human use – nature
does not afford a free lunch any more than our fellows. Even someone who acquired a natural beauty spot,
say, and keeps it natural, will be able to make a decent living thereby only if he is able to charge others for
the right to enjoy that spot. And so on.
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Inegalitarianism Good – Solves
In-egalitarianism solves– benefits trickle down
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
In short, successful investment enhances the lot of others in society. When people are employed, this enhances
their real incomes, more than any other opportunities they may have had. And when they spend their money,
it is because they judge that expenditure to contribute maximally to their well-being. Thus, if we wrest the
gains from investment or well-paid work from the investors and workers in question, we take from the
productive and transfer to the unproductive. This takes money that would have produced more and ensures
that it will be used in less productive ways. A large society that undertakes this kind of activity extensively
decrees poverty for itself, in comparison with what it could have done instead in a freed-up market. And it is
the poor, above all, who benefit, relatively speaking, from commercial activity – activ- ity that, if unimpeded,
continually drives down prices, continually finds new employment for available labour, and continually reallocates resources in the way that does most good for most people, as indicated by the actual choices and
preferences of those people.11
Egalitarianism is distinct from liberalism
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
I argue that egalitarianism is ‘wrong, or at least incompatible with liberalism.’ Recent writers alleging to be liberals
don’t often bother about defining what they believe, but in fact it is not particularly difficult to do so. It may be
sufficiently identified by just two theses: First, liberalism denies that government or morality is justified by its
tendency to benefit those in power. Justice is not ‘the inter- est of the stronger party.’ Both liberals and
conservatives hold instead that the only justificatory purpose of legislation is the good of the ruled – those whose
behaviour is to be controlled. Second, there is the question how ‘the good of the people’ is to be understood. Here lies
the special feature of liberalism. It denies the very natural-sounding idea of Plato, Aristotle, and perhaps most people,
that if government is for the good of the people, surely the rulers should find out what is good for people and then use
the laws to make them good rather than bad. Liberalism, on the contrary, holds that it is the preferences, the
values held by those very peoplet hat is to guide legislation, whether or not those preferences accord with others’
notion(s) of ‘the good.’ We may discuss the good with people, of course, and urge them to do things our way; but we
may not force them to do so: individuals may live their lives as they see best. Rules for the community are justified
exclusively by their conduciveness to that end – or rather, that very diverse set of ends.
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Sufficientarianism Good
The goal of the judge should not be to make sure each person is equal—rather ensure each person
is sufficient
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005 “What Matters is Absolute Poverty, Not
Relative Poverty” http://www.cdams.kobe-u.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf
Therefore, sufficientarianism is an alternative to economic egalitarianism. Sufficientarianism presents the idea of
sufficiency as an alternative to the idea of economic equality. The essence of sufficientarianism is to show that the
idea of economic equality has no intrinsic value. According to sufficientarianism, when people consider what is
important for their own lives, the amount of goods owned by other people becomes irrelevant. Instead, comparison
with the amount of goods owned by others prevents people from seeking what they consider valuable for themselves.
It is unnecessary to attach moral significance to economic egalitarianism. While Frankfurt enumerates some
reasons for the failure of economic egalitarianism, he indicates that egalitarians do not actually defend the idea of
equality, as indicated by the priority view. In other words, egalitarians’ objections are not based on their moral
aversion to a person holding a smaller amount of goods as compared to other people. In reality, their objection
is to the fact that the person owns only a remarkably small amount of goods. This naturally gives rise to the
following questions. What does sufficiency imply? What is the standard of sufficiency? Although Frankfurt does not
define the meaning of sufficiency in concrete terms, it does not imply that sufficientarianism is pointless. Indeed, the
meaning of sufficiency can be defined in various ways. However, the essence of sufficientarianism is to seek what
one finds valuable in his/her life and not compare the amount of goods one owns with that of others; this is
crucial to judge sufficiency.
Everything is relative—the goal should not be to carve everyone into the same statue—rather
ensure each person is sufficient—this is distinct from economic egalitarianism
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005 “What Matters is Absolute Poverty, Not
Relative Poverty” http://www.cdams.kobe-u.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf
Irrespective of the definition of sufficiency selected, sufficientarianism cannot justify distribution to those whose
circumstances are above the standard of sufficiency. Therefore, it does not lead to the implausible conclusion that
goods should be distributed to millionaires in a society that comprises only billionaires and millionaires.
Sufficientarianism, which rejects economic egalitarianism and simultaneously requires distribution to those
below the standard of sufficiency, is consistent with moderate libertarianism or classical liberalism, which rejects
distribution aimed at reducing income disparity and admits the necessity of distribution that guarantees a minimum
standard of living. Indeed, the interpretation of sufficientarianism that I present in this paper might conflict with the
original intention of sufficientarians. As we have seen, I support sufficientarianism. Despite differences between
sufficientarianism and the priority view, I re-emphasize the fact that they have a common crucial viewpoint regarding
egalitarianism. They share the belief that being worse off than others does not have moral significance in terms of the
ethics of distribution. While the idea of equality that emphasizes relativity with others is set as a default position in
the argument on distribution, both theories demand criticism of the above assumption. Egalitarians often confuse
equality with priority or sufficiency; however, it is important to bear in mind that the apparent plausibility of
egalitarianism is derived from its humanitarian appeal. The point I wish to emphasize is that absolute poverty,
and not relative poverty, is important. Next, before turning to an examination of the connection between
sufficientarianism and libertarianism, I shall consider the necessity of highlighting the abuse of egalitarianism.
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A2 Egal = Util
No such thing as a utilitarian defense of egalitarianism
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
An immensely popular argument, thought to provide a clear utilitarian defense for egalitarianism, appeals to a
principle of ‘diminishing marginal utility.’ The idea is that the marginal return from possession of some
measurable good decreases as a function of the amount one already has – money being the most familiar
and obvious case in point. From this it is inferred that general utility will be promoted by transferring such
goods from those above the midpoint to those below, where the marginal util- ity of unit increments is
much greater. Two major flaws destroy this argument. The first is fundamental:general (aggregate) utility
simply isn’t a common value, and therefore cannot be appealed to. Individuals are not necessarily concerned
to promote the aggregate sum of good. They are mostly concerned to promote the goods of certain
particular persons – themselves, friends, countrymen, whatever – and not the sum of utility, even if that
sum could be objectively deter- mined. It is therefore inadmissible to appeal to it. Only if the particular
individual addressed can be shown that what matters to himwill be forwarded if the aggregate of utility grows
– some- times plausible, to be sure – is he rationally interested in its growth. That special case apart,
utilitarian arguments are dismissed. Second, and more important for present purposes, the argu- ment suffers
from myopia: it focuses only on the consumptionutil- ity of money. But all good things come from
somewhere: namely, human effort and know-how. Allocation of those requires invest- ment. But the poor,
obviously, do not invest – the better-off do that. A well-invested dollar yields goods and services in the future
greatly exceeding the stock of consumption goods one could buy with the same money. The marginal utility
of dollars in the upper incomes is therefore greater, not less, than the marginal utility of dollars for the poor.
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Econ Turns Case
Economic collapse crushes egalitarian legitimacy
Stuart White 2k, “ReviewArticle: Social Rights and the Social Contract – Political Theory and the New Welfare Politics”
Cambridge University Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30, 507–53
Respect for reciprocity is instrumentally important in so far as obvious violations of the principle will undermine
the legitimacy of economic arrangements and the willingness of individuals to maintain these arrangements. This is
perhaps especially true of egalitarian arrangements which involve significant amounts of redistribution. If
egalitarian objectives are pursued in a way that is inattentive to economic free-riding and parasitism, there is a
clear risk that the egalitarian institutions in question will provoke feelings of alienation and resentment and so
undercut the very spirit of solidarity on which they depend. In this vein, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have
recently argued that popular resistance to the American welfare state derives not froman opposition to egalitarian
redistribution per se, but to redistribution that enables citizens to evade the contributive responsibilities that derive
from a widely shared norm of ‘strong reciprocity’.11 Bowles and Gintis start with the observation, confirmed in a
variety of experimental settings, that individuals tend not to conform to the standard model of ‘Homo economicus’,
who rationally pursues his/her self-interest without regard to any norms of fairness. People tend not to be rational
egotists, nor unconditional altruists, but conditional co-operators, willing to do their bit in co-operative ventures to
which they belong so long as they can be assured that others will also make a reasonable contribution: ‘Homo
reciprocans’. Commitment to the norm of reciprocity is such that people are often willing to accept costs to
themselves rather than see this norm violated with impunity. Widespread adherence to the norm may be explicable in
evolutionary terms: communities in which Homo reciprocans predominates may find it easier to solve important
problems of trust and collective action than communities in which Homo economicus predominates. 12 If, however,
commitment to the reciprocity norm is so deep-rooted, then egalitarians must frame their reform proposals in a way
that explicitly acknowledges and upholds the norm rather than being indifferent to it. A very similar argument
concerning the necessary conditions under which citizens will grant their ‘contingent consent’ to egalitarian social
policy is made by Bo Rothstein in relation to European universalistic welfare states. Where social policies are
universalistic in the sense that there is an inclusive share-out of both benefits and contributions, these policies have
greater perceived legitimacy and, Rothstein argues, will thus be relatively resistant to the politics of welfare state
retrenchment.13
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A2 Rawls
Rawl’s theories inevitable lead to inequality for all—arbitrary justice
Jan Narveson – P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 “Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and Baseless” Blackwell
4. A thesis made familiar by Rawls, has it that social arrange- ments ought to correct for the arbitrarinesses of
nature, which are guilty of ‘moral irrelevance’.8 Suppose A has more than B because A is more talented
than B. A’s talents are due to his genetic constitution, which of course A can have done nothing to deserve.
Therefore . . . But that’s the trouble. Rawlsians seem not to have noticed that what actually follows is not the
egalitarian conclusion desired – that we should help matters out by transferring from the fortu- nate to the
less fortunate – but instead, that nobody deserves anything at all – neither the fortunate nor the unfortunate. If
justice is served by depriving people of what they came by as the result of morally arbitrary processes, then we
must take everything from everyone – a kind of ‘equality’, I suppose, but hardly what they had in mind. The
argument is, in short, a howler, over- looked by people convinced in advance. Of course we do not use
notions of desert this way. Those who win the prize by being naturally talented do, often, deserve it: they
exceed the others in relevant ways. ‘Moral arbitrariness’ has bite when it is a matter of being given more on
the basis of what the rewarders do notoffer the rewards for . Unfairness is possible, to be sure: but not via
Rawls’ argument.9
Rawl can’t solve poverty
Carl Knight – p.h.d-- Review of International Studies (2008), 34, 713–733, British International Studies Association “A
pluralistic approach to global poverty”
Abstract. A large proportion of humankind today lives in avoidable poverty. This article examines whether
affluent individuals and governments have moral duties to change this situation. It is maintained that an alternative
to the familiar accounts of transdomestic distributive justice and personal ethics put forward by writers such as
Peter Singer, John Rawls, and Thomas Pogge is required, since each of these accounts fails to reflect the full
range of relevant considerations. A better account would give some weight to overall utility, the condition of the
worst off , and individual responsibility. This approach provides robust support to global poverty alleviation.
Rawls kritik of toleration Is circular – he lacks tolerance of the political processes
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 “Between Justice and Legality: Derrida on Decision”,
Political Research Quarterly, http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341
Rawls presupposes the consensus that his theory seeks to establish, and then he introduces the burdens of
judgment in the name of toleration as a way to reinforce it. And yet, Rawls tolerates everything except the
divisive issues that put his overlapping consensus at risk. Reopening the founding to contestation is not
tolerated. Arguably, fidelity to the burdens justify returning to discuss foundational assumptions since more optimal
arrangements might be possible. But opening the political foundation to discussion, for Rawls, is too risky. It
would not produce the pacified and conflict free vision of politics that he seeks. The burdens may allow for mild
levels of disagreement but they also contain it at the most decisive moment: political foundation. The disagreement
that Rawls permits in one moment is snuffed out in the next. Derrida’s re-conceptualization of decision arrests the
disenchanted liberalism that we see in the work of Rawls. Rawls’s liberalism is disenchanted because he drains
every- thing that revitalizes politics from his image of political soci- ety. He excludes fundamental questions
and controversies from the public sphere. There is no space for healthy polit- ical conflict.38Liberalism needs the
work of Derrida in order to recover politics from politics, to redefine the political core of politics as an experience of
uncertainty and the ethical imperative to respect the other, to overcome bureaucratic liberalism, to strip the illusion off
of institutional decision- making that masks politics behind the veil of consensus, to raise the stakes of responsibility
through the strategic con- vergence of law and justice.
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A2 Rescher
Rescher flows neg when it comes to extinction.
Nicholas Rescher (Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh) 1983 Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to
the theory of risk evaluation, p. 67
Certain hazards are simply unacceptable because they
involve a relatively unacceptable threat—things may go wrong so badly that, relative to the alternatives, it’s just not
worthwhile to “run the risk,” even in the face of a favorable balance of probabilities. The rational man is not willing to trade off
In such situations we are dealing with hazards that are just not in the same league.
against one another by juggling probabilities such outcomes as the loss of one hair and the loss of his health or his freedom. The imbalance or disparity
between risks is just too great to be restored by probablistic readjustments. They are (probablistically) incommersuable: confronted with such
“incomparable” hazards, we do not bother to weigh this “balance of probabilities” at all, but simply dismiss one
alternative as involving risks that are, in the circumstances, “unacceptable”.
We should make predictions even if they aren’t perfect
Fuyuki Kurasawa, Associate Professor of Sociology at York University, ‘4 (Constellations, Vol. 11, No. 4)
When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from some intellectual circles is a deep-seated
skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless,
perhaps even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If,
contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism,
prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future appears to be
unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that
abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the
merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted
assertions about the latter’s total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute
certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises
already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of prevention means that
we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected
consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical
contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations.
The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes,
instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present – including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources
of harm to our successors.
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A2 Menand
Their Menand evidence doesn’t apply – it doesn’t say that all predictions are bad, just that
predictions without evidence are bad
Louis Menand 2005 The New Yorker, 10/5, lexis
It was no news to Tetlock, therefore, that experts got beaten by formulas. But he does believe that he discovered something about why some people
make better forecasters than other people. It has to do not with what the experts believe but with the way they think. Tetlock uses Isaiah Berlin's
metaphor from Archilochus, from his essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," to illustrate the difference. He says: Low scorers look like
hedgehogs: thinkers who "know one big thing," aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly
impatience with those who "do not get it," and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term.
High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation
and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible "ad hocery" that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are
rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess. A hedgehog is a person who sees international affairs to be ultimately determined by a single bottomline force: balance-of-power considerations, or the clash of civilizations, or globalization and the spread of free markets. A hedgehog is the kind of person
who holds a great-man theory of history, according to which the Cold War does not end if there is no Ronald Reagan. Or he or she might adhere to the
"actor-dispensability thesis," according to which Soviet Communism was doomed no matter what. Whatever it is, the big idea, and that idea alone, dictates
the probable outcome of events. For the hedgehog, therefore, predictions that fail are only "off on timing," or are "almost right," derailed by an unforeseeable
accident. There are always little swerves in the short run, but the long run irons them out. Foxes, on the other hand, don't see a single determining
explanation in history. They tend, Tetlock says, "to see the world as a shifting mixture of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies: self-fulfilling ones in
which success breeds success, and failure, failure but only up to a point, and then self-negating prophecies kick in as people recognize that things have gone
too far." Tetlock did not find, in his sample, any significant correlation between how experts think and what their politics are. His hedgehogs were liberal as
well as conservative, and the same with his foxes. (Hedgehogs were, of course, more likely to be extreme politically, whether rightist or leftist.) He also did
not find that his foxes scored higher because they were more cautious-that their appreciation of complexity made them less likely to offer firm predictions.
Unlike hedgehogs, who actually performed worse in areas in which they specialized, foxes enjoyed a modest benefit from expertise. Hedgehogs
routinely over-predicted: twenty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs claimed were impossible or nearly impossible came to pass, versus ten per cent for
the foxes. More than thirty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs thought were sure or near-sure did not, against twenty per cent for foxes. The upside of
being a hedgehog, though, is that when you're right you can be really and spectacularly right. Great scientists, for example, are often hedgehogs. They value
parsimony, the simpler solution over the more complex. In world affairs, parsimony may be a liability-but, even there, there can be traps in the kind of
highly integrative thinking that is characteristic of foxes. Elsewhere, Tetlock has published an analysis of the political reasoning of Winston Churchill.
Churchill was not a man who let contradictory information interfere with his idees fixes. This led him to make the wrong prediction about Indian
independence, which he opposed. But it led him to be right about Hitler. He was never distracted by the contingencies that might combine to make the
elimination of Hitler unnecessary. Tetlock also has an unscientific point to make, which is that "we as a society would be better off
if participants in policy debates stated their beliefs in testable forms"-that is, as probabilities-"monitored their forecasting
performance, and honored their reputational bets." He thinks that we're suffering from our primitive attraction to deterministic, overconfident hedgehogs.
It's true that the only thing the electronic media like better than a hedgehog is two hedgehogs who don't agree. Tetlock notes, sadly, a point that Richard
Posner has made about these kinds of public intellectuals, which is that most of them are dealing in "solidarity" goods, not "credence"
goods. Their analyses and predictions are tailored to make their ideological brethren feel good-more white swans for the white-swan
camp. A prediction, in this context, is just an exclamation point added to an analysis. Liberals want to hear that whatever conservatives are up to is bound to
go badly; when the argument gets more nuanced, they change the channel. On radio and television and the editorial page, the line between expertise and
advocacy is very blurry, and pundits behave exactly the way Tetlock says they will. Bush Administration loyalists say that their predictions about postwar
Iraq were correct, just a little off on timing; pro-invasion liberals who are now trying to dissociate themselves from an adventure gone bad insist that though
they may have sounded a false alarm, they erred "in the right direction"-not really a mistake at all.
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A2 Menand
The study Menand cites is out of context – it just says that we need to examine the evidence
behind predictions. In fact, their study indicts idiots like Menand and Rescher who believe all
predictions suck.
Philip Tetlock (psychologist) 2005 Expert Political Judgement, http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7959.html)
Chapters 2 and 3 explore correspondence indicators. Drawing on the literature on judgmental accuracy, I divide the guiding hypotheses into two categories:
those rooted in radical skepticism, which equates good political judgment with good luck, and those rooted in meliorism, which maintains that the quest for
predictors of good judgment, and ways to improve ourselves, is not quixotic and there are better and worse ways of thinking that translate into better and
worse judgments. Chapter 2 introduces us to the radical skeptics and their varied reasons for embracing their counterintuitive creed. Their guiding precept
is that, although we often talk ourselves into believing we live in a predictable world, we delude ourselves: history is ultimately one damned thing after
another, a random walk with upward and downward blips but devoid of thematic continuity. Politics is no more predictable than other games of chance. On
any given spin of the roulette wheel of history, crackpots will claim vindication for superstitious schemes that posit patterns in randomness. But these
schemes will fail in cross-validation. What works today will disappoint tomorrow.34 Here is a doctrine that runs against the grain of human nature, our
shared need to believe that we live in a comprehensible world that we can master if we apply ourselves.35 Undiluted radical skepticism requires us
to believe, really believe, that when the time comes to choose among controversial policy options--to support Chinese entry
into the World Trade Organization or to bomb Baghdad or Belgrade or to build a ballistic missile defense--we could do as
well by tossing coins as by consulting experts.36 Chapter 2 presents evidence from regional forecasting exercises consistent with this debunking
perspective. It tracks the accuracy of hundreds of experts for dozens of countries on topics as disparate as transitions to democracy and capitalism, economic
growth, interstate violence, and nuclear proliferation. When we pit experts against minimalist performance benchmarks--dilettantes, dart-throwing chimps,
and assorted extrapolation algorithms--we find few signs that expertise translates into greater ability to make either "well-calibrated" or "discriminating"
forecasts. Radical skeptics welcomed these results, but they start squirming when we start finding patterns of consistency in
who got what right. Radical skepticism tells us to expect nothing (with the caveat that if we toss enough coins, expect some streakiness). But the data
revealed more consistency in forecasters' track records than could be ascribed to chance. Meliorists seize on these findings to argue that crude humanversus-chimp comparisons mask systematic individual differences in good judgment. Although meliorists agree that skeptics go too far
in portraying good judgment as illusory, they agree on little else. Cognitive-content meliorists identify good judgment with a particular outlook but squabble
over which points of view represent movement toward or away from the truth. Cognitive-style meliorists identify good judgment not with what one thinks,
but with how one thinks. But they squabble over which styles of reasoning--quick and decisive versus balanced and thoughtful--enhance or degrade
judgment. Chapter 3 tests a multitude of meliorist hypotheses--most of which bite the dust. Who experts were--professional background, status, and so on-made scarcely an iota of difference to accuracy. Nor did what experts thought--whether they were liberals or conservatives, realists or institutionalists,
optimists or pessimists. But the search bore fruit. How experts thought--their style of reasoning--did matter. Chapter 3 demonstrates the
usefulness of classifying experts along a rough cognitive-style continuum anchored at one end by Isaiah Berlin's prototypical
hedgehog and at the other by his prototypical fox.37 The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought,
under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to "cover" new cases ; the more eclectic foxes
knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Treating the regional forecasting
studies as a decathlon between rival strategies of making sense of the world, the foxes consistently edge out the hedgehogs but enjoy their
most decisive victories in long-term exercises inside their domains of expertise. Analysis of explanations for their predictions sheds light
on how foxes pulled off this cognitive-stylistic coup. The foxes' self-critical, point-counterpoint style of thinking prevented them from
building up the sorts of excessive enthusiasm for their predictions that hedgehogs, especially well-informed ones, displayed for
theirs. Foxes were more sensitive to how contradictory forces can yield stable equilibria and, as a result, "overpredicted" fewer departures, good or bad,
from the status quo. But foxes did not mindlessly predict the past. They recognized the precariousness of many equilibria and hedged their bets by rarely
ruling out anything as "impossible." These results favor meliorism over skepticism--and they favor the pro-complexity branch of meliorism, which
proclaims the adaptive superiority of the tentative, balanced modes of thinking favored by foxes,38 over the pro-simplicity branch, which proclaims the
superiority of the confident, decisive modes of thinking favored by hedgehogs.39 These results also domesticate radical skepticism, with its wild-eyed
implication that experts have nothing useful to tell us about the future beyond what we could have learned from tossing coins or inspecting goat entrails .
This tamer brand of skepticism--skeptical meliorism--still warns of the dangers of hubris, but it allows for how a self-critical,
dialectical style of reasoning can spare experts the big mistakes that hammer down the accuracy of their more intellectually
exuberant colleagues.
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***Utilitarianism Good**
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Utilitarianism Frontline (1/2)
1. Nuclear war precedes all ethics
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 19 86 “Nuclear Ethics”, p. 24
This leads us to the last and most difficult problem with nuclear weapons: that they risk nuclear holocaust. This
holocaust is a case of extreme (excessive?) violence, since it may very well entail the end of all human
civilization as well as the destruction of numerous other forms of life (probably everything except cockroaches). It
is difficult to see how such a war can be viewed as following St. Augustine's just war standard of creating peace. Even
outside the precepts of just war, it is hard to see the utilitarian aspects of such a war. It is extremely hard to defend
as a step towards ultimate good, unless you believe that the world needs to be completely destroyed and started
anew.
Since nuclear holocaust is a combination of massive destruction and residual effects, possibly including
the remaking of all life on the planet through genetic mutations and nuclear winter, it is essentially just an extension,
albeit extreme, of the combination of excessive violence and residual effects. Since our earlier analysis of these two
areas failed to provide an ethical framework for either of them even in isolation, we shall not even begin to try
to defend their combination, nuclear holocaust, as ethically acceptable.
2. Util precedes morality – policy makers ought to maximize everyone’s wellbeing
Robert Goodin, fellow in philosophy at Australian National Defense University, 19 90 “The Utilitarian Response”
Utilitarianism begins by generalizing the hedonistic pleasure principle in terms of happiness. Then what is moral
or good is that which brings an agent happiness. This thesis is further generalized to say that happiness should be
secured for as many agents in the community as possible. Every action, therefore, should be motivated in terms
of trying to maximize as much happiness for as many agents as possible within the given community. The use of
happiness in this thesis is in relation to the overall consequences of all the agents in the given community. The basic
argument is that individual good is maximizing individual happiness. Morality though, involves the common good
of all the agents in the community. The common good, therefore, is maximizing every ones happiness. I think
the most promising variation of utilitarianism is rule utilitarianism where emphasis is placed on the
consequences of every agent in the community adopting a particular action as a rule. Implicit within rule
utilitarianism is a strong consistency thesis which places necessary constraints on the basic utilitarian argument.
The question here is that in terms of rule utilitarianism can an agent or should an agent be held accountable not only
for their direct actions but in some cases also for their lack of action or for what they allow to happen
3. Conflicting moral claims are inevitable – this necessitates utilitarianism.
Leslie Mulholland, P.h.d, Professor @ University of Newfoundland, June 19 86 Journal of Philosophy, p. 328
For many, the persuasiveness of utilitarianism as a moral theory lies in its power to provide a way out of
difficulties arising from the conflict of moral principles. The contention that utilitarianism permits people to
override rights in case of conflict of principles or in those cases where some recognized utility requires that a
right be disregarded, is then not an internal objection to utilitarianism. Nor does it even indicate a plausible
alternative to the convinced utilitarian. For him, utilitarianism has its force partly in the coherence and simplicity
of the principle in explaining the morality of such cases.
4. Util is key to avoid grand sacrifice
Robert Goodin, fellow in philosophy at Australian National Defense University 1998 “Utilitarianism as a Public
Philosophy”
The great advantage of utilitarianism as a guide to public conduct is that it avoids gratuitous sacrifices, it
ensures as best we are able to ensure in the uncertain world of public policy-making that policies are sensitive
to people's interests or desires or preferences. The great failing of more deontological theories applies to those
realms, is that they fixate upon duties done for the sake of duty rather than for the sake of any good that is done
by doing one's duty. Perhaps it is permissible (perhaps it is even proper) for private individuals in the course of their
personal affairs to fetishize duties done their own sake. It would be a mistake for public officials to do likewise, not
least because it is impossible.
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5. Critiques of util ignore ignore the suffering it prevents
James Bailey lecturer in politics @ Princeton University, 1997 “Utilitarianism, Institutions, and Justice”, Oxford University
Press, p. 160
I have also tried to show that attempts to subvert utilitarianism through appeals to formal properties about theories of
justice—such as finality and publicity—do not work either. The finality of utilitarianism is unlikely to be in jeopardy in a
world in which people cannot suffer horrible acts as patients or alienating acts as agents. The rules protecting self-ownership,
which are necessary to prevent exploitation, also forbid the horrible acts and allow individuals the liberty to do much
of what they see as with their lives. The question of utilitarianism's subversion in its finality by grossly, unfair
distributive arrangements is answered by a set of institutions in which no deep suffering is allowed and a generous
provision is made for educational opportunities for all.
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XT 1 – Nukes End Ethics
Nuclear war is the end of all ethics
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 “Nuclear Ethics”, p. 24
The first of these ethical points is rather simple: if the intent of the overall war is ethically unsound, then the
use of any weapons in such a cause is wrong, be they clubs or nuclear missiles. This fact does not let us differentiate
ethically between nuclear and non-nuclear arms, but merely returns us to a basis for our original assumption that war
can be just. This point does bear on the ethicality of all- out nuclear war, however, since although the announced
intent of the war may be to save the earth from the yoke of Communism or Imperialism, the actual end of the war
would probably be a silent, smoking planet. Each of us must draw our own conclusions as to the ethicality of such an
action, based on our own cultural, religious, political, and ethical backgrounds. But it is an old ethical axiom that no
right action aims at greater evil in the results, and my personal feelings on all out war is that there is no provocation
that can ethically support such devastation.9 In the eloquent words of John Bennett, "How can a nation live with
its conscience and . . . kill twenty million children in another nation . . .?"10
.
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XT 2 – Util > Morality
Utilitarianism precedes morality – It maximizes the wellbeing and happiness of everyone—this is
the most moral action.
Util doesn’t say we should sacrifice certain members of the community, rather we should value
everyone’s life equally. That’s Goodin ‘90
Upholding life is the ultimate moral standard.
Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl -- profs. of philosophy @ Bellarmine College and St. John’s University,
1981 “Reading Nozick”, p. 244
Rand has spoken of the ultimate end as the standard by which all other ends are evaluated. When the ends to be
evaluated are chosen ones the ultimate end is the standard for moral evaluation. Life as the sort of thing a living
entity is, then, is the ultimate standard of value; and since only human beings are capable of choosing their ends,
it is the life as a human being-man's life qua man-that is the standard for moral evaluation.
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XT 3 – Resolve
It impossible to evaluate arguments – even multiple ethical principles – in a system of deontology.
As a judge don’t evaluate the round with Utilitarianism because it’s better, do so because it’s the
only way to resolve impossible questions. That’s Mulholland
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XT 4 – Grand Sacrifice
As a policymaker you have an obligation to protect the well-being of everyone—specifically
everyone your policies effect
Utilitarianism is more important for decision makers because it helps avoid grand sacrifice.
Deontology aids specific groups—and justifies the sacrifice of everyone in the name of “justice.”
Public officials ought not be biased, rather ensure the wellbeing of all. That’s Goodin ’98
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Util  Deterrence (1/2)
A. Util is key to nuclear deterrence.
Russell Hardin and John Mearsheimer, political science @ University of Chicago, 1985 “Ethics”, April, p. 417
Yet it should be clear that the diverse conclusions of philosophers, unlike those of the strategists, are not principally
determined by differences in their objective assessments of what systems would work best for deterrence. Rather,
what most divides philosophers on the issue of which nuclear policy should be adopted are basic assumptions of
moral theory. In rough outline, the two principal positions are deontological and utilitarian. Deontologists are
concerned with the nature of actions, including the nature of threatened actions. Utilitarians are concerned
with likely outcomes of actions, as, of course, are strategists. Most philosophers who are inclined to defend the
morality of nuclear deterrence through the threat of massive retaliation even against innocents are, utilitarians,
who share with strategists the view that the world with nuclear deterrence is likely to be better than the world
without it.
B. Deterrence solves every nuclear conflict
Robinson, director of the Sandia National Laboratories, 2001 (Paul, “A White Paper: Pursuing a Nuclear Weapons Policy
for the 21st Century”, http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Nuclear-Weapons-Policy-21stC.htm)
there has been a steady proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons
of mass destruction by other nations around the globe. The vast majority of these newly armed states are not U.S.
allies, and some already are exhibiting hostile behaviors, while others have the potential to become aggressors toward
the U.S., our allies, and our international interests. Russia has already begun to emphasize the importance of its arsenal of nuclear weapons to compensate for its limited conventional capabilities
to deal with hostilities that appear to be increasing along its borders. It seems inescapable that the U.S. must carefully think through how we should be
preparing to deal with new threats from other corners of the world, including the role that nuclear weapons might
serve in deterring these threats from ever reaching actual aggressions . I personally see the abolition of nuclear weapons as an
Additionally, throughout the Cold War and ever since,
impractical dream in any foreseeable future. I came to this view from several directions. The first is the impossibility of ever "uninventing" or erasing from
the human mind the knowledge of how to build such weapons. While the sudden appearance of a few tens of nuclear weapons causes only a small stir in a
world where several thousands of such weapons already exist, their appearance in a world without nuclear weapons would produce huge effects. (The impact
of the first two weapons in ending World War II should be a sufficient example.) I believe that the words of Winston Churchill, as quoted by Margaret
Thatcher to a special joint session of the U.S. Congress on February 20, 1985, remain convincing on this point: "Be careful above all things not to let go of
the atomic weapon until you are sure, and more sure than sure, that other means of preserving the peace are in your hands." Similarly, it is my sincere view
that the majority of the nations who have now acquired arsenals of nuclear weapons believe them to be such potent tools for deterring conflicts that they
would never surrender them. Against this backdrop, I recently began to worry that because there were few public statements by U.S. officials in reaffirming
the unique role which nuclear weapons play in ensuring U.S. and world security, far too many people (including many in our own armed forces) were
beginning to believe that perhaps nuclear weapons no longer had value. It seemed to me that it was time for someone to step forward and articulate the other
side of these issues for the public: first, that nuclear weapons remain of vital importance to the security of the U.S. and to our allies and friends (today and
for the near future); and second, that nuclear weapons will likely have an enduring role in preserving the peace and preventing world wars for the foreseeable
future. These are my purposes in writing this paper. For the past eight years, I have served several Commanders-in-Chief of the U.S. Strategic Command by
chairing the Policy Subcommittee of the Strategic Advisory Group (SAG). This group was asked to help develop a new terms of reference for nuclear
strategy in the post-Cold War world. This paper draws on many of the discussions with my SAG colleagues (although one must not assume their
endorsement of all of the ideas presented here). We addressed how nuclear deterrence might be extended-not just to deter Russia-but how they might serve a
continuing role in deterring wider acts of aggression from any corner of the world, including deterring the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
[Taken together, these are normally referred to as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).] My approach here will be to: (1) examine what might be the
appropriate roles for nuclear weapons for the future, (2) propose some new approaches to developing nuclear strategies and policies that are more
appropriate for the post-Cold War world, and (3) consider the kinds of military systems and nuclear weapons that would be needed to match those policies.
The Role(s) of Nuclear Weapons The Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Command, Admiral Rich Mies, succinctly reflected the current U.S. deterrent
policy last year in testimony to the U.S. Senate: "Deterrence of aggression is a cornerstone of our national security strategy, and
strategic nuclear forces serve as the most visible and most important element of our commitment ... (further) deterrence of
major military attack on the United States and its allies, particularly attacks involving weapons of mass destruction, remains our highest defense priority."
While the application of this policy seemed clear, perhaps we could have said even "straightforward," during the Cold War; application of that policy
becomes even more complicated if we consider applying it to any nation other than Russia. Let me first stress that nuclear arms must never be thought of as
a single "cure-all" for security concerns. For the past 20 years, only 10 percent of the U.S. defense budget has been spent on nuclear forces. The other 90
percent is for "war fighting" capabilities. Indeed, conflicts have continued to break out every few years in various regions of the globe, and these nonnuclear
capabilities have been regularly employed. By contrast, we have not used nuclear weapons in conflict since World War II. This is an important distinction
for us to emphasize as an element of U.S. defense policy, and one not well understood by the public at large. Nuclear weapons must never be considered as
war fighting tools. Rather we should rely on the catastrophic nature of nuclear weapons to achieve war prevention, to
prevent a conflict from escalating (e.g., to the use of weapons of mass destruction), or to help achieve war termination when it
cannot be achieved by other means, e.g., if the enemy has already escalated the conflict through the use of weapons of mass destruction.
[Continued – No Text Removed]
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Util  Deterrence (2/2)
[Continued – No Text Removed]
the inherent threat to escalate to nuclear use can
help to prevent conflicts from ever starting, can prevent their escalation, as well as bring these conflicts to a swift and
certain end. In contrast to the situation facing Russia, I believe we cannot place an over-reliance on nuclear weapons, but that we must maintain
Conventional armaments and forces will remain the backbone of U.S. defense forces, but
adequate conventional capabilities to manage regional conflicts in any part of the world. Noting that the U.S. has always considered nuclear weapons as
"weapons of last resort," we need to give constant attention to improving conventional munitions in order to raise the threshold for which we would ever
consider nuclear use. It is just as important for our policy makers to understand these interfaces as it is for our commanders. Defenses Although it is beyond
the scope of this paper to strictly consider "defensive" tactics and armaments, I believe it is important for the United States to consider a continuum of
defensive capabilities, from boost phase intercept to terminal defenses. Defenses have always been an important element of war fighting, and are likely to be
so when defending against missiles. Defenses will also provide value in deterring conflicts or limiting escalations. Moreover, the existence of a credible
defense to blunt attacks by armaments emanating from a rogue state could well eliminate that rogue nation's ability to dissuade the U.S. from taking military
actions. If any attack against the U.S., its allies, or its forces should be undertaken with nuclear weapons or other
weapons of mass destruction, there should be no doubt in the attacker's mind that the United States might retaliate
for such an attack with nuclear weapons; but the choice would be in our hands. If high effectiveness defenses can be achieved, they will
enhance deterrence by eliminating an aggressor's confidence in attacking the U.S. homeland with long-range missiles, and thus make our use of nuclear
weapons more credible (if the conflict could not be terminated otherwise.) Whereas, nuclear weapons should always remain weapons of last resort, defensive
systems would likely be our weapons of first resort. Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Strategic Tool? Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to
participate in a number of "war games" in which the roles and uses of nuclear weapons had to be faced in scenarios that imagined military conflicts
developing between the U.S. and other potential adversaries. The totality of those games brought new realizations as to the role and purpose of nuclear
weapons, in particular, how essential it is that deterrence be tailored in a different way for each potential aggressor nation. It also seemed abundantly clear
that any use of nuclear weapons is, and always will be, strategic. Thus, I would propose we ban the term "nonstrategic nuclear weapons" as a non sequitur.
The intensity of the environment of any war game also demonstrates just how critical it is for the U.S. to have thought through in advance exactly what
messages we would want to send to other nations (combatants and noncombatants) and to "history," should there be any future use of nuclear weaponsincluding threatened use-in conflicts. Similarly, it is obvious that we must have policies that are well thought through in advance as to the role of nuclear
weapons in deterring the use of, or retaliating for the use of, all weapons of mass destruction. Let me then state my most important conclusion directly: I
believe nuclear weapons must have an abiding place in the international scene for the foreseeable future. I believe that the world, in fact, would become
more dangerous, not less dangerous, were U.S. nuclear weapons to be absent. The most important role for our nuclear weapons is to serve as a "sobering
force," one that can cap the level of destruction of military conflicts and thus force all sides to come to their senses. This is the enduring purpose of U.S.
nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War world. I regret that we have not yet captured such thinking in our public statements as to why the U.S. will retain
nuclear deterrence as a cornerstone of our defense policy, and urge that we do so in the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review. Nuclear deterrence becomes in
my view a "countervailing" force and, in fact, a potent antidote to military aggression on the part of nations. But to succeed in harnessing this power,
effective nuclear weapons strategies and policies are necessary ingredients to help shape and maintain a stable and
peaceful world.
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***Deontology**
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Deontology Frontline (1/2)
1. All evil is committed in the name of Survival
Callahan, institute of Society and Ethics, 1973 (Daniel, “The Tyranny of Survival”, p. 91-3)
The value of survival could not be so readily abused were it not for its evocative power. But abused it has been. In
the name of survival, all manner of social and political evils have been committed against the rights of
individuals, including the right to life. The purported threat of Communist domination has for over two decades
fueled the drive of militarists for ever-larger defense budgets, no matter what the cost to other social needs. During
World War II, native Japanese-Americans were herded, without due process of law, to detention camps. This
policy was later upheld by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States (1944) in the general context that a threat
to national security can justify acts otherwise blatantly unjustifiable. The survival of the Aryan race was one of the
official legitimations of Nazism. Under the banner of survival, the government of South Africa imposes a
ruthless apartheid, heedless of the most elementary human rights. The Vietnamese war has seen one of the greatest
of the many absurdities tolerated in the name of survival: the destruction of villages in order to save them. But it is not
only in a political setting that survival has been evoked as a final and unarguable value. The main rationale B. F.
Skinner offers in Beyond Freedom and Dignity for the controlled and conditioned society is the need for survival. For
Jacques Monod, in Chance and Necessity, survival requires that we overthrow almost every known religious, ethical
and political system. In genetics, the survival of the gene pool has been put forward as sufficient grounds for a
forceful prohibition of bearers of offensive genetic traits from marrying and bearing children. Some have even
suggested that we do the cause of survival no good by our misguided medical efforts to find means by which those
suffering from such common genetically based diseases as diabetes can live a normal life, and thus procreate even
more diabetics. In the field of population and environment, one can do no better than to cite Paul Ehrlich, whose
works have shown a high dedication to survival, and in its holy name a willingness to contemplate governmentally
enforced abortions and a denial of food to surviving populations of nations which have not enacted population-control
policies. For all these reasons it is possible to counterpoise over against the need for survival a "tyranny of survival."
There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on another for sake of survival,
no rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger
when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never talk about their aggressions, but only about
the need to defend the fatherland to save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies. But my point goes deeper than
that. It is directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which
would ignore, suppress or destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny survival as
value is that it is capable, if not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values. Survival can become an obsession
and a disease, provoking a destructive singlemindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the
fundamental moral dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if
survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the
premise of a right to life—then how will it be possible to honor and act upon the need for survival without, in the
process, destroying everything in human beings which makes them worthy of survival. To put it more strongly, if the
price of survival is human degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure
that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories.
2. Government is made up of individuals who are still required to act morally
Thomas Donaldson, prof. of business and ethics, 1995 “Ethics and International Affairs”, p. 149
The state is not deprived of intentionality, as Hardin alleges, by the fact that “various officials of a particular
state must typically reach different conclusions about what is rationally required.” Like corporations and
judicial systems, states possess decision-making procedures designed to allow inferences about the acts and
intentions of the state itself from the acts of individual members. When, for example, majorities of the dulyelected members of both houses of the U.S. Congress approve aid to Poland for the purposes of developing its
economic infrastructure, and when the U.S. President concurs, then we may correctly infer that the United States has
acted intentionally in giving aid to Poland.
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3. Err on the side of systemic impacts – it’s the biggest consequence in the long term
Tibor Machan, prof. emeritus of philosophy at Auburn University, 2003 “Passion for Liberty”
All in all, then, I support the principled or rights-based approach. In normal contexts, honesty is the best policy, even
if at times it does not achieve the desired good results; so is respect for every individual's rights to life, liberty, and
property. All in all, this is what will ensure the best consequences—in the long run and as a rule. Therefore, one
need not be very concerned about the most recent estimate of the consequences of banning or not banning guns,
breaking up or not breaking up Microsoft, or any other public policy, for that matter. It is enough to know that
violating the rights of individuals to bear arms is a bad idea, and that history and analysis support our understanding of
principle. To violate rights has always produced greater damage than good, so let's not do it, even when we are
terribly tempted to do so, Let's not do it precisely because to do so would violate the fundamental requirements of
human nature. It is those requirements that should be our guide, not some recent empirical data that have no staying
power (according to their very own theoretical terms). Finally, you will ask, isn't this being dogmatic? Haven't we
learned not to bank too much on what we've learned so far, when we also know that learning can always be improved,
modified, even revised? Isn't progress in the sciences and technology proof that past knowledge always gets
overthrown a bit later? As in science and engineering, so in morality and politics: We must go with what we know but
be open to change— provided that the change is warranted. Simply because some additional gun controls or
regulations might save lives (some lives, perhaps at the expense of other lives) and simply because breaking up
Microsoft might improve the satisfaction of consumers (some consumers, perhaps at the expense of the satisfaction of
other consumers) are no reasons to violate basic rights. Only if and when there are solid, demonstrable reasons to do
so should we throw out the old principles and bring on the new principles. Any such reasons would have to speak to
the same level of fundamentally and relevance as that incorporated by the theory of individual rights itself.
Those defending consequentialism, like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, have argued the opposite thesis: Unless one
can prove, beyond a doubt, that violating rights in a particular instance is necessarily wrong in the eyes of a "rational
and fair man," the state may go ahead and "accept the natural outcome of dominant opinion" and violate those rights.1
Such is now the leading jurisprudence
4. We must dismiss low probability scenarios like nuke war.
Nicholas Rescher, prof. of philosophy @ Pittsburgh University, 1983 “Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of
Risk Evaluation and Management”, p. 50
The "worst possible case fixation" is one of the most damaging modes of unrealism in deliberations about risk
in real-life situations. Preoccupation about what might happen "if worst comes to worst" is counterproductive
whenever we proceed without recognizing that, often as not, these worst possible outcomes are wildly improbable
(and sometimes do not deserve to be viewed as real possibilities at all). The crux in risk deliberations is not the
issue of loss "if worst comes to worst" but the potential acceptability of this prospect within the wider framework
of the risk situation, where we may well be prepared "to. take our chances," considering the possible advantages
that beckon along this route. The worst threat is certainly something to be borne in mind and taken into account, but it
is emphatically not a satisfactory index of the overall seriousness or gravity of a situation of hazard.
5. Util doesn’t benefit anyone
Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy, 2001 Winter, 18 J. Contemp. Health L. & Pol’y 95, p. 117
The utilitarian principle justifies intentional, harmful acts against other humans to achieve a hoped-for benefit
to a greater number of people. It is the wrong approach to public policy decisions. Its most notable proponents
have been responsible for much of the misery and strife of the last century. Experience has taught us time and
again that public servants, even when crafting policies that appear wholly beneficent, can cause great harm (the
so-called "law of unintended consequences"). Humans lack the wisdom and foresight to completely understand
the future ramifications of many actions. A father, for example, may believe that it is an entirely good thing to help
his daughter with homework every day because they are spending time together and he is showing sincere interest in
her life and schooling. By "helping" with homework, however, his daughter may be denied the mental struggle of
searching for solutions on her own. She may not develop the mental skills to solve tough math problems, for example,
or to quickly find key concepts in reading selections. If even "good" actions can produce undesirable results, how
much worse is the case when evil is tolerated in the name of some conjectural, future outcome?
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XT 1 – Evil
Taking action in order to avoid extinction scenarios cause social paralysis by diverting our
attention from real world problems to apocalyptic scenarios then never come true
At the same time they unleash the Pandora of evil-- Wars are waged in the name of survival; our
Callahan evidence cites several empirical examples:
1. the threat of communism led to a military buildup at the expense of social welfare
2. During WW2 the Japanese were herded into camps and deprived of civil liberty
3. Nazis waged war under the banner of survival
4. Justifies Eugenics and ethnic cleansing
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XT 2 – Individual
As a policy-maker you are still a living individual -- similarly the state must be held accountable
otherwise it leads to a slippery slop; we forget morals altogether. The less humane the state
becomes the more likely atrocity occurs
we are only responsible for our own actions and cannot look to intervening actors to determine our
own moral decision making, and we are required to make the most moral decision in every
situation
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XT 3/4 – Systemic
Group 3+4
Deontological calculus even in the short-term pays off in the long term. Apocalyptic scenarios
rarely come true, but structural violence occurs on a daily basis. Should society preface systemic
impacts it would be net beneficial in the long run. Machan says we have to look past the
conventional "estimate of consequences" and focus on real world issues.
Policymaking ought never prefer apocalyptic fixations over systemic risks—The worst comes to
worst mentally is counter-productive since the probabilities of it occurring are so low its like it wont
happen. Thats Rescher
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XT 5 – Util Bad
Utilitarianism is harmful to humans-- its notion of greatest number of people rarely gets applied,
rather it serves the elite with interest group mentality; it is responsible for most of the misery in the
last century.
It is impossible to predict future scenarios-- we must default to what we know and empirical
problems. Thats the Journal of Contemporary Health Law & Policy.
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A2 Consequentialism
Consequentialism ought to preface real world social problems
Robert Goodin, fellow in philosophy at Australian National Defense University, 19 90 “The Utilitarian Response”
Consequentialism is the idea that what matters most is the consequences of our actions. This de-emphasizes the direct
content of an action by replacing such emphasis with the actual outcome of an action. There are many variations on this
theme the most promising of which, I think, are the ones that take into account the actual consequences of an agent
throughout their entire life as opposed to just immediate consequences and deceptions. This view looks at the
overall success of protracted struggles above and beyond simply immediate victories that might eventually lead to the
success of the overall struggle. Also, emphasis is placed on actual consequences instead of perceived consequences in
which an agent might be deceived. The consequences of an action are many times influenced by a great number of outside
forces or variables such as other agents in the world. Also, desired consequences may involve the conditions of others. In
this way there is a social element implicit to consequentialism. “It is because consequentialism attaches value ultimately
to states of affairs, and its concern is with what states of affairs the world contains, that it essentially involves the notion
of negative responsibility: that if I am ever responsible for anything, then I must be just as much responsible for things that I
allow or fail to prevent, as I am for things that I myself, in the most everyday sense, bring about.” (Bernard Williams,
Against Utilitarianism, from Pojman, Ethical Theory, pg 193)
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***Poverty Impacts**
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AIDS Module
Poverty makes the global spread of AIDS inevitable.
Peter Mann, international coordinator for World Hunger Year, 2000
“Why is AIDS A Poverty Issue?”http://www.worldhungeryear.org/programs/why_speaks_09.html
Until now, almost all public responses have been to treat AIDS as a medical problem, and an issue of high-risk
behavior - the sharing of infected needles by drug users, and unprotected sex within at-risk communities. What is
coming more clearly into view as the pandemic reaches into every region of the globe is that AIDS is more than a
health crisis or a lifestyle issue. AIDS is also a crisis of poverty. Poverty spreads AIDS and, in turn, the widening
AIDS crisis increases poverty. In fact, it would be even more accurate to say that AIDS is being spread by
impoverishment, by deadly patterns of development which make people poor and place at risk whole sectors of
populations. In the United States, the alarming spread of AIDS within the African-American community has been
concentrated within the inner cities, targeting the poor and the addicted. People in these inner-city poor neighborhoods
are marginalized, often malnourished, in poor health and without adequate health care for prevention or treatment.
While high-risk behavior in these communities directly spreads HIV/AIDS, urban poverty is clearly a contributing
cause. And as AIDS moves through these communities, they become still poorer and more marginalized. The figures
are startling. In 1999, African Americans were less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, more than 26 percent of the
poor, and 37 percent of all reported cases of HIV/AIDS. By 2000, AIDS had become in the U.S. the leading cause
of death for blacks between the ages of 25 and 44. Yet these communities reflect the realities of global poverty ,
where 1.2 billion people live on less than one dollar a day, lack basic health care, education, adequate food and clean
water, and are increasingly marginalized - impoverished - within the global economy. The status of women is a key
indicator of vulnerability to AIDS. Women and girls are a majority of the world's poor, and an increasing proportion
of those infected by HIV/AIDS - 55 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. Women in the developing world are often
malnourished, vulnerable to infections and sexually transmitted diseases, without health care and lacking
power inside the family, and thus placed in a high-risk environment for AIDS.
Unchecked AIDS culminates in extinction.
Ojedokun et al 07 (educational research and review v2n6, “policy, philosophy and pedagogical
initiative to HIV/AIDS education in the Nigerian secondary school’s social studies curriculum,”
www.academicjournals.org?ERR/PDF/pdf%202007/Jun?Ojedokun%20et%20al..pdf)
Apparently, of the numerous civic issues identified above, health care was first mentioned either deliberately or inadvertently.
The author thus wishes to regard this arrangement as a reflection of the global relevance, and importance of good health to
humanity, and the survival of the human race and society that is now being threatened by HIV and AIDS. It is however
no more a news that HIV/AIDS is an issue of health concerns. It is a perennial problem that affects all aspects of
humanity (economic, social and political) and perhaps threatening the existence of the human race. “It has become a
critical development issue, and the developmental implications of this pandemic, on the global economy and social
relations are dire”, because “It is expected to reverse the gains made in social and economic development, and every
individual and group will be affected”
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AIDS => War
Aids spread triggers a wave of state collapse and nuclear civil wars.
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), ACTION TODAY, A FOUNDATION FOR TOMORROW:
SECOND ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS ON PEPFAR, 2006
As Atwood notes, HIV is much more than a social or developmental threat — it is a concrete threat to stability and
security. Nelson Mandela, in a speech before the World Economic Forum in 1997, hinted of the potential for conflict and
instability to emerge when a people realize that their government is unable to meet their needs when he noted that,
“South Africans are beginning to understand the cost [of HIV/AIDS] … observing with growing dismay its impact on the
efforts of our new democracy to achieve the goals of reconstruction and development.” In addition to eroding the link
between people and their government, infectious epidemics have a more pernicious ability to pit people against each
other within societies. As the resource base begins to shrink, competition among surviving groups for access to and
control over the levers of power and influence increases. This competition often results in social and political
fragmentation and ethnic, racial or socio-economic conflict. David Gordon of the United States National Intelligence
Council, one of the first policy analysts to recognize the connection between health and security, noted in his groundbreaking 2000 “National Intelligence Estimate” the potential for intra-state conflict resulting from epidemic disease.
Gordon noted that, “[t]he severe social and economic impact of infectious diseases … and the infiltration of these
diseases into ruling political and military elites and middle classes of developing countries are likely to intensify the
struggle for political power to control scarce state resources.” The global nature of the threat HIV/AIDS represents
becomes immediately clear when we pause to remember how interconnected and mobile we all are. Richard Holbrooke,
the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, warned members of the Security Council in 2000 that, “if it
[HIV/AIDS] is not dealt with, it will clearly wreck the economies of Africa and the subcontinent. [AIDS] will spread;
you can’t draw a wall around Africa and commit continental triage.” Indeed, HIV is spreading daily — hourly — reaching
epidemic levels of infection throughout the developing world.
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Biodiversity Module
Poverty is the root-cause of global warming and loss of bio diversity.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Like disease, environmental degradation is linked significantly to poverty in the developing world and can result
in long-term adverse consequences for the United States. Much of the world’s environmental stress can be
attributed to population pressure. From 1950 to 1998, the world’s population doubled. It has grown a further 14%
in the last ten years to 6.4 billion. By 2050, global population is on track to reach 9 billion. This growth is coming
disproportionately from the developing world. Poverty substantially fuels population growth, as families have
more children in response to high infant mortality rates and the need to raise income potential.
Deforestation is accelerating in the developing world due to increased demand for fuel in the form of firewood
and for arable acreage to enable growing populations to survive in marginal areas. The loss of trees exacerbates
desertification, which has spread to the extent that 2 billion hectares of soil, or 15% of the planet’s land cover, is
already degraded. Logging for trade in exotic African and Asian hardwoods magnifies the problem, contributing to
the loss of 2.4% of the world’s forest cover since 1990. One result is reduced biodiversity, which alters delicate
ecosystems and depletes the world’s stock of flora and fauna that have produced important medical benefits for
mankind.
Desertification and deforestation can also accelerate global climate change, though carbon emissions in rich
and rapidly growing economies are the main culprit. 2005 was the hottest year on record. Global warming is
already rendering coastal areas more vulnerable to flooding. And, as temperatures rise in temperate climates, the
transmission vectors for mosquito-borne and other tropical diseases will change. New areas of the world, including
our own, will face the possibility of once-tropical diseases becoming prevalent.
Each new species extinction risks planetary extinction-evidence is gender-modified
MAJOR DAVID N. DINER, Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Army, Military Law Review Winter
1994 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161
Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological niches.
These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more
successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric
can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." n79
By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so
does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the
United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal
or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human
extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an
aircraft's wings, [hu]mankind may be edging closer to the abyss. ([ ] = correction
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Biodiversity Exts.
Poverty results in destruction of the environment
ANANTHA K. DURAIAPPAH Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, World
Development Vol. 26, No. 12, pp. 2169-2179, 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd March 30, 1998
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6VC6-3VXR3RN-M1&_cdi=5946&_user=4257664&_orig=search&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F1998&_sk=999739987&view=c&wchp=dGLbVzzzSkWz&md5=e86e2f10b6e0da5deca1ce7d8d6468c9&ie=/sdarticle.pdf
The poor have traditionally taken the brunt of the blame for causing society’s many problems. The most recent
accusation directed against them is that they cause environmental degradation. The general consensus seems to be
that poverty is a major cause of environmental degradation. For example, in one of the conclusions of the
Bruntland Commission report, which incidentally has been accepted as the blueprint for environmental
conservation, it is explicitly stated that poverty is a major cause of environmental problems and amelioration of
poverty is a necessary and central condition of any effective program to deal with environmental concerns.
Along similar lines, Jalal (1993), the Asian Development Bank’s chief of the environment department argues, “It is
generally accepted that environmental degradation, rapid population growth and stagnant production are closely
linked with the fast spread of acute poverty in many countries of Asia.” The World Bank (1992) joined the
consensus with its the World Development Report, where it explicitly states, “poor families who have to meet
short term needs mine the natural capital by excessive cutting of trees for firewood and failure to replace soil
nutrients.”
The poor exacerbate natural resources leading to destruction of the environment
Anders Ekbom and Jan Bojö, Environment Group Africa Region The World Bank January 19 99
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/david.harvey/AEF806/WBPovEn.pdf
This hypothesis is not about “putting the blame on the poor,” but to state that the rural poor are often compelled to
exploit marginal areas, such as steep hillsides, or derive resources from protected areas. Compounded by the
impact of population growth, they often lack the incentives or means to intensify their production and are forced
to exploit new, fragile lands. The urban poor unwillingly contribute to a different kind of environmental
degradation, resulting in poor health, which can further reduce income opportunities. World Bank (1992, 1995)
elaborate on some of the links between poverty and environment. It is stated that a declining natural resource base,
largely caused by poor people deprived of access to other resources, exacerbates the conditions of the poor by
limiting their already restricted production possibilities. This applies in particular to rural water, soils and energy.
One of the basic forces behind the vicious circle between poverty and environment is thus suggested to be that
poverty limits people’s options and induces them to deplete resources faster than is compatible with long-term
sustainability. Hence the poor themselves will aggravate the process of environmental degradation. Dasgupta
(1993) describes how closely dependent poor people are on their surrounding environmental resource base for
their livelihood, and how poverty can be a driving force to environmental degradation. Based on theory and
some empirical evidence he argues that poverty is both a cause and effect of resource degradation or lack of access
to resources, including natural capital. To exemplify the above arguments he describes how poor nomadic dryland
herdsmen often are excluded from formal credit, capital and insurance markets and are forced to invest their capital in
cattle, resulting in non-sustainable herd sizes and overgrazing. Plausible explanations to the hypothesis that the poor
are agents of environmental degradation are that (i) poor people have shorter time horizon and (ii) higher risk-aversion
and a propensity to use implicit, higher discount rates, which leads us to specify the following subhypothesis: vii H2a:
Poor people have shorter time horizons, which exacerbates environmental degradation. Allegedly, poverty often
results in myopic production and consumption decisions, and precludes longer term investments in
preservation and accumulation of natural capital (Holden et. al., 1996; Prakash, 1997). Consequently, poor
people’s limited economic options and low savings rates cause them to deplete and degrade their immediate
environment (soils, forest, fisheries), and impose externalities on future generations.
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Crime – Domestic
Poverty leads to crime
Joseph Williams, Christian Association for Prison Aftercare 2007
http://capaassociation.org/newsletter_N009/Articles/PovertyCrime.htm
Sociologist and criminal justice scholars have found a direct correlation between poverty and crime. One
economic theory of crime assumes that people weigh the consequences of committing crime. They resort to crime
only if the cost or consequences are outweighed by the potential benefits to be gained. The logical conclusion to
this theory is that people living in poverty are far more likely to commit property crimes such as burglary, larceny,
or theft. The rising levels of poverty, then, should alarm those of us engaged in ministry to prisoners, ex-prisoners and
their families. It follows that as goes the poverty rates, so go the crime rates and subsequently the prison rates. If
the relationship between poverty rates and crime rates holds, and I suspect that it will, we can expect to be faced with
the challenge of ministering to even higher numbers of inmates and former inmates. Those of us who minister to men
and women in transition from prison and the families of inmates can expect to have our meager resources taxed to the
limit.
Poverty increases crime
Jeff Polesovsky 2/13/04
http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2004/02/13/Campus/HighCrime.Rate.Poverty.Linked-607157-page2.shtml
A research project conducted by the Kirwan Institute on the Study of Race and Ethnicity found that high concentrations of
poverty has led to a hotbed of crime in the university district - a crime rate that is higher than the city average. John A.
Powell, professor of law and director of the Kirwan Institute, presented the University Area Safety Committee with his
findings Wednesday, as well as recommendations to improve safety within the university district. In a report titled
"Dedensifying" Urban Neighborhoods, powell explained high-concentrated poverty in the area caused by racial and
economic segregation of low-income housing, urban sprawl and lopsided wealth creation opportunities have caused a spike
in the crime rate in and around the Ohio State campus. "Concentrated poverty happens when more than 40 percent of a
community lies below the (federally defined) poverty level," powell said. "When a neighborhood reaches a certain level of
poverty, it invites crime to it." Studies have shown concentrated poverty to have adverse effects on many facets of life,
including employment, education, health and criminal behavior. powell said by further concentrating people into one area
through the establishment of low-income housing with federal money, the situation only will get worse. Public safety at OSU
is compromised by its proximity to these poverty-stricken areas. An urban university setting, along with unsafe and
dilapidated physical design characteristics of buildings, have created a "perfect storm," powell said. All of these factors have
come together to intensify public problems and create a high crime rate, he said.
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Crime - International
Poverty increases the proliferation of international crime
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
The spread of disease and environmental degradation are just two of the potential challenges that weak states pose to
U.S. national security. Weak states hobbled by poverty often lack effective control over substantial portions of
their territory and resources. Ill-equipped and poorly-trained immigration and customs officials as well as underresourced police, military, judiciary and financial systems create vacuums into which transnational predators can
easily move. Conflict, difficult terrain and corruption render weak states particularly vulnerable to transnational
criminal syndicates, smugglers, and pirates such as those operating in lawless zones from the Somali coast and
Central Asia to the Tri-border region of South America. Where ecological conditions permit, poverty also fosters
ideal socio-economic conditions for drug production, as in the Andes, parts of Mexico, and South Asia. Where
production is difficult, drug trafficking may still thrive, as in Nigeria and Central Asia. Not surprisingly, the drug
couriers, the human slaves, prostitutes, petty thieves, and others drawn into global criminal enterprises often
come from the ranks of the unemployed or desperately poor. Transnational crime syndicates reap billions each
year from illicit trafficking in drugs, hazardous waste, humans, endangered species, and weapons – all of which reach
American shores.
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Dehumanization Module
Poverty dehumanizes everybody.
Robinson and Ciriello (Order of Preachers(dominican nun), PhD) '98
bernadine and Maria Formation and Development for catholic School Leaders p. 192
Redemption has everything to do with being released from poverty. Poverty dehumanizes people. It makes them
dependent. It prevents them from developing their full human potential. It oppresses the human spirit. Poverty
translates into illiteracy, unemployment, teenage pregnancy, addiction, the destruction of family life, violence, the
abuse and neglect of children, social marginalization, prostitution, homelessness. moral ignorance, emotional
under-development, and prison. There is no way of conceiving the redemption of the human race, especially in
light of the Church's own social reaching, that does not rake into account the reality of human brokenness, not
only at the level of individual persons, but also at the level of social structures. There is personal sin, the evil that
wounds us as persons and for which we bear personal responsibility; and there is there is social sin, the evil that
surrounds us, the evil into which we are born, the evil to which each of us, as we grow, makes his or her own indelible
contribution Yet, not only does poverty dehumanize the poor; with a soul-threatening, inverse log, it also
dehumanizes the rich.
Dehumanization outweighs all – it’s the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse
Montagu and Matson 83 – Esteemed Scientist and Writer; and Professor of American Studies at University of
Hawaii
[Ashley and Floyd, The dehumanization of man, http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:hnDfqSFkJJwJ:www.cross-x.com/vb/archive/index.php/t939595.html+montagu+matson+dehumanization&hl=en]
The contagion is unknown to science and unrecognized by medicine (psychiatry aside); yet its wasting symptoms are plain
for all to see and its lethal effects are everywhere on display. It neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet
the extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natual calamity on record -- and
its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason, this
sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Hourseman of the Apocalypse. Its more conventional name, of course, is
dehumanization.
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Disease Module
Poverty makes the spread of disease inevitable.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Poverty contributes substantially to the outbreak of infectious disease. As the search for clean water and fire wood drives
impoverished people deeper into forested areas, the risk of animal contact and exposure to new pathogens increases. By
spurring population growth, contributing to immune-compromising malnutrition, and exacerbating crowding and poor living
conditions, poverty also fuels the transmission of disease. Almost two million people will die this year of tuberculosis and
another nearly 4 million from lower respiratory infections, most of whom live in poor, crowded parts of the developing world.
These communicable diseases are mutating dangerously and spreading to other regions. Antibiotic-resistant TB, for
example, is resurgent in the United States, especially among immigrant populations.
Health experts’ most alarming predication is that the H5N1 strain of avian flu, which is rampant in poultry stocks in Asia, will
soon evolve into a virus easily transmitted from human to human. We have recently witnessed the difficulty Turkey, a
middle income country, has had containing its outbreak of avian flu. In Asia and Africa, where the rural poor people live in close
proximity to animals and depend on those animals to subsist, the incentive to cooperate in culling animals is much reduced and
the risk of mutation is even greater. If this occurs, WHO’s conservative estimate is that a pandemic could erupt, killing between
2 million and 7.4 million people. An additional 1.2 billion would fall sick and 28 million would require hospitalization. The worst
case estimate is that 60 million could die, exceeding the more than 40 million who died in the great influenza epidemic of 19181919. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of victims, would be American.
The lack of adequate health-care infrastructure and surveillance capacity in poor countries hinders early detection and
timely treatment of disease, while also reducing states’ ability to halt its spread abroad. According to the World Health
Organization, low and middle income countries suffer 90% of the world’s disease burden but account for only 11% of its
health care spending. Per capita spending on health in the West African country of Niger amounted to $6 in 2001, compared with
$4,887 in the U.S. These disparities have potentially deadly consequences.
A new pandemic will cause extinction.
Helen Branswell, October 2, 2005, World as we know it' may be at stake: UN pandemic czar,
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2005/10/02/1245355-cp.htm
A flu pandemic could fundamentally alter the world as we know it, warns the public health veteran charged with coordinating UN planning
for and response to the threat. Inadequate - and inequitably shared - global resources and the uncertainties inherent in trying to predict the
behaviour of influenza combine to create planning dilemmas that are "monster difficult," Dr. David Nabarro said in an interview describing
his new job and the challenges ahead. Progress will demand appealing "to people's recognition that we're dealing here with world survival
issues - or the survival of the world as we know it," Nabarro explains. "And therefore we just can't go on approaching it with sort of
business-as-usual type approaches." The former head of the World Health Organization's crisis operations was seconded to the UN to coordinate world response to both the ongoing avian influenza outbreak in Southeast Asia and preparations for a human flu pandemic. A
native of Britain, Nabarro says the decision to appoint a planning czar reflects surging political concern that the world may be facing a
pandemic springing from the H5N1 avian flu strain, which is decimating poultry in Asia and has already killed at least 60 people in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. "Governments have realized that this is something to be worried about," he says, adding the
UN must harness that concern and the resources it frees up. "It's a rare thing, political commitment to deal with a health issue. And when
you've got it, you must use it well," he insists. "We're not going to have such an excellent window of opportunity to really start moving
forward with this for long. And so we must take advantage of it now." One of the monster dilemmas Nabarro describes relates to antiviral
drugs, which may be able to blunt the blow of pandemic flu. But there are only two drugs which, in laboratory settings, work against all
possible pandemic strains, oseltamivir (sold as Tamiflu) and zanamivir (sold as Relenza). Both are expensive and made in limited
quantities. And there appears to be no quick or easy way to ramp up production. In addition, the supplies that exist - as well as most of
those that will be made in the foreseeable future - are spoken for. They are either squirreled away in or destined for stockpiles held by the
world's wealthy nations. "So we're going to have very little stuff and it's already stuck away in stockpiles . . . that people will protect with
their lives. And yet we're going to have to find some way to ration these things so that they are given to the folk who need them the most,"
Nabarro says. That statement may reflect Nabarro's position on the pandemic learning curve. Setting priorities for who will and won't get
antiviral drugs is a responsibility of governments, not the UN or the WHO
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Disease Exts.
Poverty increases diseases the wealthy are able to avoid
Philip Stevens, Director of Health Projects, International Policy Network November 2004
http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/submissions/InternationalPolicyNetwork.pdf
A large proportion of illnesses in low-income countries are entirely avoidable or treatable with existing medicines or
interventions. Most of the disease burden in low-income countries finds its roots in the consequences of poverty,
such as poor nutrition, indoor air pollution and lack of access to proper sanitation and health education. The
WHO estimates that diseases associated with poverty account for 45 per cent of the disease burden in the poorest
countries.10 However, nearly all of these deaths are either treatable with existing medicines or preventable in the first
place. ■ Tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS, for example, together account for nearly 18 per cent of the
disease burden in the poorest countries.11 ■ Malaria can be prevented through a combination of spraying
dwellings with DDT, using insecticide treated mosquito nets and taking prophylactic medicines such as
mefloquine, doxyclycline and malorone. Malaria can also be treated with artemisinin combination therapy. Education
can also play an important role in reducing the incidence of insect-borne diseases, for example by encouraging
people to remove sources of stagnant water (insect breeding sites) from near their dwellings. Tuberculosis can be
prevented by improving nutrition, and can be treated with DOTS therapy. This can detect and cure disease in up to 95
per cent of infectious patients, even in the poorest countries. 12■ Education is vital for the prevention of HIV/AIDS
– and this entails the full engagement of civil society. A combination of anti-retrovirals (ARVs) and good nutrition
can help to control the viral load and suppress the symptoms of HIV/AIDS. ■ Treatable childhood diseases such
as polio, measles and pertussis, account for only 0.2 percent of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) in highincome countries, while they account for 5.2 per cent of DALYs in high mortality lowincome countries.13 Vaccines
for these diseases have existed for at least 50 years, yet only 53 per cent of children in sub-Saharan Africa were
immunised with the diphtheria-tetanuspertussis (DTP) jab in 2000.14 Diarrhoeal diseases are caused by the poor
sanitation inherent to the condition of poverty, yet are easily and cheaply treatable through oral rehydration
therapy. However, diarrhoeal diseases still claim 1.8 million lives each year. 15 ■ Respiratory infections caused by
burning biomass fuels in poorly ventilated areas also place a considerable health burden on poor people.
According to the WHO, exposure to biomass smoke increases the risk of acute lower respiratory infections (ALRI) in
childhood, particularly pneumonia. Globally, ALRI represent the single most important cause of death in children
under 5 years and account for at least two million deaths annually in this age group. 16 ■ Malnutrition particularly
affects people in poor countries. As a result of vitamin A deficiency, for example, 500,000 children become blind
each year,17 despite the fact that such outcomes can be avoided by cheap, easy-to-administer food supplements.18
Increasing wealth increases health
Philip Stevens, Director of Health Projects, International Policy Network November 20 04
http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/submissions/InternationalPolicyNetwork.pdf
When poverty is reduced and eliminated, health outcomes improve. People in rich countries can expect to live
longer and have better access to medical care. With greater wealth, scientists and innovators, both private and
public, have better opportunities to conduct research into health and disease. With increased financial resources,
more can be spent on education and to improve literacy, which in turn can promote the adoption of new
technologies and ensure that these technologies are more widely diffused.
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Disease Exts.
Poor Americans experience the same diseases as those in the poorest countries
ScienceDaily, award-winning site has earned the loyalty of students, researchers, healthcare professionals,
government agencies, educators, June 25, 2008 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080624110934.htm
An analysis published June 25th in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases highlights that diseases
very similar to those plaguing Africa, Asia, and Latin America are also occurring frequently among the poorest
people in the United States, especially women and children. These diseases -- the "neglected infections of poverty" -are caused by chronic and debilitating parasitic, bacterial, and congenital infections. While most Americans have
never heard of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), the analysis estimates that these infections occur in hundreds of
thousands of poor Americans concentrated primarily in the Mississippi Delta (including post-Katrina Louisiana),
Appalachia, the Mexican borderlands, and inner cities. These diseases represent a major cause of chronic
disability, impaired child development, and adverse pregnancy outcomes, yet many of them are preventable. "The
fact that these neglected infections of poverty represent some of the greatest health disparities in the United States, but
they remain at the bottom of the public health agenda, is a national disgrace," says Peter J. Hotez , MD, PhD, author of
the analysis and President of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, Executive Director of Global Network for Neglected
Tropical Diseases, and Walter G. Ross Professor and Chair of the Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine
department at George Washington University. Hotez notes that the common features of these neglected infections
include their highly disproportionate health impact on minorities and people living in poverty; their chronic,
largely insidious, and disabling features; and their ability to promote poverty because of their impact on child
development, pregnancy outcome, and productive capacity. He calls upon policy makers to make these infections
a priority on the public health agenda. "Control of these neglected infections is both a highly cost-effective
mechanism for lifting disadvantaged populations out of poverty and consistent with our shared American values
of equity and equality," Hotez says. "We need a national dialogue about these very important, but neglected
conditions that afflict the poorest people in the United States. Neglected infections of poverty are understudied and
not well known even by physicians and public-health experts. This lack of understanding and knowledge points to the
urgent need to increase surveillance for these infections; use cost-effective existing drug control and treatment efforts;
implement newborn screenings; and develop new drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines for these infections."
Poverty problem should be addressed to reduce life cost in possible pandemics
Priscilla Wald, English Professor at Duke University
Office of News & Communications, DU, 1 May 2009
Pandemics call for a Focus on Global Poverty
In the telling of the outbreak story, the media present the pandemic as solely a medical problem. But it is a social
problem as well. Poverty and inadequate health care are the most effective vectors for the spread of disease.
Malnourished people are more likely to get sick; overcrowded living quarters are a microbe’s haven.
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Disease Exts.
Multiple health threats stem from being in poverty
Eva Luo, MD Radiologist
The Next Generation: An Introduction to Medicine, December 2007
Unlinking Poverty and Poor Health
The effect of poverty on health is very well documented. Social factors such as unsanitary living conditions,
crowding, malnourishment, and homelessness are still widespread problems in the US and continue to contribute to
poor health, especially children’s health. Living in substandard housing and being forced to make a decision between
food and heat, contribute to many physical and mental developmental problems that carry on into adulthood. Lowincome children not only are at higher risk for exposure to these factors, but also face greater difficulties when
managing and controlling resulting medical conditions. If a family is suffering from any of the above psychosocial
factors, keeping up with treatment regiments are relegated as secondary concerns often until the medical illnesses
become insurmountable. Dr. Zuckerman explains, “I can treat a child with antibiotics for an ear infection, but if the
child is living in a house where the heat is being shut off constantly or his family is being evicted, giving medicine
kind of pales.”
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Disease – Government Action Needed
The U.S. government needs to intervene
The Global Network, comprised of international non-profit organizations with decades of on-the-ground
experience in fighting disabling, disfiguring, and deadly NTDs, in collaboration with the World Health Organization,
pharmaceutical companies, June 23, 2008 http://globalnetwork.org/press/press-release/2008/8/27/“neglectedinfections-poverty”-affect-hundreds-thousands-americans
Hotez called upon policy makers to make these infections a priority on the public health agenda. “Control of
these neglected infections is both a highly cost-effective mechanism for lifting disadvantaged populations out of
poverty and consistent with our shared American values of equity and equality,” Hotez stated. Despite their povertypromoting role, the neglected infections of poverty have not been prioritized by policy makers and funding
agencies in the U.S. Government. Today, the U.S. spends more than $1 billion annually for potential biodefense
threats such as anthrax, smallpox, and avian flu, diseases that have not occurred in the United States. Yet, for
the neglected infections of poverty, diseases that cause real suffering among the poor, the federal budget
investment is 100 or 1000 times smaller.
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Human Rights Module
The existence of poverty is a denial of basic human rights.
Polly VIZARD Research Associate Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion London School of
Economics 2006 Oxford University Press
Against this background, this monograph analyses the ways in which the work of Amartya Sen has contributed to
the development of a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework for analysing global poverty as a human rights issue.
The aim is to establish the ways In which Sen’s intellectual protect over more than forty years addresses the
theoretical underpinnings of the idea that global poverty represents a violation or a denial of basic human rights
on a persistent, massive, and systematic wale. Sens research agenda is shown to have systematically addressed
the 'theoretical obstacles' to viewing global poverty as a human rights issue-through the examination and
rejection of frameworks in ethics that exclude freedom from bask forms of deprivation and impoverishment,
Including hunger and starvation, premature mortality and excess morbidity, and illiteracy and inadequate
educational achievement, from the class of fundamental freedoms and human rights, and frameworks in
economics that exclude fundamental freedoms and human rights as objects of central concern. In addition, Sen's work
has deepened and widened human rights discourse in both ethics and economics by making a major
contribution to the development of new paradigms and approaches that focus on global poverty and human
rights concerns. The monograph explores these contributions and establishes the ways in which correspondences and
analogues between Sen's capability perspective' and embryonic-but nevertheless developing and strengtheningstandards in International law provide a basis for a major new cross-disciplinary framework for thinking
about global poverty as a human tights issue.
Violations of human rights threaten survival.
Rhonda Copelon, Professor of Law and Director of the International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic at the City
University of New York School of Law, New York City Law Review, 1998/99, 3 N.Y. City L. Rev. 59
The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the
international arena. The framework is there to shatter the myth of the superiority of the U.S. version of rights, to
rebuild popular expectations, and to help develop a culture and jurisprudence of indivisible human rights. Indeed, in
the face of systemic inequality and crushing poverty, violence by official and private actors, globalization of the
market economy, and military and environmental depredation, the human rights framework is gaining new force and
new dimensions. It is being broadened today by the movements of people in different parts of the world,
particularly in the Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who understand the protection of human
rights as a matter of individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also emerging is a notion of thirdgeneration rights, encompassing collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state basis and that call for new
mechanisms of accountability, particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights include humancentered sustainable development, environmental protection, peace, and security. Given the poverty and
inequality in the United States as well as our role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human rights
framework to bear on both domestic and foreign policy.
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Moral Obligation
Humanity has a moral obligation to alleviate poverty.
UN General Assembly Press Release. December 2006. “WORLD HAS MORAL OBLIGATION TO
FIGHT POVERTY, PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS OF MOST VULNERABLE, SAYS GENERAL
ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS DAY MESSAGE”
Following is the message by Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the General Assembly, on the
occasion of Human Rights Day, observed 10 December: This year, we commemorate Human Rights Day with the
theme “Fighting Poverty: a matter of obligation not charity”. When poverty is so immediate and the suffering
so intense, the world has a moral and strategic obligation to fight poverty and to address the human rights
concerns of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to experience human rights violations,
discrimination or other forms of persecution. Being poor makes it harder to find a job and get access to basic
services, such as health care, education and housing. Poverty is above all about having no power and no voice.
History is littered with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are to eradicate poverty and promote human
rights, we need to take action to empower the poor and address the root causes of poverty, such as
discrimination and social exclusion. It is because human rights, poverty reduction and the empowerment of the
poor go hand in hand that we all have a moral duty to take action.
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Moral Obligation
Solving poverty is an obligation
Fathi Aburafia, literary critic and is currently staff at UN New York, AL-AHRAM Weekly December 2006
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/824/sc42.htm
Fighting Poverty: A matter of obligation, not charity" has been decided on by the UN as a theme for
commemorating this year's event. The decision came out of recognition that poverty is a violation of human rights and
that promoting human rights could alleviate poverty. A human rights approach to poverty reduction is now being
recognised and implemented internationally. Such an approach links poverty reduction to questions of obligation,
rather than welfare or charity, and compels policymakers to seek out and identify the most vulnerable people and
implement appropriate strategies to help them escape destitution. Human rights are universal legal guarantees
protecting individuals and groups against actions and omissions that interfere with fundamental freedoms,
entitlements and human dignity. A human rights approach is grounded in the International Bill of Human Rights and
the core human rights treaties that clearly define those rights. Among the rights guaranteed to all human beings under
these treaties are the right to life, liberty and security of person, the right to the highest attainable standard of health,
the right to just and favourable working conditions, the right to adequate food, housing and social security, the right to
education, the right to vote and take part in the conduct of public affairs and the right to participate in cultural life.
The fact that poverty persists in many parts of the world points not only to an inequitable distribution of
economic, social and political opportunities, but also to a violation of human rights. Often the condition of
living in poverty also affects the ability of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged individuals, families and
groups to defend their rights and responsibilities. The violation of human rights is thus both a cause and a
consequence of poverty. People living in poverty are, by their condition, disempowered and excluded from
society, and their capacity to secure their own rights is extremely limited by their situation. As a result, the
eradication of poverty is not only a development goal, but also a central challenge for human rights, and the
defence of all human rights is not only a concern of human rights activists and jurists, but also a central element of the
poverty eradication process.
We have an moral obligation to solve poverty
Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the General Assembly 8 December 2006
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm
When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so intense, the world has a moral and strategic obligation to
fight poverty and to address the human rights concerns of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to
experience human rights violations, discrimination or other forms of persecution. Being poor makes it harder
to find a job and get access to basic services, such as health care, education and housing. Poverty is above all
about having no power and no voice. History is littered with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are to
eradicate poverty and promote human rights, we need to take action to empower the poor and address the root
causes of poverty, such as discrimination and social exclusion. It is because human rights, poverty reduction and
the empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that we all have a moral duty to take action.
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Moral Obligation
Poverty is the worlds biggest killer – we have an obligation to address the systemic impacts that it
causes.
John Kevany Prof. of Community Health at Trinity College. 7/13/96. “Extreme Poverty: an
obligation ignored.”
The world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering across the globe is listed almost at the end
of the International Classification of Diseases. It is given code Z59.5--extreme poverty.1
Extreme poverty is defined as a level of income or expenditure below which people cannot afford a minimum,
nutritionally adequate diet and essential non-food requirements.2 The effects of poverty on health are never more
clearly expressed than in poor communities of the developing world. The absence of safe water, environmental
sanitation, adequate diet, secure housing, basic education, income generating opportunities, and access to health care
act in obvious and direct ways to produce ill health, particularly from infectious disease, malnutrition, and
reproductive hazards.3
Today the number of people in extreme poverty is estimated at 1.1 billion--a fifth of the world's population. The
wealthiest fifth of the world's population now controls 85% of global gross national product and 85% of world trade,
leaving the poorest quintile with 1.4% of gross national product and 0.9% of world trade.4 This extraordinary gap
continues to widen, to an extent that human poverty has now become institutionalised on an unprecedented scale.
In real terms, poverty is the principal cause of the 12.2 million deaths a year in children under 5; 4.1 million of these
deaths arise from acute lower respiratory tract infections and a further 3 million from diarrhoea and dysentery. 1
Malnutrition is estimated to be an underlying cause in 30% of child deaths and is overtly expressed as growth
retardation in 230 million children and severe wasting in 50 million children.1 In adults, poverty accounts for much of
the annual 2.7 million deaths from tuberculosis and 2 million deaths from malaria.1 Maternal mortality is strongly
associated with high fertility and lack of access to health services and causes a further 500 000 deaths a year, with
their associated impact on surviving offspring.1 The scale and persistence of these problems, despite global
immunisation levels of around 80% and a gradual improvement in life expectancy in most countries, 1 is a blunt
reminder of an obligation ignored.
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Oceans Module
Poverty causes the destruction of coral reefs and fish stocks.
CNN. 2/9/09. “Beating poverty could save coral reef fish, report says” http://www.cnn.com/2009/
WORLD/asiapcf/02/09/poverty.coralreef/
It's not just the number of people fishing, but the level of poverty in a local community that leads to overfishing of
coral reefs, according to a new report. Studying coral reefs in the western Indian Ocean, the researchers of the report
published in "Current Biology" found that overfishing is at its worst in areas that are socio-economically
underdeveloped. According to the report, in these areas fish numbers were only one-quarter what they were in places with
either higher or lower levels of development. However, it is not necessarily the poorest and most underdeveloped areas that
are guilty of the worst overfishing. People in moderately developed places that have few amenities such as road, schools
and electricity often tend to depend less on fishing, but they also have more access to engine-powered boats, spear guns,
and other technologies that can rapidly deplete some fish species, said Joshua Cinner of James Cook University in Australia
in the report. Those locations also tended to have fewer traditional village rules to limit fishing and national governments that
are too weak to effectively enforce fishery regulations. "In short, they have the technology to plunder their reefs, but not the
institutions to protect them or the levels of development that allow for sufficient alternatives to fishing," Cinner said. The
report suggests that the sustainability of coral reefs will depend in large part on whether developing countries can
improve their well-being without falling into a poverty trap -- a situation when communities are forced to degrade the
very resources they rely on because of a lack of alternatives for making ends meet. "Those conditions can create a cycle of
poverty and resource degradation, and the danger is that, if pushed too hard, reefs may lose their ability to bounce back
when and if economic conditions improve," Cinner said. "For communities already in a poverty trap, governments and
donors need to help them get out and couple this development with good governance and strong institutions," he said. The
complexity of the reef ecosystem is an additional factor that can determine how fish stocks hold up to fishing, the report also
noted. Better news, said Cinner, is that the current economic crisis could provide a opportunity for western governments,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and donors to restructure aid and conservation efforts to better tackle causes of reef
decline. While some coral reef conservation projects already do try to consider socioeconomic issues and provide people with
alternatives to fishing, the new findings suggest that those efforts likely won't be enough. "Reef fisheries don't seem to get
better until very substantial improvements in human welfare have been made," Cinner said. "There are certainly some
real challenges facing reefs, the path to their destruction is not inevitable. They can be sustained with the right
combination of approaches, which includes promoting strategies such as fishery closures while at the same time tackling
poverty as a root cause of the degradation of reefs and their fish stocks," Cinner said.
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Oceans Module
Oceans key to survival
Craig '03. (Robin Kundis Craig -- Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School
of Law – McGeorge Law Rev – Winter – elipses in original)
The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more
than [seventy percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," 17 oceans provide food; marketable
goods such as shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon sequestration, nutrient
cycling, and weather mechanics; and quality of life, both aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide. 18
Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our
planet, and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and
hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and
climate." 19 Ocean and coastal ecosystem services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year,
worldwide. 20 In addition, many people assign heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the
world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to future generations. 21
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Overpopulation Module
Poverty causes overpopulation.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Like disease, environmental degradation is linked significantly to poverty in the developing world and can result in
long-term adverse consequences for the United States. Much of the world’s environmental stress can be attributed to
population pressure. From 1950 to 1998, the world’s population doubled. It has grown a further 14% in the
last ten years to 6.4 billion. By 2050, global population is on track to reach 9 billion. This growth is coming
disproportionately from the developing world. Poverty substantially fuels population growth, as families have
more children in response to high infant mortality rates and the need to raise income potential.
Deforestation is accelerating in the developing world due to increased demand for fuel in the form of firewood and for
arable acreage to enable growing populations to survive in marginal areas. The loss of trees exacerbates
desertification, which has spread to the extent that 2 billion hectares of soil, or 15% of the planet’s land cover, is
already degraded. Logging for trade in exotic African and Asian hardwoods magnifies the problem, contributing to the
loss of 2.4% of the world’s forest cover since 1990. One result is reduced biodiversity, which alters delicate
ecosystems and depletes the world’s stock of flora and fauna that have produced important medical benefits for
mankind.
OVERPOP risks extinction and nuke wars
The Ehrlich’s 90 [Paul and Anne, Professors of Population Studies and Biology at Stanford, The Population Explosion]
The population explosion contributes to international tensions and therefore makes a nuclear holocaust more likely. Most
people in our society can visualize the horrors of a large-scale nuclear war followed by a nuclear winter. We call that
possible end to our civilization “the Bang.” Hundreds of millions of people would be killed outright, and billions more
would follow from the disruption of agricultural systems and other indirect effects largely caused the disruption of
ecosystem services. It would be the ultimate “death-rate solution” to the population problem-a stunning contrast to the
humane solution of lowering the global birthrate to slightly below the death rate for a few centuries. [174-5]
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Poverty Terminal Impact
Poverty is the worst form of violence – it kills more people than an ongoing nuclear war
Abu-Jamal, prominent social activist and author, ‘98
[A Quiet and Deadly Violence, Sept 19, http://www.flashpoints.net/mQuietDeadlyViolence.html]
The deadliest form of violence is poverty. --Ghandi It has often been observed that America is a truly violent
nation, as shown by the thousands of cases of social and communal violence that occurs daily in the nation. Every
year, some 20,000 people are killed by others, and additional 20,000 folks kill themselves. Add to this the nonlethal
violence that Americans daily inflict on each other, and we begin to see the tracings of a nation immersed in a fever of
violence. But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent
features of living in the midst of the American empire. We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a
nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging "structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a
breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes; By
"structural violence" I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs
of society, as contrasted by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large
proportion of them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective
human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am
contrasting "structural" with "behavioral violence" by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that
are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide,
suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. --(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage,
1996), 192.) This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because
of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan notes: [E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people
die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every
single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the
Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in
fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade,
throughout the world. [Gilligan, p. 196] Worse still, in a thoroughly capitalist society, much of that violence
became internalized, turned back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of wealth, those who
own nothing are taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with themselves, instead of the
social order that promotes this self-loathing. This intense self-hatred was often manifested in familial violence as
when the husband beats the wife, the wife smacks the son, and the kids fight each other.
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Poverty Terminal Impact
Poverty is a form of structural violence equivalent to an ongoing nuclear war that is the root cause
of all other violence
Gilligan 96
[James, Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the Study of Violence, and a
member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence, “Violence: Our
Deadly Epidemic and its Causes”, p. 191-196]
The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental
hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their
lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest
form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely individual terms
is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum
security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not
where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths.
Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing
merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural
causes of violent death that are for more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By “structural violence” I mean the
increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively low death rates
experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class
structure; and that structure itself is a product of society’s collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the
society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting “structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries
that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in
warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavior violence in at least three major respects. *The lethal effects
of structural violence operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions,
wars, and other forms of behavior violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less
independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose
decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. *Structural violence is normally invisible, because it
may appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. [CONTINUED] The finding that structural violence causes
far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at
the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the
nation that had come closest to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards,
and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy of the world.
When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they
found that 18 million deaths a year could be attributed to the “structural violence” to which the citizens of all the other
nations were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have
increased dramatically and alarmingly. The 14 to 19 million deaths a year caused by structural violence
compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from
structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War
II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocide – or about eight million per year,
1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000 deaths), the Vietnam war (possibly two million,
1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was
clear that even war cannot being to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other
words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the
Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact
accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade,
throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and
epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to which of the
two forms of violence – structural or behavioral – is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are
inextricably related to eachother, as cause to effect.
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“S” and Crew
Small Arms Module
Poverty makes increase the proliferation of small arms.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Today, more than half the world’s population subsists on less than $2 dollars per day, and almost 1.1 billion
people live in extreme poverty, defined as less than $1 dollar per day. The costs of global poverty are multiple.
Poverty dramatically increases the risk of civil conflict, and war zones provide ideal operating environments
for international outlaws. Poverty erodes weak states’ capacity to control their territory and resources,
creating vacuums easily exploited by transnational criminals and terrorists. Poverty impedes poor countries’
ability to detect or contain deadly disease, and it undermines their ability to protect the world’s forests and
watersheds.
If in the “old days” the consequences of extreme poverty could be confined conveniently to the far corners of the
planet, it is no longer the case. The end of U.S.-Soviet competition, the civil and regional conflicts that ensued, and
the rapid pace of globalization have brought to the fore a new generation of dangers. These are the complex nexus of
transnational security threats – infectious disease, environmental degradation, international crime and drug
syndicates, proliferation of small arms and weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism. Often these threats
emerge from impoverished, relatively remote regions of the world. They thrive especially in conflict or lawless
zones, where corruption is endemic, and in poor, weak states with limited control over their territory or
resources. The map of vulnerable zones is global – ranging from parts of the Caribbean, Latin America and the
Middle East to Africa, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Central, South and East Asia. Fifty-three countries have an
average per capita GDP of less than $2 per day. Each is a potential weak spot in a world in which effective action and
cooperation among states everywhere is necessary to combat transnational threats.
Small Arms outweigh Nuclear Weapons -- certainty of use & systemic
impacts make them a higher priority.
Wood ‘94. (DAVID WOOD; NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE -- Plain Dealer – March
20th – lexis)
From Somalia to Sarajevo and in dozens of lesser-known conflicts, a relentless proliferation of small arms is fueling a global
wave of mayhem, and is beyond the ability of authorities to control or even monitor. A flood of excess Cold War weapons,
together with a recent boom in exports from new arms factories around the world, has combined to lethal effect with a
virulent new form of conflict ideally suited to small arms: ethnic and religious terrorism and violence, spurred by economic
and environmental deterioration and overpopulation.
"A fully loaded fighter plane is obviously more deadly than a rifle, but there are a lot more rifles in the world and they are
used with much less discretion," said Aaron Karp, a political scientist at Old Dominion University in Virginia and one of a
handful of arms analysts who are beginning to study the problem. In the Persian Gulf war of 1991, 5,000 to 10,000 Iraqis are
believed to have been killed, mostly by American bombers, guided missiles and long-range artillery. By contrast, Karp said, a
dozen "minor" conflicts around the world at the same time - in Angola and Cambodia, for instance – each produced more
than 10,000 deaths, most of them the result of rifles, hand grenades and mines. While the world's arsenals of missiles, longrange bombers and nuclear weapons bear watching, Karp said, "the greater danger certainly comes from the weapons used in
ethnic conflict."
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Terrorism Module
Poverty creates the structural conditions necessary for terrorism to occur.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
However, the primary flaw in the conventional argument that poverty is unrelated to terrorism is its failure to
capture the range of ways in which poverty can exacerbate the threat of transnational terrorism -- not at the
individual level -- but at the state and regional level. Poverty bears indirectly on terrorism by sparking conflict
and eroding state capacity, both of which create conditions that can facilitate terrorist activity.
Oxford University economist Paul Collier finds that “if a country’s per capita income doubles, its risk of conflict
5
drops by roughly half.” A country at $250 GDP per capita has an average 15% risk of internal conflict over five
6
years, while a country at $5,000 per capita has a risk of less than 1%. Conflict zones not only cost lives, they can
incubate virtually every type of transnational security threat by creating the optimal anarchic environment for
external predators. Al Qaeda established training camps in conflict-ridden Sudan and Afghanistan, purchased
diamonds from Sierra Leone and Liberia, and now target American soldiers in Iraq. While low per capita income
increases the likelihood of civil conflict, conflict zones, in turn, have been exploited by terrorists to lure foot
soldiers and train new cadres, as in Bosnia, the Philippines and Central Asia.
In extreme cases, conflict results in state failure as in Somalia and Afghanistan. When states collapse, the climate for
predatory transnational actors is improved exponentially. Economic privation is an important indicator of state
failure. The CIA’s State Failure Task Force found that states in which human suffering is rampant (as measured by
7
high infant mortality) are 2.3 times more likely to fail than others. While poor economic conditions are not the only
major risk factor for state weakness and failure, they are widely understood to be an important contributor along with
partial democratization, corrupt governance, regional instability and ethnic tension.
Even absent conflict, poverty at the country level, particularly in states with significant Muslim populations,
may enhance the ability of Jihadist terrorists to operate. Poor countries with limited institutional capacity to
control their territory, borders and coastlines can provide safe havens, training grounds, and recruiting fields
8
for terrorist networks. By some estimates, 25% of the foreign terrorists recruited by Al Qaeda to Iraq have come
9
from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. To support their activities, networks like Al Qaeda have exploited the terrain,
cash crops, natural resources and financial institutions of low-income states from Mali to Yemen. Militants have taken
advantage of lax immigration, security and financial controls to plan, finance and execute operations in Kenya,
Tanzania and Indonesia. Al Qaeda is now believed to have extended its reach to approximately 60 countries
worldwide.
Country-level poverty may also weaken state capacity to provide essential human services and thereby render
states more vulnerable to exploitation by terrorist networks. In low-income countries, social and welfare services
are often inadequate, creating voids in education and health that may be filled by radical NGOs or madrassas. In
Indonesia, the Sahel and Bangladesh, for example, international Islamic charities are closing the welfare gap. In
Pakistan and Egypt, radical groups offer social welfare services that governments fail to provide. In the Palestinian
territories, Hamas’ stunning electoral victory was due in part to its superior provision of social services. Terrorist
networks often use legitimate and illegitimate charities as fronts to garner popular support.
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Terrorism risks extinction
Alexander 03. (Yonah, Prof and Director of Inter-University for Terrorism Studies, Washington Times, August
28, lexis)
Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary
terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and
unconventional threats and impact. The internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we
have entered an Age of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious
implications concerning national, regional and global security concerns. Two myths in particular must be debunked immediately if an
effective counterterrorism "best practices" strategy can be developed [e.g., strengthening international cooperation]. The first illusion is that terrorism can be
greatly reduced, if not eliminated completely, provided the root causes of conflicts - political, social and economic - are addressed. The conventional illusion
is that terrorism must be justified by oppressed people seeking to achieve their goals and consequently the argument advanced by "freedom fighters"
anywhere, "give me liberty and I will give you death," should be tolerated if not glorified. This traditional rationalization of "sacred" violence often conceals
that the real purpose of terrorist groups is to gain political power through the barrel of the gun, in violation of fundamental human rights of the noncombatant
segment of societies. For instance, Palestinians religious movements [e.g., Hamas, Islamic Jihad] and secular entities [such as Fatah's Tanzim and Aqsa
Martyr Brigades]] wish not only to resolve national grievances [such as Jewish settlements, right of return, Jerusalem] but primarily to destroy the Jewish
state. Similarly, Osama bin Laden's international network not only opposes the presence of American military in the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, but its
stated objective is to "unite all Muslims and establish a government that follows the rule of the Caliphs." The second myth is that strong action against
terrorist infrastructure [leaders, recruitment, funding, propaganda, training, weapons, operational command and control] will only increase terrorism. The
argument here is that law-enforcement efforts and military retaliation inevitably will fuel more brutal acts of violent revenge. Clearly, if this perception
continues to prevail, particularly in democratic societies, there is the danger it will paralyze governments and thereby encourage further terrorist attacks. In
sum, past experience provides useful lessons for a realistic future strategy. The prudent application of force has been demonstrated to be an effective tool for
short- and long-term deterrence of terrorism. For example, Israel's targeted killing of Mohammed Sider, the Hebron commander of the Islamic Jihad, defused
a "ticking bomb." The assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab - a top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip who was directly responsible for several suicide bombings
including the latest bus attack in Jerusalem - disrupted potential terrorist operations. Similarly, the U.S. military operation in Iraq eliminated Saddam
Hussein's regime as a state sponsor of terror. Thus, it behooves those countries victimized by terrorism to understand a cardinal message
communicated by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940: "Victory at all costs, victory in spite of terror, victory
however long and hard the road may be: For without victory, there is no survival."
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Poverty significantly contributes to terrorism – studies that conclude oppositely are flawed.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Finally, poverty contributes, indirectly but significantly, to transnational, anti-U.S. terrorism perpetrated by
sub-state actors such as Al Qaeda. There remains much debate over whether poverty causes individuals to
become terrorists. Some analysts argue that 4 the 9/11 hijackers were predominantly middle class, educated Saudis,
so poverty cannot bear any meaningful relationship to terrorism. Others note that the poorest are struggling merely to
2
survive and have no capacity to plan and execute terrorist acts. A commonly cited study by Alan Krueger and Jitka
Maleckova concludes there is “little direct connection between poverty or education and participation in terrorism.”
Yet, their analysis is unconvincing in several respects. First, it extrapolates data on Palestinian terrorists and
traditional crime rates in several countries to draw conclusions about terrorism writ large, including
transnational, anti-U.S. Jihadi terrorism. Second, contrary evidence undermines the argument that socioeconomic conditions are unrelated to the recruitment of terrorist foot soldiers, if not leaders.
3
Poverty increases terrorism.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Poverty, vast income disparities, joblessness, and lack of hope may engender sufficient levels of fatalism among some
groups (perhaps especially educated, but under-employed youth) to render them vulnerable to recruitment by radical
groups. In the greater Middle East region, the emergence of a youth bulge in the 1970s was followed by the rise of
political Islam. Many Middle Eastern countries suffer from high unemployment rates, an exploding labor force and
stagnant real wages. For several years, Saudi Arabia, home to several 9/11 hijackers, experienced rapidly declining GDP.
University of Maryland researchers have found that countries with low income, low life expectancy and a large male
4
youth bulge are more likely to experience terrorism.
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Poverty allows terrorists to rise to power
President Bush, speech at the United Nations Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico. March
22, 2002 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/march02/bush_3-22.html
We thank our friends and neighbors throughout the world for helping in this great cause. History has called us to a
titanic struggle, whose stakes could not be higher because we're fighting for freedom, itself. We're pursuing great and
worthy goals to make the world safer, and as we do, to make it better. We will challenge the poverty and
hopelessness and lack of education and failed governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize
and try to turn to their advantage.
Reducing poverty key to fighting terrorism
Carlos Lozada, writer for the National Bureau of Economic Research, May 5, 2005
http://www.nber.org/digest/may05/w10859.html
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, politicians and policy experts drew a quick and intuitive line
between terrorism and poverty. Much of the existing academic literature on conflict suggested that poverty
increased the likelihood of political coups and civil war, so conflating terrorism with poor economic conditions
seemed logical. Indeed, just a few weeks following 9/11, then U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick spoke
out on the need to liberalize international trade -- and thus reduce poverty -- as a means to fight terrorism.
Poverty allows terrorism to arise
Alberto Abadie, Harvard University and NBER October 2004 http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/povterr.pdf
After the 9/11 attacks, much of the political and media debate on terrorism has focused on prevention policies.
The widespread view that poverty creates terrorism has dominated much of this debate (see, for example, Kahn
and Weiner, 2002). This is hardly surprising. After all, the notion that poverty generates terrorism is consistent
with the results of most of the existing literature on the economics of con°icts. In particular, the results in Alesina
et al (1996) suggest that poor economic conditions increase the probability of political coups. Collier and Hoe®er
(2004) show that economic variables are powerful predictors of civil war, while political variables have low
explanatory power. Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti (2004) show that, for a sample of African countries, negative
exogenous shocks in economic growth increase the likelihood of civil con°ict. Because terrorism is a
manifestation of political con°ict, these results seem to indicate that poverty and adverse economic conditions
may play an important role explaining terrorism.
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Tuberculosis Module
Poverty exacerbates tuberculosis and other diseases causing a vicious cycle.
Rowson, managing editor of the Global Health Watch 05-06, 2001,
(Mike, Poverty and health, http://student.bmj.com/back_issues/0601/education/180.html,)
Most of the illnesses associated with poverty are infectious diseases, such as diarrhoeal illness, malaria, and
tuberculosis. All of them are associated with the lack of income, clean water and sanitation, food, and access to
medical services and education which characterise poor countries and communities. The diseases are linked to
undernutrition and children are most susceptible to them (see table 3). The environmental, social, and dietary
changes produced by industrialisation and urbanisation are leading to higher rates of diabetes, hypertension,
heart disease, and respiratory illness among both the urban poor and not so poor. 8
There is in fact a two way relationship between poverty and ill health, with disease often further impoverishing
the poor. Illness prevents people from working, or affects their productivity, lowering their income. The costs
of obtaining health care can also be substantial, both in terms of time off from work (clinics are often a long
distance from the household) and in terms of money spent on services: it is estimated that between 1990 and 1994,
21% of previously non-poor households in Bangladesh slipped into poverty as a result of health-related causes.6
TB is already the second biggest killer in the world. Left unchecked it would go global.
Middle East Online News 3/24/02 l/n
Washington - March 24 has been designated by the World Health Organization as World Tuberculosis Day. This very
date, 120 years ago, Dr. Robert Koch - a German medical researcher - announced to the European medical community
that he had discovered the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. His discovery was considered a medical breakthrough
that promised to put an end to the disease. But today, over a century later, tuberculosis continues to kill millions of
people every year. In the late 19th century, tuberculosis a bacterial disease spread through the air - killed one out of
every seven people in the United States and in Europe. Today, this infectious disease remains the second leading killer
in the world after AIDS, with more than two million TB-related deaths each year. Tuberculosis strikes somewhere in
the world every second. According to Michael Iademarco of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the disease
primarily plagues developing countries. "Countries such as India, and China, Vietnam, the Philippines. There is a list
of 23 high burdened countries in the world. It's from this set of 23 countries that 80 percent of the world's TB burden
comes from," he says. Dr. Iadenmarco says that poverty and poor health conditions contribute significantly to the
spread of tuberculosis in those countries. "Many of these 23 high burdened countries, for example, are lower or low
income countries. So, they don't have adequate health infrastructure and so, therefore, it is very difficult to coordinate,
organize and provide the drugs for adequate TB control. A more social reason is that TB historically is a very
stigmatizing disease. People don't want other people to know that they have tuberculosis. This prevents people from
going and seeking appropriate treatments," he says. Today, tuberculosis appears to be a disease of the developing
world. But, if it is not checked, it could spread anywhere, including the United States.
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War on Drugs Module
The government justifies uses poverty to justify the war on drugs.
Talking Drugs, online drug awareness website. October 2007. “Drug War in Rio: The
Criminalization of Poverty”
How can the state justify the ongoing repression and coercion measures without being accused of unfair,
authoritarian or despotic behavior? 1st- Criminalizing the poor. That is, blaming the poor for the violence
generated by the punitive prohibition intended to diminish drug problems - but which in fact only increases
those problems. 2nd - Associating the localities where poor people live to a group of ‘cruel and bloody
murderers’: the traficantes (drug dealers). Although less than 1% of the people in the favelas are connected to the
drug trade, all people who live there are suspects. Drug dealers are the alibi of the State to maintain the order
and the status quo. Drug traffic is used to justify, legitimate and reproduce the criminalization of poverty.
The war on drugs endorses racism.
Arianna Huffington. Editor of Huffington Post. 3/28/2007. “The War on Drugs' War on
Minorities”
THERE IS A subject being forgotten in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House.
While all the major candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most
pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed "war on drugs" — a war that has morphed into a war on
people of color.
Consider this: According to a 2006 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, African Americans make up an
estimated 15% of drug users, but they account for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted
and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison. Or consider this: The U.S. has 260,000 people in state prisons
on nonviolent drug charges; 183,200 (more than 70%) of them are black or Latino.
Such facts have been bandied about for years. But our politicians have consistently failed to take action on what has
become yet another third rail of American politics, a subject to be avoided at all costs by elected officials who fear
being incinerated on contact for being soft on crime.
Perhaps you hoped this would change during a spirited Democratic presidential primary? Unfortunately, a quick
search of the top Democratic hopefuls' websites reveals that not one of them — not Hillary Clinton, not Barack
Obama, not John Edwards, not Joe Biden, not Chris Dodd, not Bill Richardson — even mentions the drug war, let
alone offers any solutions.
The silence coming from Clinton and Obama is particularly deafening.
Obama has written eloquently about his own struggle with drugs but has not addressed the tragic effect the
war on drugs is having on African American communities.
As for Clinton, she flew into Selma, Ala., to reinforce her image as the wife of the black community's most beloved
politician and has made much of her plan to attract female voters, but she has ignored the suffering of poor, black
women right in her own backyard.
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We Must tear down the walls of Racism. Failure risks extinction.
Barndt 1991 (Joseph; Pastor and Co-director of Crossroads – a ministry working to dismantle racism and build a
multicultural church and society) Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America 155-6
To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations, ghettos and prisons. The
prison of racism confines us all, people of color and white people alike. It shackles the victimizer as well as the victim. The
walls forcibly keep people of color and white people separate from each other; in our separate prisons we are all prevented
from achieving the human potential that God intends for us. The limitations imposed on people of color by poverty,
subservience, and powerlessness are cruel, inhuman, and unjust; the effects of uncontrolled power, privilege, and greed,
which are the marks of our white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well. But we have also seen that the walls of
racism can be dismantled. We are not condemned to an inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility
of freedom . Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be
destroyed. You and I are urgently called to join the efforts of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all,
the walls of racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be drawing ever more near . The results of
centuries of national and worldwide conquest and colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggression, of
overconsumption and environmental destruction may be reaching a point of no return . A small and predominantly
white minority of the global population derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of
color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue .
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War on drugs policy is based of white supremacy and reproduces the ideology of slavery.
Drug Policy Alliance 2001 “The U.S. War on Drugs: Political Economics of a New Slavery”
The U.S. "war on drugs" is big business -- a multi-billion dollar public/private venture that radically inflates the
value of illegal drugs and is used to criminalize the poorest people of color, trapping them in a vicious cycle of
addiction, unemployment and incarceration: $27 billion for interdiction and law enforcement, $1.3 billion for Plan
Colombia in 2000. $9.4 billion in 2000 to imprison close to 500,000 people convicted of non-violent drug offenses,
75% of whom are Black. $80 to $100 billion in lost earnings. Untold billions in homeless shelters, healthcare,
chemical dependency and psychiatric treatment, etc. It is rarely acknowledged that Black women are the fastest
growing segment of the prison population and that Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita.(1)
Approximately five million people -- including those on probation and parole -- are directly under the surveillance
of the criminal justice system. To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of
prisons relies on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Black and brown bodies are the
human raw material in a vast experiment to conceal the major social problems of our time. The racialized
demographics of the victims of the "war on drugs" will not surprise anyone familiar with the symbiotic
relationship between poverty and institutionalized white supremacy. Economic inequality and political
disenfranchisement have been inextricably intertwined since the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. The racist
enforcement of the drug laws is just the latest strategy to sustain the status quo. As political economist John
Flateau graphically puts it: "Metaphorically, the criminal justice pipeline is like a slave ship, transporting human
cargo along interstate triangular trade routes from Black and Brown communities; through the middle passage
of police precincts, holding pens, detention centers and courtrooms; to downstate jails or upstate prisons; back to
communities as unrehabilitated escapees; and back to prison or jail in a vicious recidivist cycle."(2)
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War on drugs has been a disaster
The Economist, 5 March 2009
How to Stop the Drug Wars
Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like
first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been
a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any
sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist
continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.
Gangsterism results from prohibitive policies
The Economist, 5 March 2009
How to Stop the Drug Wars
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before.
According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the
West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up
in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily
adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who
succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the
emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in
a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried
about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.
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Legalization will discourage gangs and crime
The Economist, 5 March 2009
How to Stop the Drug Wars
Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a
public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and
use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking
and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different
levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hardto-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use
on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now
resort to feed their habits.
No difference in drug rates between strict and lenient laws
The Economist, 5 March 2009
How to Stop the Drug Wars
That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That
presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drugtaking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer.
Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules
make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same
addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that
dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made
cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume
that drug-taking as a whole would rise.
Addiction and liberal principle show that prohibition should end
The Economist, 5 March 2009
How to Stop the Drug Wars
There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal
principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful.
(Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even
heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or
a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.
What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the
user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider
social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second
argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.
By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments
could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer
drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff
that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee
treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in
stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.
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Massive drug war costs for California and other states – reform on the table
Sasha Abramsky, Senior Fellow at Demos, NYC think tank
The Nation, 6 July 2009
The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’
The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the
real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual
correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state's political figures are challenging the basic
tenets of the "war on drugs," the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years;
they argue that the country's harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support
among the voting public.
Similar stories are unfolding around the country; in Washington, federal officials are talking about drug-policy reform
and, more generally, sentencing reform in a way that has not been heard in the halls of power for more than a
generation.
Incarceration no longer effective method to solve social problems – citizens want alt. measures
Sasha Abramsky, Senior Fellow at Demos, NYC think tank
The Nation, 6 July 2009
The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’
Tough-on-crime rhetoric, and the policies and institutions that grow from it, emerged from Nixon's Silent Majority
tactics, from his recasting of politics as a series of debates around "values" rather than bread-and-butter issues. And in
the same way the 2008 presidential election ended that peculiar chapter in American history, so too did it end the
monotone cry that we could incarcerate our way out of deep-rooted social and economic problems. Despite a few
halfhearted GOP attempts to accuse Democrats of being weak on drugs and public safety--Obama had, after all,
written about his drug use during his teenage and early adult years, which, according to the old calculus, should have
made him an easy target for scaremongers--neither presidential candidate played the tough-on-crime card. It was a
nonissue for most voters and thus for the candidates. In fact, recent Zogby polling commissioned by the National
Council on Crime and Delinquency suggests that close to eight in ten Americans favor alternatives to incarceration for
low-level nonviolent offenders. Another Zogby poll, from last fall, found that just more than three-quarters of
Americans felt the "war on drugs" was a failure. The sea change in public opinion holds in California too. In late
March the Los Angeles Times ran a column asking readers their opinion on marijuana legalization. So far 4,927 people
have replied, and 94 percent of them favor legalization. A Field Poll in April found that 56 percent of Californians
favor legalizing and taxing pot
Obama favors alternative drug laws and policies to ‘war’
Sasha Abramsky, Senior Fellow at Demos, NYC think tank
The Nation, 6 July 2009
The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’
The new atmosphere is most apparent vis-à-vis the Obama administration's move away from "war on drugs" rhetoric
and toward a harm-reduction strategy. Gil Kerlikowske, the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
has made it clear that he prefers treatment over punishment for drug users, a preference he brings from his time as a
reform-oriented police chief in Seattle. Putting money where its mouth is, the new team has increased funding for the
Bush-era Second Chance Act, intended to connect released inmates with community services such as housing, family
counseling and addiction treatment. Support is also growing for the creation of more drug and mental health courts
across the country. Finally, there are the promises being made by drug policy leaders in Washington that state medical
marijuana laws will be respected rather than trampled, as they have been for more than a decade.
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Legalization will end dangers of cartels and gangs
Sasha Abramsky, Senior Fellow at Demos, NYC think tank
The Nation, 6 July 2009
The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’
To get a handle on that problem involves thinking of ways to neutralize these gangs, which inevitably leads to a
discussion of partial drug decriminalization or legalization. Why? Because once the drug market is no longer confined
to the shadows--once it is regulated and taxed, as alcohol was after Prohibition ended in 1933--the violence that
accompanies struggles for control of that illicit market will disappear. After years of denying this truth and assuming
that the country could incarcerate its way out of the drug-abuse epidemic, a number of American politicians, Webb
included, are touting that seemingly paradoxical fact. Want to get really tough on crime? Well, do the smart thing:
start working out ways to neutralize the drug cartels, start talking about at least limited forms of decriminalization or
legalization.
Smarter but still tough – states are following new policies
Sasha Abramsky, Senior Fellow at Demos, NYC think tank
The Nation, 6 July 2009
The War Against the ‘War on Drugs’
America isn't about to abandon all of its "tough on crime" tenets. Nor should it in all instances. The three-strikes law
will likely remain in place for violent offenders, as will the growing body of laws limiting where sex offenders may
live. Violent crimes will probably continue to trigger longer sentences than they did before the get-tough movement.
And while some inmates will qualify for early release, many sentenced to long terms at the height of the tough-oncrime years will stay in prison. But out of economic necessity and because of shifting mores, the country will likely
get more selective, and smarter, about how it uses incarceration and whom it targets for long spells behind bars.
This will be especially true for drug policy--the multi-tentacled beast that's sucking most people into jails and prisons.
There, profound changes are likely to develop over the next few years. And when it comes to the mentally ill,
momentum continues to build around mental health courts designed to get people medical and counseling help rather
than simply to shunt them off to prison. States like Pennsylvania are starting to develop parallel institutions to deal
with mentally ill people who run afoul of the law. Many other states will likely follow suit in the near future. Forty
years after deinstitutionalization, a new consensus is emerging that prisons became an accidental, de facto alternative
to mental hospitals, and that very little good has come from that development.
Drug crackdown leads to violent crime – we must change approach
Tom Stone, Graduate of Harvard University
The Signal (Newspaper of the College of NJ), 29 April 2009
America’s war on drugs is misguided
Most Americans now realize the folly of alcohol prohibition. They know it led to violent crime, and it's better to treat
alcohol abuse as a medical problem. They should also realize the same logic applies to currently illegal substances.
The use of mind-altering chemicals is as old as human civilization, and no amount of laws will prevent someone from
using drugs if they want to use them.
Considering this, it makes more sense to legalize drugs and regulate their production and use. As Albert Einstein once
said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
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Government arrests large amount of poor people for drug possession alone
Stephen H. Unger, Professor at Columbia University
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/drugWar.html, 2 December 2008
The Drug War: Stuck in the Tunnel
The drug war is being fought on several different fronts involving local, state, and national governments. It is
international in that an important aspect is the use of force to try to stop the growing and transporting of opiates and
coca leaves in countries all over the world. The principal strategy has been to cut off the supply at the source or in
transit, so as to reduce the quantity of drugs available for sale on the streets. In addition, substantial efforts are being
made, to apprehend and imprison local drug dealers. Drug users are also routinely rounded up. In fact, most of those
"captured" in the war on drugs are people, mostly poor people, arrested for illegal possession of illicit substances.
These constitute more than four times the number arrested for sales or manufacture of such items. About 20% of state
prisoners and about 55% of federal prisoners are drug offenders. In addition, about 1 out of 6 prisoners committed
their crimes to get money for drugs.
Increase of drugs and drug problems since ‘war on drugs’ began
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, César Gaviria, Ernesto Zedillo
The Wall Street Journal, 23 February 2009
The War on Drugs is a Failure
Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven't worked.
Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin
America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium
and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.
Unfairness and violation of privacy from Drug Wars
Mike Gray, Author of ‘Drug Crazy’
Times Union, 9 June 2009
Nation Must Recast The War on Drugs
The Rev. Eddie Lopez, a United Methodist pastor, who works with young people in the Bronx, said: "It's amazing
when you get youth groups together, whether it's in our churches or our communities, and how they talk about police
abusing them and stopping them and frisking them. We know we have a drug problem but war is definitely not the
answer. We need to find the moral, just, and effective way to solve this problem, and I think that lies outside the
criminal justice system."
The Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, who hosted the gathering at the church in Harlem, is white, but he's familiar with the
inequality of drug war punishment.
As Sister Marion put it: "The word on the street is, if you're white and you're famous you go to rehab. If you're poor,
you're black, you're Hispanic, you go to jail."
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War on Drugs Racist Exts.
Governmental policies disproportionately harsh on poor drug users and people of color
PBS
Independent Lens, 23 February 2009
The U.S. War on Drugs: An Overview
One main reason for this increase in incarceration was a shift in sentencing laws. The state of New York first imposed
mandatory prison sentences for drug possession and drug sales, known as the “Rockefeller drug laws,” in 1973. The
1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Law established mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses on the federal level. This
law also imposed far higher penalties for crack cocaine offenses than for powder offenses, requiring a possession of
100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine in order to enact the same mandatory minimum prison sentence of
five to ten years. This 100 to one ratio continues to be widely criticized by citizens and lawmakers for being overly
harsh and for disproportionately targeting low-income communities and people of color. In 2006, for instance, African
Americans and Hispanics comprised 96 percent of those sentenced under federal crack cocaine laws.
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War of Drugs => Terrorism
Terrorists gain more recruits from drug war
Johann Hari, Columnist of the London Independent
The Huffington Post, 10 February 2009
Obama Must End the War on Drugs or Mexico and Afghanistan will Collapse
The same process has occurred in Afghanistan. After the toppling of the Taliban, the country's bitterly poor farmers
turned to the only cash crop that earns them enough to keep their kids alive: opium. It now makes up 50 percent of the
country's GDP. The drug cartels have a far bigger budget than the elected government, so they have left the young
democracy, police force and army riddled with corruption and virtually useless.
The U.S. reacted by declaring "war on opium." The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed that the NATO
Commander has ordered his troops to "kill all opium dealers." Seeing their main crop destroyed and their families
killed, many have turned back to the Taliban in rage. The drug war has brought the Taliban back to life.
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War on Drugs => AIDS
More dangerous drug use results from restrictions – spreads HIV
The Economist, 5 March 2009
How to Stop the Drug Wars
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before.
According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the
West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up
in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily
adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who
succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the
emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in
a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried
about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.
Drug safety effective – prevents HIV spread
Manfred Nowak, Professor at Vienna University, Anand Grover, U.N. Health Reporter
The New York Times, 25 June 2009
A Misguided ‘War on Drugs’
This is not only a human rights problem: It is bad public policy. Research shows that abusive drug control practices,
including mass incarceration, are ineffective in controlling illicit drug consumption and drug-related crime, and in
protecting public health. Scientific evidence has shown that more supportive “harm-reduction” programs prevent HIV
among injection drug users, protect people’s health and lower future health costs. And for those with untreated pain,
ignoring their needs removes them and their caregivers from productive life.
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War on Drugs Hurts Human Rights
Human rights repeatedly violated in ‘war on drugs’
Manfred Nowak, Professor at Vienna University, Anand Grover, U.N. Health Reporter
The New York Times, 25 June 2009
A Misguided ‘War on Drugs’
In 2003, law enforcement officials in Thailand killed more than 2,700 people in the government’s “war on drugs.”
More than 30 U.N. member states, including China, Indonesia and Malaysia, retain the death penalty for drug offenses
— some as a mandatory sentence — in violation of international law. In Russia, untold thousands of heroin users
cannot obtain opioid substitution treatment because the government has banned methadone, despite its proven
effectiveness.
In the United States — and many other countries — prisons are overflowing because drug users are routinely
incarcerated for nonviolent, low-level drug offenses. These prisoners often have no access to effective drug treatment
or basic medical care. In Colombia, Afghanistan and other countries, crop eradication has pushed thousands of poppy
and coca farmers and their families deeper into poverty without offering them any alternative livelihood and has
damaged their health.
In China, hundreds of thousands of drug users are forced into drug detoxification centers, where they can be detained
for up to three years without trial, treatment, or due process. In India people are dying in uncontrolled detoxification
programs.
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Warming Module
Poverty is the root-cause of global warming and loss of bio diversity.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Like disease, environmental degradation is linked significantly to poverty in the developing world and can result
in long-term adverse consequences for the United States. Much of the world’s environmental stress can be
attributed to population pressure. From 1950 to 1998, the world’s population doubled. It has grown a further 14%
in the last ten years to 6.4 billion. By 2050, global population is on track to reach 9 billion. This growth is coming
disproportionately from the developing world. Poverty substantially fuels population growth, as families have
more children in response to high infant mortality rates and the need to raise income potential.
Deforestation is accelerating in the developing world due to increased demand for fuel in the form of firewood
and for arable acreage to enable growing populations to survive in marginal areas. The loss of trees exacerbates
desertification, which has spread to the extent that 2 billion hectares of soil, or 15% of the planet’s land cover, is
already degraded. Logging for trade in exotic African and Asian hardwoods magnifies the problem, contributing to
the loss of 2.4% of the world’s forest cover since 1990. One result is reduced biodiversity, which alters delicate
ecosystems and depletes the world’s stock of flora and fauna that have produced important medical benefits for
mankind.
Desertification and deforestation can also accelerate global climate change, though carbon emissions in rich
and rapidly growing economies are the main culprit. 2005 was the hottest year on record. Global warming is
already rendering coastal areas more vulnerable to flooding. And, as temperatures rise in temperate climates, the
transmission vectors for mosquito-borne and other tropical diseases will change. New areas of the world, including
our own, will face the possibility of once-tropical diseases becoming prevalent.
Runaway warming causes extinction
Henderson 06. (Bill, “Runaway Global Warming – Denial”, CounterCurrents, August 19,
countercurrents.org/cc-henderson190806.htm)
The scientific debate about human induced global warming is over but policy makers - let alone the happily shopping general
public - still seem to not understand the scope of the impending tragedy. Global warming isn't just warmer temperatures, heat
waves, melting ice and threatened polar bears. Scientific understanding increasingly points to runaway global warming
leading to human extinction. If impossibly Draconian security measures are not immediately put in place to keep further
emissions of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere we are looking at the death of billions, the end of civilization as we
know it and in all probability the end of man's several million year old existence, along with the extinction of most flora and
fauna beloved to man in the world we share.
Runaway global warming: there are 'carbon bombs': carbon in soils, carbon in warming temperate and boreal forests and in a
drought struck Amazon, methane in Arctic peat bogs and in methane hydrates melting in warming ocean waters. For several
decades it has been hypothesized that rising temperatures from increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to burning
fossil fuels could be releasing some of and eventually all of these stored carbon stocks to add substantually more potent
greenhouse gases to the atmosphere..
Given time lags of 30-50 years, we might have already put enough extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to have
crossed a threshold to these bombs exploding, their released greenhouse gases leading to ever accelerating global warming
with future global temperatures maybe tens of degrees higher than our norms of human habitation and therefor extinction or
very near extinction of humanity.
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***Aff Poverty Answers**
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A2: Heritage Foundation/Rector
Rector and the Heritage foundation write from a classist and ignorant perspective – they are not
qualified to write on poverty issues.
James Ridgeway, Senior Correspondent at Mother Jones. 12/3/07
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/12/heritage-foundation-hunger-let-them-eatbroccoli?page=1
There's another side of the story, of course, that addresses realities Heritage and its followers choose to ignore. Adam
Drewnowski, professor of epidemiology and director of the University of Washington's Center for Obesity Research,
believes diet is determined by economic and social factors far more than by personal choice. "Healthier diets are more
expensive," he says flatly. It's easy to point to specific exceptions like doughnuts vs. beans or Coke vs. milk (well, not
always; my local Safeway charges 40 cents more for a half-gallon of milk than for a two-liter bottle of Coke). But research
generally has shown that "energy-dense foods," which often are high in refined grains and added sugar and fat, "provide
dietary energy at a far lower cost than do lean meats, fish, fresh vegetables, and fruit," as Drewnowski wrote in a 2004 article
for Nutrition Today. Processed foods also dominate store shelves in poor neighborhoods, are quick to prepare, and simply
taste better to some people than some nutritious foods available on the cheap—think cabbage, condensed milk, and canned
fish.
Drewnowski calls Rector's arguments "rubbish, written from a position of class privilege—let them eat broccoli,
indeed." He cites the suggestion that the poor should purchase cheap, nutritious foods rather than processed stuff. "When you
suggest that people buy rice, pasta, and beans," he says, "you presuppose that they have resources for capital investment for
future meals"—since these healthy staples come in large bags—"a kitchen, pots, pans, utensils, gas, electricity, a refrigerator,
a home with rent paid, the time to cook. Those healthy rice and beans can take hours; another class bias is that poor
people's time is worthless. So this is all about resources that middle-class people take so much for granted that they do
not give them another thought. Not everybody has them."
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A2: Material Conditions Good
1. Even if conditions in America are improving half the world live on less then 2 dollars a day – we
solve global poverty through are growth argument.
2. Despite economic gains poverty is still a desperate problem in America.
Penn State University no date given. “Poverty in America Today.” http://www.povertyinamerica.
psu.edu/about/
The problem of persistent poverty is a complex one that includes communities and individuals who, through no
fault of their own, find themselves unable to make ends meet in this globalizing, information-intensive world.
People at risk are women, children, and people of color, single-parent families, and the elderly. Large numbers of the
nation's citizens live at or below the poverty threshold, which means each month is a struggle to pay the bills
and provide the basics, including food, clothing, and shelter, not to mention access to health care and simple
comforts. How can the richest country in the world still have more than 12% of its total population, and almost 20% of all children under the age of 18, unable to meet, let alone be guaranteed coverage of, basic needs?
Today, as a nation, we are significantly different than we were in 1960, when more than 20% of the population was
visibly poor and lacked basic goods, including food, clothing, proper shelter, clean water, heating, health care, and
access to decent schools. We are a more diverse population and a more dispersed population; we are older and remain
divided by race, income, and location.
Certainly progress has been made over the intervening forty years in terms of an overall minimum standard of
living as measured by material conditions. And yet the lived experience of poor people is starkly different from
that of individuals and families who enjoy some degree of economic security as measured by income levels that
pro-vide comfortable, worry-free circumstances. If anything, the gap between the economically secure and the
poor is more severe than it was four decades ago. Increasingly, the nation is composed of persons who look to a
future in which circumstances include the expectation of more wealth, security, and opportunity; and the alternative,
those who struggle to make ends meet. In many families today, children cannot say they expect to be better off
than their parents. This is perhaps the greatest challenge now facing our society. Forty years ago, public officials
took a stand against economic deprivation. For a short period of time we made huge strides in reducing economic
insecurity. America is again facing this serious challenge. Once again we can make a difference if we choose to
look this issue in the eye and invest in people and communities.
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A2: Alt Causes
1. Economic growth solves other causes of poverty.
Richard H. Adams, Jr. World Bank Policy Researcher. “February 2003. Economic Growth,
Inequality, and Poverty”
Why is economic growth so important in reducing poverty? The answer to this question has been broached at several points
in this analysis. Economic growth reduces poverty because first and foremost growth has little impact on. income
inequality. Income distributions do not generally change much over time. Analysis of the 50 countries and the 101
intervals included in the data set shows that income inequality rises on average less than 1.0 percent per year. Moreover,
econometric analysis shows that economic growth has no statistical effect on income distribution: inequality may rise,
fall or remain steady with growth. Since income distributions are relatively stable over time, economic growth - in the sense
of rising incomes - has the general effect of raising incomes for all members of society, including the poor. As noted
above, in many developing countries poverty, as measured by the $1 per person per day standard, tends to be "shallow" in the
sense that many people are clustered right below (and above) the poverty line. Thus, even a modest rate of economic
growth has the effect of "lifting" people out of poverty. Poor people are capable of using economic growth - especially
labor-intensive economic growth which provides more jobs -- to "work" themselves out of poverty. Table 8
underscores these relationships by summarizing the results of recent empirical studies regarding the growth elasticity of
poverty. When growth is measured by survey mean income (consumption), the point estimates of the elasticity of poverty
with respect to growth are remarkably uniform: from a low of -2.12 in Bruno, Ravallion 21 and Squire (1998), to a mid-range
of -2.59 in this study (excluding Eastern Europe and Central Asia), to a high of -3.12 in Ravallion and Chen (1997). In other
words, on average, a 10 -percentage point increase in economic growth (measured by the survey mean) can be
expected to produce between a 21.2 and 31.2 percent decrease in the proportion of people living in poverty ($1 per
person per day). Economic growth reduces poverty in the developing countries of the world because average incomes of
the poor tend to rise proportionately with those of the rest of the population. The fact that economic growth is so
critical in reducing poverty highlights the need to accelerate economic growth throughout the developing world.
Present rates of economic growth in the developing world are simply too low to make a meaningful dent in poverty. As
measured by per capita GDP, the average rate of growth for the 50 low income and lower middle income countries in this
paper was 2.66 percent per year. As measured by mean survey income (consumption), the average rate of growth in these 50
countries was even lower: a slightly negative -0.90 percent per year (Table 3). In the future, these rates of economic growth
need to be significantly increased. In particular, more work needs to be done on identifying the elements used for achieving
successful high rates of economic growth and poverty reduction in certain regions of the developing world (e.g., East Asia
and South Asia), and applying the lessons of this work to the continuing growth and poverty needs in other areas, such as
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
2. We don’t have to win complete eradication of poverty to access our impacts. Our impacts are
systemic – means that each step towards solving poverty helps prevent the impact from occurring.
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A2: Cap is the Root Cause
1. False - Economic growth solves worldwide poverty.
Richard H. Adams, Jr. World Bank Policy Researcher. “February 2003. Economic Growth,
Inequality, and Poverty”
Why is economic growth so important in reducing poverty? The answer to this question has been broached at several points
in this analysis. Economic growth reduces poverty because first and foremost growth has little impact on. income
inequality. Income distributions do not generally change much over time. Analysis of the 50 countries and the 101
intervals included in the data set shows that income inequality rises on average less than 1.0 percent per year. Moreover,
econometric analysis shows that economic growth has no statistical effect on income distribution: inequality may rise,
fall or remain steady with growth. Since income distributions are relatively stable over time, economic growth - in the sense
of rising incomes - has the general effect of raising incomes for all members of society, including the poor. As noted
above, in many developing countries poverty, as measured by the $1 per person per day standard, tends to be "shallow" in the
sense that many people are clustered right below (and above) the poverty line. Thus, even a modest rate of economic
growth has the effect of "lifting" people out of poverty. Poor people are capable of using economic growth - especially
labor-intensive economic growth which provides more jobs -- to "work" themselves out of poverty. Table 8
underscores these relationships by summarizing the results of recent empirical studies regarding the growth elasticity of
poverty. When growth is measured by survey mean income (consumption), the point estimates of the elasticity of poverty
with respect to growth are remarkably uniform: from a low of -2.12 in Bruno, Ravallion 21 and Squire (1998), to a mid-range
of -2.59 in this study (excluding Eastern Europe and Central Asia), to a high of -3.12 in Ravallion and Chen (1997). In other
words, on average, a 10 -percentage point increase in economic growth (measured by the survey mean) can be
expected to produce between a 21.2 and 31.2 percent decrease in the proportion of people living in poverty ($1 per
person per day). Economic growth reduces poverty in the developing countries of the world because average incomes of
the poor tend to rise proportionately with those of the rest of the population. The fact that economic growth is so
critical in reducing poverty highlights the need to accelerate economic growth throughout the developing world.
Present rates of economic growth in the developing world are simply too low to make a meaningful dent in poverty. As
measured by per capita GDP, the average rate of growth for the 50 low income and lower middle income countries in this
paper was 2.66 percent per year. As measured by mean survey income (consumption), the average rate of growth in these 50
countries was even lower: a slightly negative -0.90 percent per year (Table 3). In the future, these rates of economic growth
need to be significantly increased. In particular, more work needs to be done on identifying the elements used for achieving
successful high rates of economic growth and poverty reduction in certain regions of the developing world (e.g., East Asia
and South Asia), and applying the lessons of this work to the continuing growth and poverty needs in other areas, such as
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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***Neg Poverty Stuffz
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International Aid CP
CP Text: The United States federal government should donate 0.7% of its real GDP to the overseas
development assistance. The United States federal government should also fulfill its commitments
to the Millennium Challenge Account. The United States federal government should also commit
to fund future international poverty efforts.
Increasing international aid is essential to solving poverty.
Rice, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, 06
(Susan E. Rice, The National Interest, “The Threat of Global Poverty,” l/n)
Increasingly, there is convincing evidence that foreign aid can make a crucial difference especially in countries
10
lacking resources to jump-start rapid economic growth. In Taiwan, Botswana, Uganda and Mozambique,
foreign assistance helped build the foundation for development. The Center for Global Development finds that,
irrespective of the strength of a country’s institutions or the quality of its policies, certain aid flows have strong pro11
growth effects, even in the short-term. Not only is aid beneficial, on balance, but its effectiveness has also
12
improved since the 1980s.
Based on recent donor commitments, the OECD now estimates that overall overseas development assistance (ODA)
flows to developing countries will increase by $50 billion by 2010. Sixteen of the world’s twenty two major donor
countries have pledged within a decade to devote 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) to ODA. The major
outlier is Washington. President George W. Bush has ruled out raising the United States from the current 0.16% of
per capita GNI spent on ODA (second to last among OECD donors) to the Monterrey target of 0.7%.
On the eve of the G-8 Summit, President Bush pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010, but relatively little of that
additional $4 billion represents new money. Rather, the President can meet this goal simply by keeping his as yet
unfulfilled promises to fully fund the Millennium Challenge Account and his HIV/AIDS initiative. Overall, the
U.S. pledge toward the G-8 goal is small compared to Europe’s and falls well short of the customary U.S. contribution
to multilateral funding instruments of at least 25%.
Partial debt cancellation and relatively modest aid increases to Sub-Saharan Africa seem to mark the current limit of
the Bush Administration’s will to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Meeting the MDGs
would lift more than 500 million people out of extreme poverty and allow over 300 million to live without
hunger by 2015. It would also enable universal primary education and reduce by two-thirds mortality rates for
children under five.
In reality, however, it will take much more than large, well-targeted aid flows to “make poverty history.” The most
important ingredients are improved economic policies and responsible governance in developing countries. Yet those
alone will not suffice. Developed countries will need to drop trade distorting subsidies, further open their markets,
encourage job creating foreign investment, cancel more debt, combat infectious disease, prevent and resolve conflicts,
and assist the recovery of post-conflict societies.
For the United States to meet this challenge, it will require a near tectonic shift in our national security policy. Policy
and law-makers must come to view transnational security threats as among the foremost of our potential enemies.
They must then embrace a long-term strategy in partnership with other developed countries to counter these threats,
based on the imperative to strengthen weak states’ legitimacy and capacity to control their territory and fulfill the
basic human needs of their people. This strategy must be built on the twin pillars of promoting sustainable democracy
and development. Finally, the President and Congress must commit the resources to finance this strategy and see
it to fruition. While it will be expensive and perhaps unpopular to do so, Americans will almost certainly pay more
dearly over the long term, if our leaders fail to recognize the risks and costs to the United States of persistent
global poverty.
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***Econ Stuffz
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Econ Growth Solves Poverty
Economic growth solves worldwide poverty.
Richard H. Adams, Jr. World Bank Policy Researcher. “February 2003. Economic Growth,
Inequality, and Poverty”
Why is economic growth so important in reducing poverty? The answer to this question has been broached at several points
in this analysis. Economic growth reduces poverty because first and foremost growth has little impact on. income
inequality. Income distributions do not generally change much over time. Analysis of the 50 countries and the 101
intervals included in the data set shows that income inequality rises on average less than 1.0 percent per year. Moreover,
econometric analysis shows that economic growth has no statistical effect on income distribution: inequality may rise,
fall or remain steady with growth. Since income distributions are relatively stable over time, economic growth - in the sense
of rising incomes - has the general effect of raising incomes for all members of society, including the poor. As noted
above, in many developing countries poverty, as measured by the $1 per person per day standard, tends to be "shallow" in the
sense that many people are clustered right below (and above) the poverty line. Thus, even a modest rate of economic
growth has the effect of "lifting" people out of poverty. Poor people are capable of using economic growth - especially
labor-intensive economic growth which provides more jobs -- to "work" themselves out of poverty. Table 8
underscores these relationships by summarizing the results of recent empirical studies regarding the growth elasticity of
poverty. When growth is measured by survey mean income (consumption), the point estimates of the elasticity of poverty
with respect to growth are remarkably uniform: from a low of -2.12 in Bruno, Ravallion 21 and Squire (1998), to a mid-range
of -2.59 in this study (excluding Eastern Europe and Central Asia), to a high of -3.12 in Ravallion and Chen (1997). In other
words, on average, a 10 -percentage point increase in economic growth (measured by the survey mean) can be
expected to produce between a 21.2 and 31.2 percent decrease in the proportion of people living in poverty ($1 per
person per day). Economic growth reduces poverty in the developing countries of the world because average incomes of
the poor tend to rise proportionately with those of the rest of the population. The fact that economic growth is so
critical in reducing poverty highlights the need to accelerate economic growth throughout the developing world.
Present rates of economic growth in the developing world are simply too low to make a meaningful dent in poverty. As
measured by per capita GDP, the average rate of growth for the 50 low income and lower middle income countries in this
paper was 2.66 percent per year. As measured by mean survey income (consumption), the average rate of growth in these 50
countries was even lower: a slightly negative -0.90 percent per year (Table 3). In the future, these rates of economic growth
need to be significantly increased. In particular, more work needs to be done on identifying the elements used for achieving
successful high rates of economic growth and poverty reduction in certain regions of the developing world (e.g., East Asia
and South Asia), and applying the lessons of this work to the continuing growth and poverty needs in other areas, such as
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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US Econ Key to Global Econ
The US is key to the global economy.
The New Zealand Herald, 3-20-2007, “Can world weather slow down in US?” p. Lexis
The ability of other countries to emerge from the US economy's long shadow may reflect more wishful thinking than
logic. No doubt, it will eventually happen, especially as some of the bigger emerging countries mature. Right now, the
world still needs the US consumer. The global economy is too dependent on exports to the US, whose trade deficit was
$765.3 billion in 2006, while Asia and Europe lack sufficient domestic demand to offset reduced US spending on
overseas goods, says Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley in New York. China's Reverberations The US
accounts for 24% of Japan's total exports, 84% of Canada's, 86% of Mexico's and about 40% of China's, Mr Roach says.
Just as China is dependent on the US, other countries rely on Asia's second-largest economy. So a US slowdown that
hurts China will reverberate in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and commodity producers such as Russia, Australia, New
Zealand, Canada and Brazil. From 2001 through 2006, the US and China combined contributed an average of 43% to
global growth, measured on the basis of purchasing-power parity, according to Mr Roach. And there may be more fallout
from a US decline. ''Allowing for trade linkages, the total effects could be larger than 60%,'' he says. ''Globalisation makes
decoupling from such a concentrated growth dynamic especially difficult.'' As the US economy faltered in early 2001,
many Wall Street gurus predicted that Europe would outpace the US. European Vulnerability ''It didn't happen _ a
lesson investors should bear in mind today,'' says Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America Capital
Management in New York. Even though only about 8% of European exports go to the US, Europe is vulnerable to a US
slowdown through its businesses abroad. The earnings of European companies' US units plunged 64% in 2001, according
to Mr Quinlan. Those declines in the biggest and most-profitable market for many German, UK, French and Dutch
enterprises resulted in reduced orders, lower profit, slower job growth and weak business confidence. After expanding 3.9%
in 2000, euro-area growth shrank to 1.9% in 2001, 0.9% in 2002 and 0.8% in 2003. ''As the US economy decelerates and
as the dollar continues its slide, Europe will sink or swim with the US in 2007,'' Mr Quinlan says.
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US Econ Key to Global Econ
The US is essential to the global economy – no other country is close to US production.
Richard W. Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas. 2/6/06. “The United States:
Still the Growth Engine for the World Economy?”
My kind hosts, who had no idea that this event would follow so closely on the heels of the meager growth estimate
reported for last year’s fourth quarter, have asked me to address the question: Is the United States still the growth
engine for the world? The answer is yes. Let me explain why. The American economy has been on an upswing for
more than four years. Growth advanced briskly at 4.2 percent in 2004. It slowed to a still solid 3.5 percent in 2005,
although I would not be surprised if GDP were revised upward when we take a more definitive look at the fourth
quarter. In January, the U.S. economy employed 134.6 million people, up 2.2 million in a year. Unemployment stood
at a four-year low of 4.7 percent, which compares with the latest reading of 8.4 percent for Europe and even higher
rates for some of the continent’s major economies. We have weathered hurricanes’ fury and record-high energy
prices while continuing to grow and keep inflation under control. The statement the Federal Open Market
Committee released Tuesday quite summed up our current situation succinctly: “Although recent economic data have
been uneven, the expansion in economic activity appears solid.” This is especially true in what I call the “growth
rim”—an arc of population centers with favorable demographics that begins in Virginia, runs down the southeastern
seaboard through Georgia to Florida, then through the megastate of Texas and on to the uberstate of California and up
to Seattle. I use “mega” and “uber” to describe the two largest states for a reason: to illustrate the depth and breadth of
our economy. In dollar terms, Texas produces 20 percent more than India, and California produces roughly the
same output as China. To the extent there is weakness in the U.S. economy, it is in the Northeast and North Central
states. Netting all this out, the consensus of most economic forecasters is that growth in the first quarter will rebound
to a rate well above 4 percent. To understand what this kind of growth means, we need only follow Margaret
Thatcher’s wise hectoring to “do the math.” The United States produces $12.6 trillion a year in goods and services. Be
conservative—once again, Lady Thatcher would like it—and assume that in 2006 we grow at last year’s preliminary
rate of 3.5 percent. The math tells us we would add $440 billion in incremental activity—in a single year. That is a big
number. What we add in new economic activity in a given year exceeds the entire output of all but 15 other
countries. Every year, we create the economic equivalent of a Sweden—or two Irelands or three Argentinas. In
dollar terms, a growth rate of 3.5 percent in the U.S. is equivalent to surges of 16 percent in Germany, 20
percent in the U.K., 26 percent in China and 70 percent in India. Of course, our growth is driven by consumption,
a significant portion of which is fed by imports, which totaled $2 trillion last year. Again, do the math: Our annual
import volume—what we buy in a single year from abroad—exceeds the GDP of all but four other countries—
Japan, Germany, Britain and France. So, yes, the United States is the growth engine for the world economy. And
it is important that it remain so because no other country appears poised to pick up the torch if the U.S.
economy stumbles or tires.
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***Impact Stuff**
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Econ- US Key
U.S. economic collapse leads to an economic depression globally.
(Walter Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 04 04, “America’s Sticky
Power, Foreign Policy, Proquest,” http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_
id=2504&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/ cms.php?story_id=2504&page=2)
Similarly, in the last 60 years, as foreigners have acquired a greater value in the United States-government and private
bonds, direct and portfolio private investments-more and more of them have acquired an interest in maintaining the
strength of the U.S.-led system. A collapse of the U.S. economy and the ruin of the dollar would do more than dent the
prosperity of the United States. Without their best customer, countries including China and Japan would fall into
depressions. The financial strength of every country would be severely shaken should the United States collapse.
Under those circumstances, debt becomes a strength, not a weakness, and other countries fear to break with the United
States because they need its market and own its securities. Of course, pressed too far, a large national debt can turn
from a source of strength to a crippling liability, and the United States must continue to justify other countries' faith by
maintaining its long-term record of meeting its financial obligations. But, like Samson in the temple of the Philistines,
a collapsing U.S. economy would inflict enormous, unacceptable damage on the rest of the world.
A drop in the U.S. economy causes a global recession.
(Anthony Faiola, staff writer of Washington Post, 01 30 08, “U.S. Downturn effects may ease
worldwide,” http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/auth/checkbrowser.do?ipcounter=1&co
okieState=0&rand=0.2947196325707201&bhcp=1)
Analysts caution that a sharper drop in the U.S. economy – something widely feared, as evidenced by the global route
on stock markets from Paris to Tokyo last week – could yet plunge the world economy below the 2.5 to 3 percent
growth range that constitutes a global recession. And around the world, billions of dollars in losses from America’s
subprime mortage morass are still being accounted for, with experts predicting it will take a deeper financial toll.
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Econ- developing countries
A global economic crisis has a hard effect on growing economies and provides significantly
reduced funds for families living in these countries.
(Luska Times, 12 24 08, “Global Economic crisis shows effects on families,”
http://www.lusakatimes.com/?p=6713)
Effects of the global economic crisis have already started showing a negative impact on growing economies, such as
Zambia, with only a few people managing to spend for Christmas. According to a survey carried out this morning by
ZANIS, people said it is hard to do shopping because there are no funds to meet the needs of many families. Most
people expressed concern about lack of funds to do shopping because prices have been hiked so much, making it
difficult for many people to buy gifts for their beloved ones. Alfonsaias Haamanjanti said people should not overspend unnecessarily but consider critical things such as school fees and uniforms for children when schools reopen.
Mr Haamanjati said it is important to budget for the things that one needs by writing a list and follow it. He pointed
out that the global financial crisis may not be felt now, saying there is need to save money and shop only when it is
necessary. He said the global financial crisis may be felt so much next year, adding that most Zambians should
consider saving their money and use it when there is real need.
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Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution
U.S. economic collapse will cause a civil war and the breakup of the U.S. into six pieces.
(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats, expert on
U.S.- Russia relations, 12 29 08, “As if Things weren’t bad enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.,”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)
MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For
most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and
the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.
In
recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin.
"But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger." Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former
KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin
receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations. But it's
his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington
for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with
the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s,
when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.
A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the
outlook for them is dire. "There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could
rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia."
Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it
currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S. Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration,
economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the
end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.
Economic and financial problems in the U.S will cause a civil war and the breakup of the U.S.
(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats, expert on
U.S.- Russia relations, 12 29 08, “As if Things weren’t bad enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.,”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)
He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. Mr. Panarin predicts that
economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets
tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the
union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign
powers will move in. California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of
China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to
Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that
may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North
American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into
Russia. "It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time."
A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office
wall. "It's not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin. Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published
an article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a
pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington's role as a global financial regulator.
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Econ Collapse Bad
Global economic collapse results in nuclear war – causes North Korean aggression, Afghanistan
collapse, Russian adventurism, and American isolationism
Friedberg and Schenfeld, 8 (Aaron Friedberg-professor of politics and international relations at the Woodrow Wilson
School, and Gabriel Schoenfeld-visiting scholar at the Witherspoon Institute, 10/21/2008, The Dangers of a Diminished
America, The Wall Street Journal, p. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades
now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar,
and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted
on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the
future?
Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist
affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and
Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless
rise also give cause for concern.
If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing
effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for
Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk.
In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful
democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of
economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more
reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability.
The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than
they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose
economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even
more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will
now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy
rests on progress in the long march to prosperity.
None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails
with external adventures.
As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are struggling to deal with
decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism,
Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical
power.
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Econ interdependence prevents war
Economic interdependence prevents war
Griswold, 7 (Daniel, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, 4/20/2007, Trade, Democracy and Peace,
http://www.freetrade.org/node/681)
A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say."
In 2006, a survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the number of armed conflicts
around the world has been in decline for the past half-century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing conflicts have dropped
from 33 to 17, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institute's latest report found that 2005
marked the second year in a row that no two nations were at war with one another. What a remarkable and wonderful
fact.
The death toll from war has also been falling. According to the Associated Press report, "The number killed in battle
has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure.
Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Current estimates of people killed by war are down
sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the
Korean War.
Many causes lie behind the good news--the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them--but
expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting world peace. Far from stoking a
"World on Fire," as one misguided American author argued in a forgettable book, growing commercial ties between
nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war. I would argue that free trade and globalization have
promoted peace in three main ways.
First, as I argued a moment ago, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and democracies
tend not to pick fights with each other. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today
are democracies--a record high. Some studies have cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less likely to fight
wars. While it's true that democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a rare occurrence for
democracies to engage in wars with non-democracies. We can still hope that as more countries turn to democracy,
there will be fewer provocations for war by non-democracies.
A second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by promoting more economic integration. As
national economies become more intertwined with each other, those nations have more to lose should war break out.
War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and
investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the
economic cost of war.
The 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report contains an insightful chapter on "Economic Freedom and Peace"
by Dr. Erik Gartzke, a professor of political science at Columbia University. Dr. Gartzke compares the propensity of
countries to engage in wars and their level of economic freedom and concludes that economic freedom, including the
freedom to trade, significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with another
country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, "Making economies freer translates into making countries more
peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are about 14 times as conflict prone as the most free."
By the way, Dr. Gartzke's analysis found that economic freedom was a far more important variable in determining a
countries propensity to go to war than democracy.
A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it allows nations to acquire wealth through production and
exchange rather than conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in
terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In
contrast, hard assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in a high-tech, service
economy. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire
them peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home. In short, globalization and the development it
has spurred have rendered the spoils of war less valuable.
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Economic decline turns TB, Malaria, AIDS
Economic downturns divert funds from disease treatment
Skirble, 9 (Rosanne- reporter for the Voice of America, VOA “Economic Downturn Threatens Global Fund for AIDS, TB,
Malaria” 04 February 2009, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2009-02/2009-02-04voa23.cfm?CFID=256884522&CFTOKEN=31 541345&jsessionid=de307b49f1da35d5dbcd4a1e52696331c2f6)
As world leaders grapple with the global financial crisis, the world's largest source of funds to combat killer diseases
is facing a crisis of its own. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria supplies one-quarter of all
AIDS funding, two-thirds of tuberculosis funding and three-fourths of malaria funding. A $5 billion funding gap now
threatens this institution's worldwide programs.
Every year since 2001, leaders from the world's wealthier nations have renewed their commitments to fund all
approved disease treatment, prevention and research programs in poor countries. According to Jeffrey Sachs, a
special United Nations advisor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the Global Fund was
designed to keep the promises made to the world's poor to help them fight AIDS, TB and malaria.
Sachs says that despite the urgency of its mission, the Global Fund has been forced by the recession-pinched budgets
of its donor countries to cut back or delay funding.
"It already cut by 10 percent the budgets for the approved plans. And it's warned that it would have to cut by 25
percent the second half of those plans," he says.
The current funding cycle has been postponed for several months, which he says, "puts at risk the malaria control
effort."
The cutbacks are all the more distressing to Global Fund supporters because in its relatively short life, the organization
has reported remarkable progress against killer diseases. For example, malaria deaths are down 66 percent in Rwanda
and 80 percent in Eritrea over the past five years.
Peter Chernin is one of a number of business leaders who've supported a $100 million campaign to fight the malaria
pandemic in Africa. He says the disease has cost industry on the continent about $12 billion in lost worker
productivity.
"And [with] just a fraction of that investment, we can end malaria deaths and remove a major obstacle to economic
development."
Keeping up the fight against killer diseases like malaria, TB and AIDS is essential to the economic development of
poor nations, says Sachs. And it's just bad economic policy, he believes, to cut long-term investments in development
for near-term savings.
"For Africa to be a full trading partner, one that could be picking up the slack by buying our goods and being a full
productive part of the world economy, [it] requires that these diseases be brought under control.
"That was at least one of the many aspects, including the humanitarian and security aspects, that led to the creation of
the Global Fund in the first place."
Sachs argues that the United States, which currently contributes about one third of the Global Fund's resources, could
make a significant dent in the fund's $5 billon shortfall if it so chose.
"There is no shortage of funds at the moment when in three months the rich world has found about $3 trillion of
funding for bank bailouts and in which there have been $18 billion of Christmas bonuses for Wall Street supported by
bailout legislation."
Those monies could not "for one moment balance the lives that are at stake."
Global Fund Board Chairman Rajat Gupta agrees that the United States could do more to help the fund out of its
financial crisis. He believes that if the U.S., which has fallen behind on its pledged commitments, were to take on
more of a leadership role, other nations would follow.
"One of the good things that has happened before is that each country or different countries have kind of egged each
other on to do more, and now it is the United States' turn to step up and get that going."
Gupta says the Global Fund's progress in the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria must be sustained. He says he and
other health and business leaders who attended the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland were not
asking for a bailout. They were simply calling on donor nations to make good on their pledges, Gupta says, to
improve the world's prosperity and its health. That continued support, Gupta says, could save nearly two million
additional lives in the coming years.
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Economic Decline Turns Soft Power
Economic decline undermines soft power
Mason, 8 (David, Professor of Political Science, Butler University, The End of the American Century,
http://books.google.com/books?id=UCNeNPeRF3UC&dq=the+end+of+the+american+century&source=gbs_navlinks_s, pg
13)
The crux of the American problem is economic decline because much of America’s global power and influence has
been a function of its great economic wealth. In The Rise and fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy puts it bluntly
this way: “wealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and military power is usually needed to acquire and
protect wealth” Furthermore, economic wealth is an important dimension of “soft power” – the ability to influence
other countries without the exercise of raw military force, or “hard power.” Thus, economic decline can adversely
affect a country’s international influence and standing. As Kennedy points out in his book, however, the relationship
between economic power and international power can also run the other direction. If a great power overreaches in its
international commitments, the home front can suffer both economically and socially.
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Econ turns heg
Hegemony depends on economic strength
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, “Empire Falls”
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)
Over time, America’s power is fundamentally a result of its economic strength. Productive capacity—defined by
indicators such as wealth, technology and population size—is a prerequisite for building and modernizing military forces.
The United States, like any state, may choose to vary the degree to which its productive capacities are used to create
military assets. But it is the economy as a whole that constrains the choice. And the size of the economy relative to
potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in international politics. Major assessments of this relative
position have long turned heavily on a single statistic: America’s share of world economic product. Advocates of
extending America’s unipolar dominance are well aware of the central importance of the economic foundations of
American power and routinely present detailed statistics on the U.S. share of world product. The basic notion is simple:
take U.S. domestic product in any year and divide it by the aggregate total of the gross domestic product of all states in
the world. To measure gross domestic product, the unipolar-dominance school prefers to compare every country’s output
in current-year U.S. dollars, a method that tends to show America is much further ahead of other countries than
alternative measures. Indeed, the most recent call for America to exploit its hegemonic position (published in 2008) rests
on the presumption of U.S. dominance based on the current-year dollar figures.2 By this metric, in 2006 the United States
had 28 percent of world product while its nearest most likely competitor, China, had 6 percent. Looks pretty good for
America, right?
Alas, single-year “snapshots” of America’s relative power are of limited value for assessing the sustainability of its grand
strategy over many years. For grand-strategic concerns—especially how well the United States can balance its resources
and foreign-policy commitments—the trajectory of American power compared to other states is of seminal importance.
For the sake of argument, let us start with the unipolar-dominance school’s preferred measure of American hegemony,
but look at the trajectory of the data over time. According to GDP figures in current U.S. dollars from the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States increased its share of world production during the 1990s, reached its apogee in
2000, and then began to steadily lose ground during the eight years of the Bush administration, with its relative power
ultimately falling by nearly a quarter in the first decade of the twenty-first century. At the same time, the relative power of
China, the state many consider America’s most likely future rival, has grown consistently. If we look out as far as the
IMF can see (2013), things get even worse—with the United States expected to continue declining and China to continue
rising. The United States has been going through the first decade of the twenty-first century not stronger than before, but
substantially weaker.
How good are the numbers? Economists commonly use two other methods to calculate GDP, constant-dollar calculations
and purchasing power parity.3 Although each offers advantages and disadvantages, for our purposes what matters is that
they form a lower bound of America’s relative decline. And regardless of the metric, the trend is the same. Again using
IMF figures, Table 2 shows the trajectory of the share of world product for the United States and China using both
alternative measures.
Simply put, the United States is now a declining power. This new reality has tremendous implications for the future of
American grand strategy.
The erosion of the underpinnings of U.S. power is the result of uneven rates of economic growth between America, China
and other states in the world. Despite all the pro-economy talk from the Bush administration, the fact is that since 2000,
U.S. growth rates are down almost 50 percent from the Clinton years. This trajectory is almost sure to be revised further
downward as the consequences of the financial crisis in fall 2008 become manifest.
As Table 3 shows, over the past two decades, the average rate of U.S. growth has fallen considerably, from nearly 4
percent annually during the Clinton years to just over 2 percent per year under Bush. At the same time, China has
sustained a consistently high rate of growth of 10 percent per year—a truly stunning performance. Russia has also turned
its economic trajectory around, from year after year of losses in the 1990s to significant annual gains since 2000.
Worse, America’s decline was well under way before the economic downturn, which is likely to only further weaken U.S.
power. As the most recent growth estimates (November 2008) by the IMF make clear, although all major countries are
suffering economically, China and Russia are expected to continue growing at a substantially greater rate than the United
States.
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Economic decline undermines heg
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, “Empire Falls”
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)
These estimates suggest that roughly a quarter of America’s relative decline is due to U.S. economic weaknesses
(spending on the Iraq War, tax cuts, current-account deficits, etc.), a sixth to China’s superior performance and just
over half to the spread of technology to the rest of the world. In other words, self-inflicted wounds of the Bush years
significantly exacerbated America’s decline, both by making the decline steeper and faster and crowding out
productive investment that could have stimulated innovation to improve matters.
All of this has led to one of the most significant declines of any state since the mid-nineteenth century. And when one
examines past declines and their consequences, it becomes clear both that the U.S. fall is remarkable and that
dangerous instability in the international system may lie ahead. If we end up believing in the wishful thinking of
unipolar dominance forever, the costs could be far higher than a simple percentage drop in share of world product.
A strong economy is key to American hegemony
Ferguson, 3 (Niall, Foreign Affairs, “Hegemony or Empire?”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59200/niall-ferguson/hegemony-or-empire?page=4, September/October 2003
The authors' argument about the uniqueness of American hegemony rests on four main pillars. The most obvious is
economic: as they point out, the U.S. economy has outstripped almost all of its competitors for much of the past
century. This point is developed by another of the book's contributors, Angus Maddison, and explored in almost
encyclopedic depth in the chapter by Moses Abramovitz and Paul David. According to these authors, nothing
achieved by the United Kingdom -- not even in the first flush of the Industrial Revolution -- ever compared with the
United States' recent economic predominance.
Second, the authors point to the way the United States has very deliberately used its power to advance multilateral,
mutually balanced tariff reductions under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later the World Trade
Organization). As Robert Gilpin argues in his chapter, the tariff reductions achieved in the 1967 Kennedy Round
negotiations (and subsequently) owed much to "American pressures." Such pressure was classically exerted through
"conditionality" -- that is, the terms under which the Washington-based International Monetary Fund granted its loans.
This deliberate process contrasts markedly with the willy-nilly way free trade spread in the nineteenth century, as
described by O'Brien and Hobson.
The third pillar of American dominance can be found in the way successive U.S. governments sought to take
advantage of the dollar's role as a key currency before and after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods institutions,
which, according to O'Brien, enabled the United States to be "far less restrained ... than all other states by normal
fiscal and foreign exchange constraints when it came to funding whatever foreign or strategic policies Washington
decided to implement." As Robert Gilpin notes, quoting Charles de Gaulle, such policies led to a "hegemony of the
dollar" that gave the U.S. "extravagant privileges." In David Calleo's words, the U.S. government had access to a
"gold mine of paper" and could therefore collect a subsidy from foreigners in the form of seigniorage (the profits that
flow to those who mint or print a depreciating currency).
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US Econ Collapse  global
A U.S. economic collapse leads to global economic depressionWalter Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, March/April, 2004
America’s Sticky Power, Foreign Policy, Proquest
Similarly, in the last 60 years, as foreigners have acquired a greater value in the United States-government and private bonds,
direct and portfolio private investments-more and more of them have acquired an interest in maintaining the strength of the
U.S.-led system. A collapse of the U.S. economy and the ruin of the dollar would do more than dent the prosperity of
the United States. Without their best customer, countries including China and Japan would fall into depressions. The
financial strength of every country would be severely shaken should the United States collapse. Under those
circumstances, debt becomes a strength, not a weakness, and other countries fear to break with the United States because they
need its market and own its securities. Of course, pressed too far, a large national debt can turn from a source of strength to a
crippling liability, and the United States must continue to justify other countries' faith by maintaining its long-term record of
meeting its financial obligations. But, like Samson in the temple of the Philistines, a collapsing U.S. economy would inflict
enormous, unacceptable damage on the rest of the world.
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Econ growth good- environment
Economic growth is more important and valued by Democrats and Republicans over the
environment.
(Frank Newport, Ph. D., Editor in Chief, The Gallup Poll, and author of Polling Matters, 03 19 09,
“Americans: Economy takes precedence over environment,”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116962/americans-economy-takes-precedence-environment.aspx
Only 50% of Democrats, who typically have been the most environmentally oriented in their policy positions,
opt for the environmental protection position -- just six points higher than the percentage of Democrats
choosing economic growth. (Republicans and independents are more likely to choose economic growth.) This
finding suggests that the economic crisis may present a real philosophical dilemma to those who ordinarily are
strongly supportive of environmental protection, but who may back off in the face of the perceived need to
restore economic growth.
The partisan spread is somewhat larger for the trade-off question dealing with energy and the environment.
Republicans and Democrats are almost perfect mirror images of each other in response to this question, with twothirds of Republicans opting for energy over the protection of the environment, while two-thirds of Democrats
hold the opposite view. There is little question that the current economic crisis poses a significant challenge for the
environmental movement in this country. Previous Gallup research has shown that concern about global
warming has diminished this year, and the research reviewed here shows clearly that Americans are more
willing than ever to forgo protection of the environment if needed in order to ensure economic growth or the
production of energy. With the economy as bad as it has been in recent memory, Americans' preferences have
swung even more strongly in the direction of the economy over the environment
Growth in the economic is beneficial to the environment.
(Terry L. Anderson, leading resource economist, professor of economics at Montana State University,
Ph.D. in economics, visiting scholar at Oxford, university of Basel, and Cornell University law School,
04, “Why Economic Growth is Good for the Environment,” http://www.perc.org/articles/article446.php)
Hansen's essay concludes on an optimistic note, saying "the main elements [new technologies] required to halt
climate change have come into being with remarkable rapidity." This statement would not have surprised
economist Julian Simon. He saw the "ultimate resource" to be the human mind and believed it to be best motivated by
market forces. Because of a combination of market forces and technological innovations, we are not running out
of natural resources. As a resource becomes more scarce, prices increase, thus encouraging development of
cheaper alternatives and technological innovations. Just as fossil fuel replaced scarce whale oil, its use will be
reduced by new technology and alternative fuel sources. Market forces also cause economic growth, which in
turn leads to environmental improvements. Put simply, poor people are willing to sacrifice clean water and air,
healthy forests, and wildlife habitat for economic growth. But as their incomes rise above subsistence,
"economic growth helps to undo the damage done in earlier years," says economist Bruce Yandle. "If economic
growth is good for the environment, policies that stimulate growth ought to be good for the environment."
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Econ Growth good- environment
A sustainable development is better achieved through economic growth, because it will lead to a
better environmental quality.
(Mathew Brown, an economist at the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, 12 13
99, “Apple Daily, Hong Kong” http://www.perc.org/articles/article175.php)
As increasing pressure from visiting business leaders and local citizens attests, Hong Kong, like all wealthy
countries, is encountering fears over air quality, clean water, and waste disposal. To meet these challenges
Hong Kong Chief Executive CH Tung has embraced the idea of "sustainable development." In his words this
requires"a fundamental change of mindset," in the way Hong Kong businesses and government operate.
Around the world policies of "sustainable development" rest on the assumption that current economic systems
are bad for the environment and that only through more government control will environmental quality be
improved. Enacting this policy could prove costly not only for Hong Kong's environment but also for its celebrated
economic success.
The good news for Mr. Tung and all of Hong Kong is that the twin goals of environmental protection and
increased prosperity are not as contradictory as many environmentalists would have the public believe.
A recent study by Princeton University economists Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger found that "economic
growth brings an initial phase of deterioration followed by a subsequent phase of improvement." They found,
for instance, that light particulates, a pervasive form of air pollution, tend to increase until a country reaches
per capita income levels of around $9,000. After that air pollution declines as countries become wealthier.
According to Grossman and Krueger "contrary to the alarmist cries of some environmental groups, we find no
evidence that economic growth does unavoidable harm to the natural habitat." This relationship between
economic growth and environmental quality, which resembles an inverted-U, has been found for many other
environmental indices such as water quality and waste disposal-- both important concerns for a city such as
Hong Kong.
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Econ growth good- environment
Countries that practiced “Sustainable development” actually created a negative impact on
economic growth and environmental quality.
(Mathew Brown, an economist at the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, 12 13
99, “Apple Daily, Hong Kong” http://www.perc.org/articles/article175.php)
Perhaps more relevant to Hong Kong's future is a recent finding that government efforts to regulate
environmental quality, a cornerstone of many "sustainable development" proposals, can have a substantial
negative impact on economic growth. Another team of economists found that American air and water
regulations had a total cost of about $320 billion and decreased American gross domestic product (GDP) by
5.8%. Even well intentioned regulations can have a negative impact on economic growth and thus
unintentionally on desired improvements in environmental quality.
A policy of sustainable development can also be harmful in its prescription to forgo economic growth in the
name of preserving resources for the future. Forcing the current generation to conserve resources for the future is
like taxing the poor to give money to the rich. Imagine how different Hong Kong would look today if fifty years ago
its imperial rulers had decreed that Hong Kong must not use natural resources so that they would be available for
future generations. In that case Hong Kong, then with per capita incomes lower than many Third World countries
today, would never have been able to achieve the remarkable economic growth that has made it one of the richest
places on Earth, with individual incomes as high as those in the United States and higher than in most parts of Europe.
Hong Kong is a good example of how economic growth will lead to a higher quality of the
environment.
(Mathew Brown, an economist at the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, 12 13
99, “Apple Daily, Hong Kong” http://www.perc.org/articles/article175.php)
In addition to asking Hong Kong to give up growth for the sake of future generations, a policy of "sustainable
development" involves reducing the environmental burden Hong Kong's economy places on its neighbors. Here
Hong Kong's great success is truly in evidence. Hong Kong is much wealthier than mainland China and indeed most
of the rest of Asia. As such it is in a position to worry more about the impact its neighbors have on Hong Kong's
environment than vice versa. By continuing the liberal trade and economic policies that have made Hong Kong
the envy and model for much of Asia, and indeed the rest of the world, it will help promote economic growth in
the region and thus improved environmental quality for its neighbors and itself.
As Hong Kong moves into the new millennium it has many advantages over most of its neighbors. Its economic
freedom and consequent wealth will not only allow it to enjoy increased prosperity in the future but also
increasing environmental quality. Avoiding the temptation to impose new layers of government regulation on a
system that has worked so well will be the main challenge standing in its way.
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Econ growth good- Poverty
Countries with higher economic growth rates will face poverty alleviation.
(Pradeep Agrawal, professor of economics and head, RBI chair unit at the institute of economic growth,
university enclave, Delhi, 08, “Economic growth and poverty reduction: evidence from Kazakhstan,”
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2-Agrawal.pdf)
Countries with higher growth rates are likely to experience more rapid reduction in poverty. Using provincelevel panel data, this was demonstrated to hold for Kazakhstan. Growth is considered pro-poor if the income share of
the poor rises with growth or at least their incomes grow in absolute terms. Inequality has declined slightly over the
recent high-growth period (1998–2003), accompanied by reduction in poverty gap and severity. This evidence
supports the view that the 1998–2003 high-growth period in Kazakhstan has been pro-poor.
Growth reduced poverty by leading to increased employment and higher real wages. Both government revenue
and expenditure increased with growth and increased oil and gas exports, both in real terms and as percent of
GDP. Government revenue, which sharply increased in 2003, was used partly to reform and expand the pension
system. This provided assistance to many unemployed workers who could not adjust to the major and rapid
changes from the Soviet era industrial structure. However, it did not translate into a corresponding improvement in
expenditure on the education and health as a share of government revenue or GDP. Nevertheless, because of the high
growth of government revenue and GDP, real expenditure per person on social sectors still rose slightly in
some periods over 1998–2003. The paper shows that provinces (regions) of Kazakhstan that received higher
expenditure on social sectors experienced a larger decline in poverty. This underlines the need for sustained,
increasing expenditure for the social sectors in Kazakhstan, more so in the poorer provinces, possibly through
additional support from the national government.
Economic growth and poverty alleviation are directly connected; economic growth helps reduce
poverty.
(Pradeep Agrawal, professor of economics and head, RBI chair unit at the institute of economic growth,
university enclave, Delhi, 08, “Economic growth and poverty reduction: evidence from Kazakhstan,”
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2-Agrawal.pdf)
This paper empirically examines the relation between economic growth and poverty
alleviation in the case of Kazakhstan using province-level data. It shows that provinces with higher
growth rates achieved faster decline in poverty. This happened largely through growth,
which led to increased employment and higher real wages and contributed significantly to
poverty reduction. Rapidly increasing oil revenues since 1998 have helped significantly raise
both gross domestic product growth and government revenue in Kazakhstan. Part of the oil
fund was used to fund a pension and social protection program that has helped reduce
poverty. However, expenditure on other social sectors like education and health has not increased much and needs
more support. It is also shown empirically that increased government expenditure on social sectors did contribute
significantly to poverty alleviation. This suggests that both rapid economic growth and enhanced
government support for the social sectors are helpful in reducing poverty.
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Econ growth good- poverty/environment
Economic growth is key to reducing poverty and helping the environment.
(World Resources institute, 97, “Economic growth and human development,”
http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8372)
Economic growth is an important factor in reducing poverty and generating the resources
necessary for human development and environmental protection. There is a strong
correlation between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and indicators of development
such as life expectancy, infant mortality, adult literacy, political and civil rights, and some
indicators of environmental quality. However, economic growth alone does not guarantee human
development. Well-functioning civil institutions, secure individual and property rights, and broad-based health and
educational services are also vital to raising overall living standards. Despite its shortcomings, though, GDP remains a
useful proxy measure of human well-being.
The world economy has grown approximately fivefold since 1950, an unprecedented rate of
increase. The industrialized economies still dominate economic activity, accounting for
US$22.5 trillion of the US$27.7 trillion global GDP in 1993 [1]. Yet a remarkable trend over
the past 25 years has been the burgeoning role played by developing countries, in particular
the populous economies of east and south Asia.
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Econ growth good- social services
Economic growth helps increase government revenue, which in turn decreases poverty through
social programs.
(Pradeep Agrawal, professor of economics and head, RBI chair unit at the institute of economic growth,
university enclave, Delhi, 08, “Economic growth and poverty reduction: evidence from Kazakhstan,”
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2-Agrawal.pdf
The growing literature on policies for poverty reduction has emphasized the importance of
economic growth, as well as targeted provision of government aid in poverty alleviation and
development. Since government aid to the poor is dependent on government revenue, which
in turn grows with economic growth, the key role of economic growth has been emphasized
in the literature. This paper examined these issues empirically for Kazakhstan and showed
that the rapid increase in oil and gas extraction and related activities very significantly
contributed to economic growth as well as to increased government revenue. A portion of
these funds was used to improve the social security/pension system, and maintain
government demand for goods that helped industrial recovery. This played a key role in poverty
reduction in Kazakhstan.
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Econ growth good- poverty
Economic growth is key to reduce poverty.
(Ebba Dohlman and Mikael Soderback, OECD development Cooperation, 03 07, "Economic growth
versus poverty reduction: A "hollow debate"?,"
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/2173/Economic_growth_versus_poverty_
reduction:_A__93hollow_debate_94_.html)
A close look at what can be patchy data suggests that growth, poverty and inequality are linked. One study
shows that a 1% increase in per capita incomes may reduce income poverty by as much as 4% or by less than
1%, depending on the initial conditions in the country, such as the distribution of assets, ownership, and so on.
Overall, most of the evidence confirms that poverty reduction depends on the pace and pattern of economic
growth. But how to achieve the optimal pattern?
The answer is a hybrid: pro-poor and pro-growth approaches are mutually reinforcing and should go hand in hand.
What this means for policy is spelt out in a new book by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the
OECD, whose member countries handle some 90% of world bilateral ODA (see references). Its forum, the Network
on Poverty Reduction (POVNET), has helped to steer previously divided opinion into a new consensus that rapid and
sustained poverty reduction requires pro-poor growth. This means “a pace and pattern of growth that enhances
the ability of poor women and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth”.
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AT: Dedev-No mindshift
People will always want an increase in economic growth, because it prevents everyone from
becoming poor.
(Richland college, 08, “Economic Growth,”
http://www.google.com/search?q=people+will+always+want+economic+growth&hl=en&start=10&sa=N)
We now know what Economic Growth is. It is the level of Real GDP increasing over time. The trick about
Economic Growth is that we always want it increasing, but not too fast or too slow. Without increased Economic
Growth we would never improve our standard of living. We would never have innovation. Ex: Would you rather live
during the time of the Biltmore Mansion, or today at minimum wage?
We are much better off today than we were 120 years ago (roughly the time when the Biltmore Estate was built).
Even people making near the Minimum Wage have access to products and information that wasn’t yet
invented or available to that time period. That explains why we want a continuous increase in GDP, but why do
we want to control its speed; why is too fast or too slow equally as bad as no growth? Think about everyone running
out and borrowing money to start businesses or invent new products. What would happen to GDP? It would increase
drastically for a short period of time, but that can’t last. Everyone is in debt through borrowing; there would be no
consumers to buy all of these new products. Everyone would become poor, and that would lead to a recession which
we know ends in job losses.
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Econ growth good-violence
Economic growth leads to less violence and disorder, and helps establish stability and the quality
of health.
(The Futurist. 04 30 06, "The Psychology of Economic Progress,"
http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/04/the_psychology_.html)
In centuries past, killing another person in order to take his belongings was common. Today, the downside risk
to one's career of even petty theft or minor fraud is enough that most people in the US today don't consider it.
As the world economy accelerated from centuries of slow growth to a period of rapid growth starting from the
middle of the 20th century, we have seen a general decline in violence and disorder in developed societies, and
also a decline in large-scale warfare in general. Simply put, when more people have a stake in the stability and
health of the system, they are more interested in maintaining and strengthening it, rather than disrupting it or
trying to bypass it.
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Econ growth good- social services
Economic growth helps increase social services, leading to a decrease in poverty.
(JBIC, Japanese bank of international cooperation, 11 06, "Infrastructure development to alleviate poverty,"
http://www.jbic.go.jp/en/report/jbic-today/2006/11/index_02.html)
It is estimated that 1.1 billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. About three-quarters of these
1.1 billion live in rural areas in developing countries, and there is a growing awareness throughout the
international community that agricultural development is extremely important in reducing poverty, and must
be accelerated to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
For rural areas where many of the poor live, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) has provided
Official Development Assistance (ODA) loans to support the development of infrastructure that will serve as a
foundation for growth in the agricultural sector. JBIC offers a range of support tools, including the combination of
various frameworks for the effective use of agricultural infrastructure and ensuring sustainable results from it.
As the development experience in Asia has shown, economic growth boosts incomes and creates employment
opportunities, leading to higher standards of living. Reducing poverty in developing countries requires
sustainable economic growth and the development of infrastructure to support that growth.
Economic growth helps increase social welfare, which is the objective of governments.
(Mathew Clarke, 09 03, "Chairman of MIND (Munasinge Institute for
development),"
http://books.google.com/books?id=TK1YDJKJoC8C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=economic+growth+leads+welfare&sourc
e=bl&ots=Z88sFL27JS&sig=saQ7KNsHERU_k4x98hR3XxAKre4&hl=en&ei=JpYSpG1NaCytwftgfHdCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3)
An explanation of the relationships between economic growth and social welfare is an enduring question in
contemporary development studies. Economic growth is desirable if it improves social welfare. Within the
literature and public policy, the orthodox view is that achieving economic growth is the appropriate means to
increase social welfare and enhancing social welfare is a rational objective of society and governments.
Economic growth leads to higher incomes and improved access to basic needs. However, the costs of achieving
economic growth are often not fully considered, as welfare analysis of economic growth is limited within the
literature. Whist some work has been undertaken for transitional economies, welfare analysis has been generally
limited to the suggestion of general frameworks.
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AT: Trainer
Ted Trainer’s ideas are flawed – overconsumption is unavoidable and necessary
(Margo Condoleon, Document of the DSP, national executive, 09,
"Environment, Capitalism and Socialism,"
http://books.google.com/books?id=kP4xrhGDoywC&pg=PA97&dq=ted+trainer&lr=&ei=L-BYSsujHpbyzQTLzJw1)
Ted Trainer's main ideas have been expressed in two books – Abandon Affluence and Developed to Death.
They contain very detailed presentation of trends in resource depletion and energy supply, population growth,
the wastefulness of consumer societies, and the exploitation of the Third World by wealthier nations. Trainer
argues strongly against those who believe that these problems can be addressed adequately through existing political
and social institutions.
However, as the title indicates, Abandon Affluence argues that all have to accept a lower level of consumption - the root cause of the ecological crisis is "overconsumption" by individual consumers in the industrially
developed countries. This argument undervalues the great disparities in income that exist within the developed
countries. It also fails to grasp that wasteful consumption is overwhelmingly created by the needs of capital for
ever expanding markets: if profits need to be maintained planned obsolescence, the permanent stimulation of
new "needs" through advertising, multiple versions of the same product and unnecessary packaging are all
unavoidable. Thus Trainer's tendency to blame individual consumption levels for the ecological crisis stems from his
equating affluence (a plentiful supply of products meeting rational needs) with consumerism and wasteful
consumption created by capitalism
.
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Terrorism turns Econ
Academic studies prove terrorism hurts the economy
Abadie and Gardeazabal, 7 (Alberto Abadie- professor of public policy @ Harvard, and Javier Gareazabal- professor of
economics @ the University of Baque Country, “Terrorism and the World Economy”, August 2007,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/twe.pdf)
It has been argued that terrorism should not have a large effect on economic activity, because terrorist attacks destroy
only a small fraction of the stock of capital of a country (see, e.g., Becker and Murphy, 2001). In contrast, empirical
estimates of the consequences of terrorism typically suggest large effects on economic outcomes (see, e.g., Abadie
and Gardeazabal, 2003). The main theme of this article is that mobility of productive capital in an open economy may
account for much of the difference between the direct and the equilibrium impact of terrorism. We use a simple
economic model to show that terrorism may have a large impact on the allocation of productive capital across
countries, even if it represents a small fraction of the overall economic risk. The model emphasizes that, in addition to
increasing uncertainty, terrorism reduces the expected return to investment. As a result, changes in the intensity of
terrorism may cause large movements of capital across countries if the world economy is sufficiently open, so
international investors are able to diversify other types of country risks. Using a unique dataset on terrorism and other
country risks, we find that, in accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of terrorist risks are
associated with lower levels of net foreign direct investment positions, even after controlling for other types of
country risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk is associated with a fall in the net foreign
direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP. The magnitude of the estimated effect is large, which suggests
that the “open-economy channel" impact of terrorism may be substantial.
This paper analyzes the effects of terrorism in an integrated world economy. From an economic standpoint, terrorism
has been described to have four main effects (see, e.g., US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, 2002). First, the
capital stock (human and physical) of a country is reduced as a result of terrorist attacks. Second, the terrorist threat
induces higher levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in counter-terrorism expenditures, drawing
resources from productive sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to affect negatively specific
industries such as tourism.1 However, this classification does not include the potential effects of increased terrorist
threats in an open economy. In this article, we use a stylized macroeconomic model of the world economy and international data on terrorism and the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) assets and liabilities to study the economic
effects of terrorism in an integrated world economy
Terrorism deters foreign investment
Abadie and Gardeazabal, 7 (Alberto Abadie- professor of public policy @ Harvard, and Javier Gareazabal- professor of
economics @ the University of Baque Country, “Terrorism and the World Economy”, August 2007,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/twe.pdf)
The amounts of foreign direct investment in the U.S. before and after the September 11th attacks provide some
suggestive evidence of the open-economy channel of terrorism. In the year 2000, the year before the terrorist attacks,
foreign direct investment inflows represented about 15.8 percent of the Gross Fixed Capital Formation in the U.S.
This figure decreased to only 1.5 percent in 2003, two years after the attacks. Conversely, foreign direct investment
outflows from the U.S. increased from about 7.2 percent of the Gross Fixed Capital Formation for the U.S. in 2000 to
7.5 percent in 2003 (see UNCTAD, 2004). Of course, not all this variation in FDI can be attributed to the effect of the
September 11th attacks. As of September 2001 foreign direct investment inflows had fallen from its 2000 peak not
only in the U.S. but also in other developed economies (see UNCTAD, 3In related research, Frey, Luechinger, and
Stutzer (2004) study the effect of terrorism on life satisfaction. Frey, Luechinger, and Stutzer (2007) surveys the
existing research on the economic impact of terrorism. 2 2002). These figures, however, motivate the question of to
which extent an increase in the perceived level of terrorism was responsible for the drop in FDI in the U.S. that
followed the events of September 11th. Surveys of international corporate investors provide direct evidence of the
importance of terrorism on foreign investment. Corporate investors rate terrorism as one of the most important
factors influencing their foreign direct investment decisions (see Global Business Policy Council, 2004).
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Disease turns military readiness
Pandemics kill military readiness
Major Hesko, 6 (Gerald, Air Command And Staff College “Pandemic Influenza: Military Operational Readiness
Implications” April 2006)
There exists in the world today the possibility of a great influenza pandemic matching those of the past century with
the potential to far exceed the pain, suffering and deaths of past pandemics. Although global pandemics are difficult to
accurately predict, scientists theorize that another pandemic on a scale of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is
imminent.
If a pandemic influenza occurs, as predicted by many in the medical and scientific community, the number of
Americans affected could easily overwhelm our medical capability resulting in untold suffering and deaths. Although
an influenza pandemic, if it occurs, has the potential to devastate and threaten our society, an equally alarming
consequence is the effects it could have on the operational readiness of the United States military establishment. With
our current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with other smaller engagements world-wide, if an influenza
pandemic were to strike the military, our level of operational readiness, preparedness and ability to defend our vital
national interests could be decreased or threaten. As a result of the pending threat of an influenza pandemic, the
United States military, must take decisive actions to mitigate the potential devastation an influenza pandemic might
have on operational readiness.
Disease turns military readiness
Suburban Emergency Management Project, 7 (Disease Outbreak Readiness Update, U.S. Department of Defense
Biot Report #449: July 25, 2007, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=449)
An infectious disease pandemic could impair the military’s readiness, jeopardize ongoing military operations abroad,
and threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of Defense (DOD) because of up to 40% of personnel
reporting sick or being absent during a pandemic, according to a recent GAO report (June 2007).
Congressman Tom Davis, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House
of Representatives, requested the GAO investigation. (1) The 40% number (above) comes from the Homeland
Security Council’s estimate that 40% of the U.S. workforce might not be at work due to illness, the need to care for
family members who are sick, or fear of becoming infected. (2) DOD military and civilian personnel and contractors
would face a similar absentee rate, according to the GAO writers.
Aids kills military readiness
Upton, 4 ( Maureen- member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the 21st Century Trust, World Policy
Journal, “Global Public Health Trumps the Nation-State” Volume XXI, No 3, Fall 2004,
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/Upton.html)
The political economist Nicholas Eberstadt has demonstrated that the coming Eurasian AIDS pandemic has the
potential to derail the economic prospects of billions of people—particularly in Russia, China, and India—and to
thereby alter the global military balance.5 Eurasia (defined as Russia, plus Asia), is home to five-eighths of the world’s
population, and its combined GNP is larger than that of either the United States or Europe. Perhaps more importantly,
the region includes four of the world’s five militaries with over one million members and four declared nuclear states.
Since HIV has a relatively long incubation period, its effects on military readiness are unusually harsh. Officers who
contract the disease early in their military careers do not typically die until they have amassed significant training and
expertise, so armed forces are faced with the loss of their most senior, hardest-to-replace officers.
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Diseases kill military readiness- empirically proven
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter
2002/3), “Epidemic Disease and National Security” http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)
Military readiness. Even when disease is not deliberately used, it can alter the evolution and outcome of military
conflict by eroding military readiness and morale. As Jared Diamond notes, .All those military histories glorifying
great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best
generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies..142 During
the European conquest of the Americas, the conquistadors shared numerous lethal microbes with their native
American foes, who had few or no deadly diseases to pass on to their conquerors. When Hernando Cortez and his men
first attacked the Aztecs in Mexico in 1520, they left behind smallpox that wiped out half the Aztec population.
Surviving Aztecs were further demoralized by their vulnerability to a disease that appeared harmless to the Europeans,
and on their next attempt the Spanish succeeded in conquering the Aztec nation.143 Spanish conquest of the Incan
empire in South America followed a similar pattern: In 1532 Francisco Pizarro and his army of 168 Spaniards
defeated the Incan army of 80,000. A devastating smallpox epidemic had killed the Incan emperor and his heir,
producing a civil war that split the empire and allowed a handful of Europeans to defeat a large, but divided
enemy.144 In modern times, too, pandemic infections have affected the ability of military forces to prosecute and win
a war. The German Army chief of staff in the First World War, General Erick Von Ludendorf, blamed Germany.s
loss of that war at least partly on the negative effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the morale of German
troops.145 In the Second World War, similarly, malaria caused more U.S. casualties in certain areas than did military
action.146 Throughout history, then, IDs have had a significant potential to decimate armies and alter military history.
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Aids turns military readiness
AIDS kills readiness- it decreases troops and erodes gov’t control
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter
2002/3), “Epidemic Disease and National Security” http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)
Still, IDs. impact in the contemporary international system may be somewhat different. Unlike other diseases, AIDS has
an incubation period of ten years or more, making it unlikely that it will produce significant casualties on the front
lines of a war. It will still, however, deplete force strength in many states. On average, 20.40 percent of armed forces
in sub-Saharan countries are HIV-positive, and in a few countries the rate is 60 percent or more. In Zimbabwe, it may
be as high as 80 percent.147 In high incidence countries, AIDS significantly erodes military readiness, directly
threatening national security. Lyndy Heinecken chillingly describes the problem in sub-Saharan Africa: AIDS-related
illnesses are now the leading cause of death in the army and police forces of these countries, accounting for more than
50% of inservice and post-service mortalities. In badly infected countries, AIDS patients occupy 75% of military
hospital beds and the disease is responsible for more admissions than battlefield injuries. The high rate of HIV
infection has meant that some African armies have been unable to deploy a full contingent, or even half of their
troops, at short notice.. [In South Africa, because] participation in peace-support operations outside the country is
voluntary, the S[outh] A[frican] N[ational] D[efence] F[orce] is grappling with the problem of how to ensure the
availability of sufficiently suitable candidates for deployment at short notice. Even the use of members for internal
crime prevention and border control, which subjects them to adverse conditions or stationing in areas where local infrastructure is limited, presents certain problems. Ordinary ailments, such as diarrhoea and the common cold, can be
serious enough to require the hospitalization of an immune-compromised person, and, in some cases, can prove fatal if
they are not treated immediately.148 Armed forces in severely affected states will be unable to recruit and train
soldiers quickly enough to replace their sick and dying colleagues, the potential recruitment pool itself will dwindle,
and officers corps will be decimated. Military budgets will be sapped, military blood supplies tainted, and
organizational structures strained to accommodate unproductive soldiers. HIV-infected armed forces also threaten
civilians at home and abroad. Increased levels of sexual activity among military forces in wartime means that the
military risk of becoming infected with HIV is as much as 100 times that of the civilian risk. It also means that
members of the armed forces comprise a key means of transmitting the virus to the general population; with sex and
transport workers, the military is considered one of the three core transmission groups in Africa. 149 For this reason,
conflict-ridden states may become reluctant to accept peacekeepers from countries with high HIV rates. Rather than
contributing directly to military defeat in many countries, however, AIDS in the military is more likely to have longer
term implications for national security. First, IDs theoretically could deter military action and impede access to
strategic resources or areas. Tropical diseases erected a formidable, although obviously not insurmountable, obstacle
to colonization in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. French and later American efforts to open the Panama Canal,
similarly, were stymied until U.S. mosquito control efforts effectively checked yellow fever and malaria. Second, in
many countries AIDS already strains military medical systems and their budgets, and it only promises to divert further
spending away from defense toward both military and civilian health. Third, AIDS in the military promises to have its
greatest impact by eroding a government.s control over its armed forces and further destabilizing the state. Terminally
ill soldiers may have little incentive to defend their government, and their government may be in more need of
defending as AIDS siphons funds from housing, education, police, and administration. Finally, high military HIV/AIDS
rates could alter regional balances of power. Perhaps 40.50 percent of South Africa.s soldiers are HIV-infected. Despite
the disease.s negative impact on South Africa.s absolute power, Price-Smith notes, AIDS may increase that nation.s
power relative to its neighbors, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with potentially important regional consequences. 150 AIDS
poses obvious threats to the military forces of many countries, particularly in sub- Saharan Africa, but it does not
present the same immediate security problems for the United States. The authors of a Reagan-era report on the effects
of economic and demographic trends on security worried about the effects of the costs of AIDS research, education,
and funding on the defense budget,151 but a decade of relative prosperity generated budget surpluses instead. These
surpluses have evaporated, but concerns about AIDS spending have not reappeared and are unlikely to do so for the
foreseeable future, given the relatively low levels of HIV-infection in the United States. AIDS presents other challenges,
including prevention education and measures to limit infection of U.S. soldiers and peacekeepers stationed abroad,
particularly in high risk settings, and HIV transmission by these forces to the general population. These concerns could
limit U.S. actions where American interests are at stake.152
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Disease turns War
Disease increases the likelihood of war and genocide
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter
2002/3), “Epidemic Disease and National Security” http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)
How might these political and economic effects produce violent conflict? Price-Smith offers two possible answers:
Disease .magnif[ies].both relative and absolute deprivation and.hasten[s] the erosion of state capacity in seriously
affected societies. Thus, infectious disease may in fact contribute to societal destabilization and to chronic lowintensity intrastate violence, and in extreme cases it may accelerate the processes that lead to state failure..83 Disease
heightens competition among social groups and elites for scarce resources. When the debilitating and deadly effects of
IDs like AIDS are concentrated among a particular socio-economic, ethnic, racial, or geographic group, the potential
for conflict escalates. In many parts of Africa today, AIDS strikes rural areas at higher rates than urban areas, or it hits
certain provinces harder than others. If these trends persist in states where tribes or ethnic groups are heavily
concentrated in particular regions or in rural rather than urban areas, AIDS almost certainly will interact with tribal,
ethnic, or national differences and make political and military conflict more likely. Price-Smith argues, moreover, that
.the potential for intra-elite violence is also increasingly probable and may carry grave political consequences, such as
coups, the collapse of governance, and planned genocides..84
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Environmental Destruction/opop turns disease
Worldwatch Institute, 96 (“Infectious Diseases Surge: Environmental Destruction, Poverty To Blame”
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1593)
Rates of infectious disease have risen rapidly in many countries during the past decade, according to a new study
released by the Worldwatch Institute. Illness and death from tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, and AIDS are up
sharply; infectious diseases killed 16.5 million people in 1993, one-third of all deaths worldwide, and slightly more
than cancer and heart disease combined.
The resurgence of diseases once thought to have been conquered stems from a deadly mix of exploding populations,
rampant poverty, inadequate health care, misuse of antibiotics, and severe environmental degradation, says the new
report, Infecting Ourselves: How Environmental and Social Disruptions Trigger Disease. Infectious diseases take their
greatest toll in developing countries, where cases of malaria and tuberculosis are soaring, but even in the United
States, infectious disease deaths rose 58 percent between 1980 and 1992.
Research Associate Anne Platt, author of the report, says, "Infectious diseases are a basic barometer of the
environmental sustainability of human activity. Recent outbreaks result from a sharp imbalance between a human
population growing by 88 million each year and a natural resource base that is under increasing stress."
"Water pollution, shrinking forests, and rising temperatures are driving the upward surge in infections in many
countries," the report says. "Only by adopting a more sustainable path to economic development can we control
them."
"Beyond the number of people who die, the social and economic cost of infectious diseases is hard to overestimate,"
Platt says. "It can be a crushing burden for families, communities, and governments. Some 400 million people suffer
from debilitating malaria, about 200 million have schistosomiasis, and nine million have tuberculosis."
By the year 2000, AIDS will cost Asian countries over $50 billion a year just in lost productivity. "Such suffering and
economic loss is doubly tragic," says Platt, "because the cost of these diseases is astronomical, yet preventing them is
not only simple, but inexpensive."
The author notes, "The dramatic resurgence of infectious diseases is telling us that we are approaching disease and
medicine, as well as economic development, in the wrong way. Governments focus narrowly on individual cures and
not on mass prevention; and we fail to understand that lifestyle can promote infectious disease just as it can contribute
to heart disease. It is imperative that we bring health considerations into the equation when we plan for international
development, global trade, and population increases, to prevent disease from spreading and further undermining
economic development."
The report notes that this global resurgence of infectious disease involves old, familiar diseases like tuberculosis and
the plague as well as new ones like Ebola and Lyme disease. Yet all show the often tragic consequences of human
actions:
Population increases, leading to human crowding, poverty, and the growth of mega-cities, are prompting dramatic
increases in dengue fever, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.
Lack of clean water is spreading diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Eighty percent of all disease in
developing countries is related to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation.
Poorly planned development disrupts ecosystems and provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes, rodents, and snails
that spread debilitating diseases.
Inadequate vaccinations have led to resurgences in measles and diphtheria.
Misuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant strains of pneumonia and malaria.
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Environment Impact/ turns disease
Environmental collapse threatens health and civilization collapse
WHO, 5 (“Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis” http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)
In a fundamental sense, ecosystems are the planet's life-support systems - for the human species and all other forms of
life (see Figure 1.1). The needs of the human organism for food, water, clean air, shelter and relative climatic
constancy are basic and unalterable. That is, ecosystems are essential to human well-being and especially to human
health – defined by the World Health Organization as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.
Those who live in materially comfortable, urban environments commonly take for granted ecosystem services to
health. They assume that good health derives from prudent consumer choices and behaviours, with access to good
health care services. But this ignores the role of the natural environment: of the array of ecosystems that allow people
to enjoy good health, social organization, economic activity, a built environment and life itself. Historically,
overexploitation of ecosystem services has led to the collapse of some societies (SG3). There is an observable
tendency for powerful and wealthy societies eventually to overexploit, damage and even destroy their natural
environmental support base. The agricultural-based civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mayans, and
(on a micro-scale) Easter Island all provide well documented examples. Industrial societies, although in many cases
more distant from the source of the ecosystem services on which they depend, may reach similar limits. Resource
consumption in one location can lead to degradation of ecosystem services and associated health effects in other parts
of the world (SG3). At its most fundamental level of analysis, the pressure on ecosystems can be conceptualized as a
function of population, technology and lifestyle. In turn, these factors depend on many social and cultural elements.
For example, fertilizer use in agricultural production increasingly is dependent on resources extracted from other
regions and has led to eutrophication of rivers, lakes and coastal ecosystems. Notwithstanding ecosystems'
fundamental role as determinants of human health, sociocultural factors play a similarly important role. These include
infrastructural assets; income and wealth distribution; technologies used; and level of knowledge. In many
industrialized countries, changes in these social factors over the last few centuries have both enhanced some
ecosystem services (through more productive agriculture, for instance) and improved health services and education,
contributing to increases in life expectancy. The complex multifactorial causation of states of health and disease
complicates the attribution of human health impacts to ecosystem changes. A precautionary approach to ecosystem
management is appropriate.
Environmental destruction causes new diseases
WHO, 5 (“Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis” http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)
Disturbance or degradation of ecosystems can have biological effects that are highly relevant to infectious disease
transmission (C14). The reasons for the emergence or re-emergence of some diseases are unknown, but the following
mechanisms have been proposed: • altered habitat leading to changes in the number of vector breeding sites or
reservoir host distribution; • niche invasions or transfer of interspecies hosts; • biodiversity change (including loss of
predator species and changes in host population density); • human-induced genetic changes in disease vectors or
pathogens (such as mosquito resistance to pesticides or the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria); and •
environmental contamination by infectious disease agents (such as faecal contamination of source waters).
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Environment turns war/economy
Environmental degradation increases war, instability, and hurts the economy
UN, 4 (United Nations News Center, “Environmental destruction during war exacerbates instability” November 5, 2004,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=12460&Cr=conflict&Cr1=environment,
"These scars, threatening water supplies, the fertility of the land and the cleanliness of the air are recipes for instability
between communities and neighbouring countries," he added.
Citing a new UNEP report produced in collaboration with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Toepfer stressed that environmental degradation
could undermine local and international security by "reinforcing and increasing grievances within and between
societies."
The study finds that a decrepit and declining environment can depress economic activity and diminish the authority of
the state in the eyes of its citizens. It also points out that the addressing environmental problems can foster trust among
communities and neighbouring countries.
"Joint projects to clean up sites, agreements and treaties to better share resources such as rivers and forests, and
strengthening cooperation between the different countries' ministries and institutions may hold the key to building trust,
understanding and more stable relations," said the UNEP chief.
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Environmental destruction turns agriculture
Environmental degradation destroys cropland
Homer-Dixon, 91 (Thomas- Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the
University of Toronto, International Security“ On The Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict”
199, http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh/thresh2.htm)
Decreased agricultural production is often mentioned as potentially the most worrisome consequence of
environmental change,47 and Figure 2 presents some of the causal scenarios frequently proposed by researchers. This
illustration is not intended to be exhaustive: the systemic interaction of environmental and agricultural variables is far
more complex than the figure suggests.48 Moreover, no one region or country will exhibit all the indicated processes:
while some are already clearly evident in certain areas, others are not yet visible anywhere.
The Philippines provides a good illustration of deforestation's impact, which can be traced out in the figure. Since the
Second World War, logging and the encroachment of farms have reduced the virgin and second-growth forest from
about sixteen million hectares to 6.8-7.6 million hectares.49 Across the archipelago, logging and land-clearing have
accelerated erosion, changed regional hydrological cycles and precipitation patterns, and decreased the land's ability to
retain water during rainy periods. The resulting flash floods have damaged irrigation works while plugging reservoirs
and irrigation channels with silt. These factors may seriously affect crop production. For example, when the
government of the Philippines and the European Economic Community commissioned an Integrated Environmental
Plan for the still relatively unspoiled island of Palawan, the authors of the study found that only about half of the
36,000 hectares of irrigated farmland projected within the Plan for 2007 will actually be irrigable because of the
hydrological effects of decreases in forest cover. 50
Figure 2 also highlights the importance of the degradation and decreasing availability of good agricultural land,
problems that deserve much closer attention than they usually receive. Currently, total global cropland amounts to
about 1.5 billion hectares. Optimistic estimates of total arable land on the planet, which includes both current and
potential cropland, range from 3.2 to 3.4 billion hectares, but nearly all the best land has already been exploited. What
is left is either less fertile, not sufficiently rainfed or easily irrigable, infested with pests, or harder to clear and work.51
For developing countries during the 1980s, cropland grew at just 0.26 percent a year, less than half the rate of the 1970s.
More importantly, in these countries arable land per capita dropped by 1.9 percent a year. 52 In the absence of a major increase
in arable land in developing countries, experts expect that the world average of 0.28 hectares of cropland per capita will
decline to 0.17 hectares by the year 2025, given the current rate of world population growth. 53 Large tracts are being lost each
year to urban encroachment, erosion, nutrient depletion, salinization, waterlogging, acidification, and compacting. The
geographer Vaclav Smil, who is generally very conservative in his assessments of environmental damage, estimates that two
to three million hectares of cropland are lost annually to erosion; perhaps twice as much land goes to urbanization, and at
least one million hectares are abandoned because of excessive salinity. In addition, about one-fifth of the world's cropland is
suffering from some degree of desertification.54 Taken together, he concludes, the planet will lose about 100 million hectares
of arable land between 1985 and 2000.55
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War causes dehumanization.
Dehumanization is used as propaganda during wars
Vinulan-Arellano 03. [Katharine, March 22 yonip.com “Stop Dehumanization of People to Stop Wars”
http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/nomorewars.html ]
In war time, dehumanization is a key element in propaganda and brainwashing. By portraying the enemy as less than
human, it is much easier to motivate your troops to rape, torture or kill. Ethnic cleansing or genocide would always be
perceived as a crime against humanity if human beings belonging to another race or religion are not dehumanized.
Throughout history, groups or races of human beings have been dehumanized. Slaves, Negroes, Jews, and now,
Muslims. Up to now, women are dehumanized in many societies -- they are made sexual objects, treated as secondclass human beings. The proliferation of the sex trade are indications of the prevailing, successful dehumanization of
women, worldwide. During wars, mass rape of women is common.
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War Turns Disease
War increases the spread of fatal disease.
Boston Globe 07. [05-07, “Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments”
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/07/spread_of_disease_tied_to_us_combat_deployments/]
A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has infected an estimated 2,500 US troops in
the last four years because of massive deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials said.
Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly, usually shows up in the form of reddish skin ulcers
on the face, hands, arms, or legs. But a more virulent form of the disease also attacks organs and can be fatal if left untreated.
In some US hospitals in Iraq, the disease has become so commonplace that troops call it the "Baghdad boil." But in the
United States, the appearance of it among civilian contractors who went to Iraq or among tourists who were infected in other
parts of the world has caused great fear because family doctors have had difficulty figuring out the cause. The spread of
leishmaniasis (pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of emerging infectious diseases in the United States in
recent years as a result of military deployments, as well as the pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business opportunities
in the developing world, health officials say. Among those diseases appearing more frequently in the United States are three
transmitted by mosquitoes: malaria, which was contracted by 122 troops last year in Afghanistan; dengue fever; and
chikungunya fever.
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War turns Gender violence
War causes sexual violence and reifies the subjugation of women.
Eaton 04. [Shana JD Georgetown University Law Center 35 Geo. J. Int'l L. 873 Summer lexis]
While sexual violence against women has always been considered a negative side effect of war, it is only in recent years that
it has been taken seriously as a violation of humanitarian law. In the "evolution" of war, women themselves have become a
battlefield on which conflicts are fought. Realizing that rape is often more effective at achieving their aims than plain killing,
aggressors have used shocking sexual violence against women as a tool of conflict, allowing battling forces to flaunt their
power, dominance, and masculinity over the other side. The stigma of rape is used to effectuate genocide, destroy
communities, and demoralize opponents-decimating a woman's will to survive is often only a secondary side effect.
Sexual violence against women during wartime had to reach horrifying levels before the international community was
shocked enough to finally take these atrocities seriously. It took the extremely brutal victimization of vast numbers of
women, played out against a backdrop of genocide, to prove that rape is not simply a natural side effect of war to be lightly
brushed aside.
The conflicts in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia put women's rights directly in the spotlight, and the international
community could no longer avoid the glare. In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, ethnic cleansing was central to the conflict.
Raping women helped to achieve this aim in a number of ways, from forced impregnation, where offspring would have
different ethnicities than their mothers, to the use of sexual violence to prevent women from wanting to have sex again (thus
limiting their likelihood of bearing children in the future). Additionally, rape was used as a means of destroying families and
communities. Raping a woman stigmatized her, making it unlikely that she would ever want to return home, and in many
cases, ensuring that if she did return home that she would be rejected. Civilians, particularly women, came to be used as tools
to achieve military ends, putting the human rights of these women at the heart of the conflict.
War conditions cause sexual violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Women are especially vulnerable during war (see Chapter 12). Rape has been used as a weapon in many wars- in Korea,
Bangladesh, Algeria, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Rwanda, Uganda, the former Yugslavia, and elsewhere. As acts of
humiliation and revenge, soldiers have raped the female family members of their enemies. For example, at least 10,000
women were raped by military personnel during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The social chaos brought about by war
also creates situations and conditions conductive to sexual violence.
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War turns Human Right Violations
Wars undermine human rights
Ganesan and Vines 04. [Arvind, Business and Human Rights Program Director @ HRW Alex, Senior Researcher @ HRW,
Head of Africa Programme Chatham House, Royal Institue of Int’l Affairs, “Engine of War: Resources, Greed, and the
Predatory State,” Human Rights Watch World Report 2004 http://hrw.org/wr2k4/download/14.pdf]
Internal armed conflict in resource-rich countries is a major cause of human rights violations around the world. An influential
World Bank thesis states that the availability of portable, high-value resources is an important reason that rebel groups form
and civil wars break out, and that to end the abuses one needs to target rebel group financing. The focus is on rebel groups,
and the thesis is that greed, rather than grievance alone, impels peoples toward internal armed conflict.
Although examination of the nexus between resources, revenues, and civil war is critically important, the picture as presented
in the just-described “greed vs. grievance” theory is distorted by an overemphasis on the impact of resources on rebel group
behavior and insufficient attention to how government mismanagement of resources and revenues fuels conflict and human
rights abuses. As argued here, if the international community is serious about curbing conflict and related rights abuses in
resource-rich countries, it should insist on greater transparency in government revenues and expenditures and more rigorous
enforcement of punitive measures against governments that seek to profit from conflict.
Civil wars and conflict have taken a horrific toll on civilians throughout the world. Killings, maiming, forced conscription,
the use of child soldiers, sexual abuse, and other atrocities characterize numerous past and ongoing conflicts. The level of
violence has prompted increased scrutiny of the causes of such wars. In this context, the financing of conflict through natural
resource exploitation has received increased scrutiny over the last few years.
When unaccountable, resource-rich governments go to war with rebels who often seek control over the same resources,
pervasive rights abuse is all but inevitable. Such abuse, in turn, can further destabilize conditions, fueling continued conflict.
Factoring the greed of governments and systemic rights abuse into the “greed vs. grievance” equation does not minimize the
need to hold rebel groups accountable, but it does highlight the need to ensure that governments too are transparent and
accountable. Fundamentally, proper management of revenues is an economic problem, and that is why the role of IFIs is so
important. But it is an economic problem that also has political dimensions and requires political solutions. Political will and
pressure, including targeted U.N. sanctions where appropriate, can motivate opaque, corrupt governments to be more open
and transparent. Where such pressure is lacking, as in Liberia prior to enforcement of sanctions, continued conflict, rights
abuse, and extreme deprivation of civilians all too commonly are the result.
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War turns human rights/ disease
Modern warfare involves crippling civilian infrastructure and violating human rights
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Modern military technology, especially the use of high-precision bombs, rockets, and missile warheads, has now made
it possible to attack civilian populations in industrialized societies indirectly—but with devastating results—by
targeting the facilities on which life depends, while avoiding the stigma of direct attack on the bodies and habitats of
noncombatants. The technique has been termed "bomb now”, die later."
U.S. military action against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in the Iraq War has included the specific and
selective destruction of key aspects of the infrastructure necessary to maintain ci v ili a n life and health (see Chapter
15). During the bombing phase of the Persian Gulf War this deliberate effort almost totally destroyed Iraq's electricalpower generation and transmission capacity and its civilian communications networks. In combination with the
prolonged application of economic sanctions and the disruption of highways, bridges, and facilities for refining and
distributing fuel by conventional bombing, these actions had severely damaging effects on the health and survival of
the civilian population, especially infants and children. Without electrical power, water purification and pumping
ceased immediately in all major urban areas, as did sewage pumping and treatment. The appearance and epidemic
spread of infectious diarrheal disease in infants and of waterborne diseases, such as typhoid fever and cholera, were
rapid. At the same lime, medical care and public health measures were totally disrupted. Modern multistory hospitals
were left without clean water, sewage disposal, or any electricity beyond what could he supplied by emergency
generators designed to operate only a few hours per day. Operating rooms, x-ray equipment, and other vital facilities
were crippled. Supplies of anesthetics, antibiotics, and other essential medications were rapidly depleted. Vaccines
and medications requiring refrigeration were destroyed, and all immunization programs increased. Because almost no
civilian telephones, computers, or transmission lines were operable, the Ministry of Health was effectively
immobilized. Fuel shortages and the disruption of transportation limited civilian access to medical care.
Many reports provide clear and quantitative evidence of violations of the requirements of immunity for civilian
populations, proportionality, and the prevention of unnecessary suffering. They mock the concept of “life integrity
rights.” In contrast to the chaos and social disruption that routinely accompany armed conflicts, these deaths have
been the consequence of and explicit military policy, with clearly foreseeable consequences to human rights of
civilians. The U.S. military has never conceded that its policies violated human rights under the Geneva Conventions
or the guidelines under which U.S. military personnel operate. Yet the ongoing development of military technology
suggests that—absent the use of weapons of mass destruction—violations of civilians’ human rights will be the
preferred method of warfare in the future.
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War Turns Racism
War props up systems of racism and domination.
Martin 90. [Brian, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Wollongong, , Uprooting
War, Freedom Press, [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/index.html]
Antagonism between ethnic groups can be used and reinforced by the state to sustain its own power. When one ethnic group
controls all the key positions in the state, this is readily used to keep other groups in subordinate positions, and as a basis for
economic exploitation. This was clearly a key process in apartheid in South Africa, but is also at work in many other
countries in which minority groups are oppressed. From this perspective, the dominant ethnic group uses state power to
maintain its ascendancy. But at the same time, the use of political and economic power for racial oppression helps to sustain
and legitimate state power itself. This is because the maintenance of racial domination and exploitation comes to depend
partly on the use of state power, which is therefore supported and expanded by the dominant group. From this perspective it
can be said that the state mobilises racism to help maintain itself.
There are several other avenues used by the state to mobilise support. Several of these will be treated in the following
chapters, including bureaucracy and patriarchy. In each case, structured patterns of dominance and submission are mobilised
to support the state, and state in turn helps to sustain the social structure in question, such as bureaucracy or patriarchy. To
counter the state, it is necessary both to promote grassroots mobilisation and to undermine the key structures from which the
state draws its power and from which it mobilises support.
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War Turns Everything
War causes destroys health, human rights, the environment, and causes domestic violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases combined. It destroys families, communities,
and sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from protection and promotion of health, medical care,
and other human services. It destroys the infrastructure that supports health. It limits human rights and contributes to
social injustice. It leads many people to think that violence is the only way to resolve conflicts—a mindset that
contributes to domestic violence, street crime, and other kinds of violence. And it contributes to the destruction of the
environment and overuse of nonrenewable resources. In sum. war threatens much of the fabric of our civilization.
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War Turns Mental Health
War creates many mental health issues
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Given the brutality of war. many people survive wars only to be physically or mentally scarred for life (see Box 1-1).
Millions of survivors are chronically disabled from injuries sustained during war or the immediate aftermath of war.
Approximately one-third of Ihe soldiers who survived ihe civil war in Ethiopia, for example, were injured or disabled, and at
least 40,000 individuals lost one or more limbs during the war.' Antipersonnel landmines represent a serious threat to
many people'' (see Chapter 7). For example, in Cambodia, I in 236 people is an amputee as a result of a landmine
explosion.'0
Millions more people are psychologically impaired from wars, during which they have been physically or sexually assaulted or have
physically or sexually assaulted others; have been tortured or have participated in the torture of others; have been forced to serve
as soldiers against their will; have witnessed the death of family members; or have experienced the destruction of their communities or entire nations (sec Chapter4). Psychological trauma may be demonstrated in disturbed and antisocial behaviors,
such as aggression toward family members and others. Many soldiers, on returning from military action, suffer from
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). which also affects many civilian survivors of war.
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War turns Health
Funds are prioritized for war over health services
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Many countries spend large amounts of money per capita for military purposes. The countries with the highest
military expenditures are shown in Table I -1. War and the preparation for war divert huge amounts of resources
from health and human services and other productive societal endeavors. This diversion of resources occurs in
many countries. In some less developed countries, national governments spend S10 to $20 per capita on military
expenditures but only SI per capita on all health-related expenditures. The same type of distorted priorities also exist
in more developed countries. For example, the United States ranks first among nations in military expenditures and
arms exports, but 38th among nations in infant mortality rate and 45th in life expectancy at birth. Since 2003. during a
period when federal, state, and local governments in the United States have been experiencing budgetary shortfalls
and finding it difficult to maintain adequate health and human services, the U.S. government has spent almost $500
b i l l i o n for the Iraq War, and is spending (in 2007) more than $2 billion a week on the war.
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War turns domestic violence
War creates a cycle of violence that spills over to domestic violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
War often creates a cycle of violence, increasing domestic and community violence in the countries engaged in war.
War teaches people that violence is an acceptable method for settling conflicts. Children growing up in environments
in which violence is an established way of settling conflicts may choose violence to settle conflicts in their own lives.
Teenage gangs may mirror the activity of military forces Men, sometimes former military servicemen who have been
trained to use violence, commit acts of violence against women; there have been instances of men murdering their
wives on return from battlefield.
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War turns the environment
War destroys the environment- both during and preparing for war
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Finally, war and the preparation for war have profound impacts on the physical environment (see Chapter 5). The
disastrous consequences of war for the environment are often clear. Examples include bomb craters in Vietnam that
have filled with water and provide breeding sites for mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases; destruction of
urban environments by aerial carpet bombing of major cities in Europe and Japan during World War II; and the more
than 600 oil-well fires in Kuwait that were ignited by retreating Iraqi troops in 1991, which had a devastating effect on
the ecology of the affected areas and caused acute respiratory symptoms among those exposed. Less obvious are the
environmental impacts of the preparation for war, such as the huge amounts of nonrenewable fossil fuels used by the
military before (and during and after) wars and the environmental hazards of toxic and radioactive wastes, which can
contaminate air, soil, and both surface water and groundwater. For example, much of the area in and around
Chelyabinsk, Russia, site of a major nuclear weapons production facility, has been determined to be highly
radioactive, leading to evacuation of local residents (see chapter 10).
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Health solves War/ War outweighs disease
Solving health problems eliminates a root cause of war
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
War is the one of the most serious threats lo public health. Public health professionals can do much to prevent war
and its health consequences. Preventing war and its consequences should be part of the curricula of schools of
public health, the agendas of public health organizations, and the practice of public health professionals. Activities by
public health professionals to prevent war and its health consequences are an essential part of our professional
obligations.
The greatest threat to the health of people worldwide lies not in specific forms of acute or chronic diseases—and not
even in poverty, hunger, or homelessness. Rather, it lies in the consequences of war. As stated in a resolution adopted
by the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization: "The role of physicians and
other health workers in the preservation and promotion of peace is the most significant factor for the attainment of
health for all."
War is not inevitable. For perhaps 99 percent of human history, people lived in egalitarian groups in which
generosity was highly valued and war was rare. War first occurred relatively recently in human history along with
changes in social organization, especially the development of nation-states. Even at present, when war seems everpresent, most people live peaceful, nonviolent lives. If we can learn from history, we may be able to move beyond war
and create a culture of peace.
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Heg collapse turns economy
US withdrawal would result in a new dark age and collapse the global economy
Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, “A World without Power” July/August 4.
http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These
are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of
course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the
world is much more populous—roughly 20 times more—meaning that friction between the world’s disparate “tribes”
is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on
fresh water and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded
destruction, too; it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it.
For more than two decades, globalization—the integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital—has
raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process
through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization—which a new Dark Age would produce—would certainly
lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second
September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for
foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe’s Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists’
infiltration of the E.U. would become irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle East to the
breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system into crisis, unleashing the
centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that
lower returns at home were preferable to the risks of default abroad.
The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of
the global economy—from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai—would become the targets of plunderers and pirates.
With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners,
while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could
devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the
Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in evangelical Christianity imported by
U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few
remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave
their privately guarded safe havens to go there?
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Human Rights Promo Good- Terrorism
Human Rights credibility gives us the influence to start modern movements and ensure necessary
cooperation to stop terrorist attacks
Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, 7-7, 2004, Promoting Human Rights and Democracy, Human Rights
Watch, p. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/07/usint9009_txt.htm
Having an effective and principled American strategy to promote democratic freedoms around the world has never
been more important to America’s national security. Indeed, I strongly believe that promoting human rights is central
to America’s central national security imperative of defeating terror, for three reasons. First, the aims of Al Qaeda
and its allies are advanced by the actions of repressive regimes in the Muslim world, which stretches from Africa to
the Middle East to Central, South and Southeast Asia. The terrorists’ primary aim, we should remember, is to turn the
hearts and minds of the people of this region against their governments and against the West, and to seize upon that
anger to transform the region politically. When governments in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and
Uzbekistan shut down political dissent, lock up non-violent dissidents, torture opponents, abuse the rule of law, and
deny their people fair justice, they are contributing to the radicalization of their people, thus playing right into the
hands of terrorist movements. And when ordinary people in the region associate the United States with their
repressive governments, Al Qaeda’s aim of painting the United States as the enemy is also advanced. Second, in the
long run, the only viable alternative to the rise of violent, extremist movements in this region is the development of
moderate, non-violent political movements that represent their peoples’ aspirations, speaking out for economic
progress and better schools and against corruption and arbitrary rule. But such movements can only exist under
democratic conditions, when people are free to think, speak, write and worship without fear, when they can form
political organizations, and when their rights are protected by independent courts. Without a doubt, more radical
organizations can also exploit democratic freedoms to express their views, and they will be part of the political
landscape as societies in the Middle East become more open. But as for terrorists, they do not need human rights to do
what they do. They have thrived in the most repressive societies in the world. It is the people who don’t use violence
who need democratic freedoms to survive. Third, promoting human rights and democracy is important because
America’s moral authority partly depends on it. American power in the world is more likely to be respected
when it is harnessed to goals that are universally shared. People around the world are more likely to aid the
United States in the fight against terrorism and other important goals if they believe the United States is also
interested in defending their rights and aspirations. When America is seen to be compromising the values it has
long preached, its credibility and influence are diminished.
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Human Rights Promo Good- Iran Prolif
Human rights promotion is critical to stem Iran prolif
William W. Burke-White, Senior Special Assistant to the Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs, Spring, 2004, 17 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 249, Lexis
The human rights-aggression link suggests alterations in U.S. policy toward Iran. Current policy emphasizes
preventing Iran from acquiring WMD,[133] which is admittedly important. The danger of WMD in Iranian hands,
however, stems in part from the aggressive tendencies associated with Iran’s human rights abuses. A dramatic
improvement in Iran’s human rights record would thus decrease the danger of the state’s potential WMD acquisition.
Part and parcel of U.S. non-proliferation goals, then, should be active advocacy of human rights improvement in Iran.
Such a policy would differentiate reformist groups in government and civil society from conservative religious
leaders. It would single out repressive elements within Iran—those particular clerics who seek to push Iran back
toward totalitarian theocracy. Likewise, it would support elements within Iran that seek liberalization, democracy, and
human freedom. That might involve beginning a conversation with President Mohammed Khatami and members of
parliament through our European partners. It might involve changing rhetoric and granting minor concessions that
strengthen Khatami’s hand vis-à-vis the clerical leadership. Such a policy would encourage non-governmental efforts
to engage with and assist Iran’s NGO and academic communities. Finally, such a policy would require Iran’s full
participation in the war on terror and an end to its support for the Hezbollah.
Iran proliferation causes arms race, terrorism, and nuclear war
Kurtz, 6 (Stanley, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, “Our Fallout-Shelter Future”, National Review Online, 8/28,
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU4MDMwNmU5MTI5NGYzN2FmODg5NmYyMWQ4YjM3OTU=)
Proliferation optimists, on the other hand, see reasons for hope in the record of nuclear peace during the Cold War. While
granting the risks, proliferation optimists point out that the very horror of the nuclear option tends, in practice, to keep the
peace. Without choosing between hawkish proliferation pessimists and dovish proliferation optimists, Rosen simply asks how
we ought to act in a post-proliferation world. Rosen assumes (rightly I believe) that proliferation is unlikely to stop with Iran.
Once Iran gets the bomb, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are likely to develop their own nuclear weapons, for self-protection, and
so as not to allow Iran to take de facto cultural-political control of the Muslim world. (I think you’ve got to at least add Egypt
to this list.) With three, four, or more nuclear states in the Muslim Middle East, what becomes of deterrence? A key to
deterrence during the Cold War was our ability to know who had hit whom. With a small number of geographically separated
nuclear states, and with the big opponents training satellites and specialized advance-guard radar emplacements on each
other, it was relatively easy to know where a missile had come from. But what if a nuclear missile is launched at the United
States from somewhere in a fully nuclearized Middle East, in the middle of a war in which, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran are
already lobbing conventional missiles at one another? Would we know who had attacked us? Could we actually drop a
retaliatory nuclear bomb on someone without being absolutely certain? And as Rosen asks, What if the nuclear blow was
delivered against us by an airplane or a cruise missile? It might be almost impossible to trace the attack back to its source
with certainty, especially in the midst of an ongoing conventional conflict. More Terror We’re familiar with the horror
scenario of a Muslim state passing a nuclear bomb to terrorists for use against an American city. But imagine the same
scenario in a multi-polar Muslim nuclear world. With several Muslim countries in possession of the bomb, it would be
extremely difficult to trace the state source of a nuclear terror strike. In fact, this very difficulty would encourage states (or
ill-controlled elements within nuclear states — like Pakistan’s intelligence services or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards) to pass
nukes to terrorists. The tougher it is to trace the source of a weapon, the easier it is to give the weapon away. In short, nuclear proliferation to multiple
Muslim states greatly increases the chances of a nuclear terror strike. Right now, the Indians and Pakistanis “enjoy” an apparently stable nuclear stand-off.
Both countries have established basic deterrence, channels of communication, and have also eschewed a potentially destabilizing nuclear arms race. Attacks
by Kashmiri militants in 2001 may have pushed India and Pakistan close to the nuclear brink. Yet since then, precisely because of the danger, the two
countries seem to have established a clear, deterrence-based understanding. The 2001 crisis gives fuel to proliferation pessimists, while the current stability
encourages proliferation optimists. Rosen points out, however, that a multi-polar nuclear Middle East is unlikely to follow the South Asian model. Deep
mutual suspicion between an expansionist, apocalyptic, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, and the Sunni Saudis and Egyptians (not to mention Israel) is likely to
fuel a dangerous multi-pronged nuclear arms race. Larger arsenals mean more chance of a weapon being slipped to terrorists. The
collapse of the world’s non-proliferation regime also raises the chances that nuclearization will spread to Asian powers like
Taiwan and Japan. And of course, possession of nuclear weapons is likely to embolden Iran, especially in the transitional
period before the Saudis develop weapons of their own. Like Saddam, Iran may be tempted to take control of Kuwait’s oil
wealth, on the assumption that the United States will not dare risk a nuclear confrontation by escalating the conflict. If the
proliferation optimists are right, then once the Saudis get nukes, Iran would be far less likely to make a move on nearby
Kuwait. On the other hand, to the extent that we do see conventional war in a nuclearized Middle East, the losers will be
sorely tempted to cancel out their defeat with a nuclear strike. There may have been nuclear peace during the Cold War, but
there were also many “hot” proxy wars. If conventional wars break out in a nuclearized Middle East, it may be very difficult
to stop them from escalating into nuclear confrontations.
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Human Rights Promo Good- Democracy
A. Human rights promotion is critical to democracy
Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, 3-10, 2004, Federal Document Clearing House
Congressional Testimony, Lexis
Whether we agree with the President's policies or not, Mr. Chairman, we have to take that warning seriously when it is
coming from those on the front lines of the struggle for human rights and democracy in the Middle East. As we make
decisions on these complex matters, we have to take into account the impact those decisions will have on America's
ability to champion democratic values around the world.
The fundamental point is that we need the moral clarity that is provided by these State Department human rights
reports and by the efforts of the President and the State Department to condemn human rights abuses throughout the
year. But the United States needs to project more than moral clarity—it must maintain moral authority to promote a
more humane and democratic world. That requires consistent leadership abroad and a sterling example at home.
B. Extinction
Diamond 95. (Larry, Snr. research fellow @ Hoover Institute, Promoting Democracy in the 1990's, p 6-7)
This hardly exhausts the list of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former
Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies
through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and
have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical. and biological weapons continue to
proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and
unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its
provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.
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Democracy Good- Democide
democratization solves democide
Rummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, 2001 (R.J., International Journal on World Peace,
September, proquest)
There is a feeling among many that since democide (genocide and mass murder) and war have always been with us,
they always will be; that such violence is in our bones, part of the human condition. After all, year after year, as far
back as one looks in history, some part of the world has suffered war or genocide. And, even today, this is going on in
many countries and regions, such as in the Sudan, Burma, China, North Korea, and the Middle East. By democide
alone, during the last century about 174 million people were murdered by government, over four times the some 38
million combat dead in all the century's domestic and foreign wars.
Nonetheless, there is much hope to eradicate war and democide. Consider that from the perspective of the eighteenth
century, slavery also looked to the humanist as democide and war do to us today: an evil that has always been part of
human society. Now slavery is virtually ended, and eventually the same may be true of war and democide. Why this is
true and how to foster this end to democide and war is the subject of this essay.
There are many complex considerations and theoretical issues to the problem of war and democide. There are the
questions of general and immediate causation, and of aggravating and inhibiting conditions. There are the practical
questions of how to gather timely intelligence about them and inform decision makers about what is known, how to
influence the political process through which intervention against democide is decided, and how to give democide and
war elsewhere the required prominence in the complex of perceived national interests. With regard to intervening to
stop democide, there are questions concerning the national mix of the necessary troops, their weapons, and the rules of
engagement.
Many of the answers to these questions will fall into place if we recognize three facts and one practical necessity that
cut through the jumble of questions and problems involved. The one fact is that democracies by far have had the least
domestic democide, and now with their extensive liberalization, have virtually none. Therefore, democratization (not
just electoral democracies, but liberal democratization in terms of civil and political rights and liberties) provides the
long-run hope for the elimination of democide.
The second fact is that democracies do not make war on each other and that the more democratic two governments, the
less the likelihood of violence between them. Not only is democracy a solution to democide, but globalizing democracy is
also a solution to war. That the world is progressively becoming more democratic, with 22 democracies in 1950 to
something like 120 democracies today (about 88 of them liberal democracies), it is increasingly likely that in the long run
the twin horrors of democide and war will be eliminated from human society.
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Human Rights Promo Good- Central Asia
Human rights cred is critical to prevent war in Central Asia
Fiona Hill, fellow – Brookings Institution, 2001, The Caucus and Central Asia: How the United States and Its Allies Can
Stave Off a Crisis, Policy Brief #80, p. online
In the next two years, the Caucasus and Central Asian states could become zones of interstate competition similar to
the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Economic and political crises, or the intensification of war in Chechnya or
Afghanistan, might lead to the "Balkanization" of the regions. This, in turn, could result in military intervention by
any of the major powers. Given the fact that both Turkey and Iran threatened intervention in the Caucasus at the peak of the NagornoKarabakh war in 1992-1993, this risk should be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the Caucasus and Central Asian states lack the capacity to tackle crises without outside help. Economic collapse has produced social
dislocation and extreme poverty. Widespread corruption and the entrenchment of aging leaders and their families have eroded support for central
governments and constrained the development of a new generation of leaders. The internal weakness of the Caucasus and Central Asian states,
combined with brutal regional wars, makes them extremely vulnerable to outside pressure—especially from Russia. Although Russia itself is weak,
it is far stronger than all the states combined, and while its direct influence over their affairs has declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it
remains the dominant economic, political, and military force.
The West will have to assist the states in bolstering their institutional capacity and in promoting cooperation among them. American engagement
remains crucial given its weight on the international stage, the potential threats to its own security, and the fact that it has leverage in the regions. In
spite of a few glitches, the Caucasus and Central Asian states have been receptive to the United States and are among its
few potential allies in a zone where other states are not so amenable to U.S. activity. Regional countries need
American moral and material support to maintain independence in the face of increasing pressures, and its guidance in
dealing with presidential transition crises and addressing human rights abuses. Even with limited political and
financial resources, U.S. leadership can do a great deal to defuse regional tensions and mitigate problems. However,
this will only be possible if a policy is defined early and communicated clearly, if there is a particular focus on
partnership with European allies in addressing regional challenges, and if Russia is encouraged to become a force for
stability rather than a factor for instability in the regions.
The Caucasus and Central Asia at a Crossroads
This is a critical time for the Caucasus and Central Asian states because a number of negative trends could converge
to bring about a crisis. Responding to that crisis requires the United States to build a long-term strategy based on a
frank assessment of regional needs and of U.S. capabilities and resources. The Clinton administration's approach to the regions was ad hoc. It tackled a
laundry list of initiatives in response to crises and shifting policy priorities. Issues such as oil and gas pipelines, conflict resolution, and human rights were
targeted at different junctures, but an overall strategy—which was essential given limited government resources for the regions—was never fully articulated.
As a result, American priorities were not communicated clearly to local leaders, resulting in frequent misinterpretations of intentions. Domestic constituencies
in the United States undermined leverage in regional conflicts. Incompatible government structures and conflicting legislation fostered competition among
agencies and encouraged a proliferation of parallel initiatives, while congressional mandates limited areas in which scarce funds could be applied and thus
reduced flexibility. The new administration must get ahead of this negative trend in setting policy and priorities, while tackling U.S. government deficiencies
directly. In crafting policy, several developments need to be considered:  The civil war in Afghanistan will likely regain momentum this summer. Already,
the incursion of refugees and fighters from Afghanistan into Central Asia and the activities of Central Asian militant groups have strained fragile political
situations in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.  Governments in Central Asia are violating human rights as they clamp down on Islamic groups in
response to acts of terrorism and militant activities. In Uzbekistan, the closing of mosques, a ban on political opposition movements, and arrests of practicing
Muslims have forced groups underground and increased support for insurgencies and extremists.  In Chechnya, the war shows little sign of resolution
through political negotiation. Refugees and fighters have been pushed across borders into the South Caucasus by Russian troops, as well as into neighboring
Russian regions. As in Afghanistan, an intensification of the war in Chechnya is likely this summer.  Other Caucasus civil wars are in a state of "no peace,
no war." Recent international efforts to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, led by the United States, France, and Russia, have raised expectations for
a peace settlement. But, in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, opposition figures openly discuss the resumption of war if leaders are perceived to have sold out. 
Georgia is teetering on the verge of collapse, overwhelmed by internal difficulties and burdened by the inability to combat corruption and tackle economic
reform. The dual secessions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have split the country and spillover from Chechnya has soured relations with Russia. In winter
2000, Russia imposed new, stringent visa requirements on Georgia and temporarily suspended energy supplies over payments and a contract dispute,
increasing pressure on the beleaguered country.  In both Georgia and Azerbaijan, political succession has become a critical issue. Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan will soon face the same crisis. No provisions have been made for a presidential transition, and emerging leaders have often been
suppressed or forced into exile. All of these issues are exacerbated by the continued downturn of regional economies. The Asian and Russian financial crises
of 1998 were a major setback, leading to the devaluation of currencies, untenable debt burdens, and the withdrawal of foreign investment. Deep-rooted
corruption feeds into the economic crisis and hinders the emergence of small and medium-sized businesses that could spur market development and economic
growth. For both regions, Russia is the only source of reliable employment, a significant market for local products, and, in the short-term, the principal energy
supplier. In Georgia alone, approximately 10 percent of the population currently works in Russia and sends home an amount equivalent to nearly a quarter of
Georgia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This influx of economic migrants has exacerbated ethnic tensions within Russia. Because regional governments
cannot pay their energy bills, clashes over energy with Russia will continue, increasing tensions and instability. In Central Asia, high unemployment fosters
the smuggling of raw materials and consumer goods, and trafficking in arms and drugs. Eighty percent of heroin sold in Europe originates in Afghanistan and
Pakistan and about half of this production flows through Central Asia. The heroin trade in Central Asia has created a burgeoning intravenous drug problem
and an HIV/AIDS outbreak that mimics the early epidemic in Africa. Health workers fear an escalation in a matter of months that will overwhelm local
medical systems and the region's miniscule international programs. A major HIV/AIDS crisis would be the final straw for states like Tajikistan and
Kyrgyzstan. U.S.-Russian Tensions in the Caspian Basin Converging with this regional crisis is a sharp difference of opinion between the United States and
Russia over U.S. involvement in Caspian energy development and engagement in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In Moscow, the United States is portrayed
as purposefully weakening Russia's strategic position and bent on establishing Central Asia and the Caucasus as U.S. outposts. Where American
policymakers speak of intervention in a positive sense to promote regional cooperation and stability, Russian political commentators speak of American
"vmeshatel'stvo"—literally, negative intervention—to constrain Russia. The United States and Russia are at odds politically and semantically in the Caspian.
Because approximately 50 percent of Russia's foreign currency revenues are generated by oil and gas sales, the Putin administration has made increasing
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Russian energy exports to Europe a priority. Caspian energy resources play a major role in Russian calculations. Gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan
flows into the Russian pipeline system, where it supplies the Russian domestic market and supplements Russia's European exports. Russia is the largest
supplier of gas to Turkey, and has begun constructing a new Black Sea pipeline ("Blue Stream") to increase supplies. But gas flowing to Turkey from
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan—and bypassing Russia—could pose direct competition. Over the last five years, U.S. policy in the Caspian Basin
has promoted multiple gas and oil pipelines to world markets to increase export options for regional states, persuading Moscow that the United States seeks to
squeeze Russia out of regional energy development. Beyond energy issues, Russia sees itself caught between NATO to the west and chaos to the south. In the
Caucasus, Russia has lost its strategic defensive structures against NATO's southern flank in Turkey. Moscow perceives this loss as significant, given NATO
expansion east and the alliance's willingness to use force in the extended European arena. Explicit statements of intent to join NATO by Georgia and
Azerbaijan have angered Russian policymakers, along with the active involvement of regional states in NATO's Partnership for Peace Program, and the
formation of a regional alliance among states that have opted out of the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States security structures (the so-called
GUUAM group of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova). Although Central Asia is less a zone of competition because of shared concern
about Afghanistan, which resulted in unprecedented U.S.-Russian collaboration on UN sanctions against the Taliban in December 2000, U.S. bilateral
military relations with regional states still alarm Moscow. The fact that an energetic Pentagon moved faster than the State Department to engage Central
Asian counterparts has led Moscow to view U.S. actions in both regions with deepening suspicion. Crafting U.S. Policy. To address these issues, the Bush
administration will first have to recognize that the Caucasus and Central Asia are a major factor in U.S.-Russian bilateral relations. Russia does not only view
its dealings with the U.S. through the prism of NATO, missile defense, and non-proliferation issues, although these are currently the United States' top
security priorities in the relationship. Russia's southern tier is now its most sensitive frontier and the Caucasus and Central Asia are its number one security
priority. Having recognized this fact, the Bush administration must present a unified front when dealing with Moscow and the region, and prevent the various
agencies from acting in conflict with each other. The administration needs to articulate a message that is positive and inclusive for Russia as well as regional
states and stick to it. It should emphasize regional stability, cooperative relations, political solutions to conflicts, border security, human rights, institutional
development, orderly successions of political power, anti-corruption efforts, and opportunities for citizen participation in political and economic
decisionmaking. Although this framework would not be considerably different from the general themes of the Clinton administration, the notion of explicitly
recognizing the importance of the Caucasus and Central Asian regions in the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationship—and staying focused—would be a departure.
The primary goal should be to encourage Russia to adopt a positive approach to relations with its neighbors that eschews commercial and political bullying.
To this end, the administration will have to maintain a direct dialogue with its Russian counterparts in working out a practical approach for the Caucasus and
Central Asia. With its message clear, the administration needs to bring its bureaucratic mechanisms in line to focus on key issues and countries. Even if
responsibility for the Caucasus and Central Asian states is divided within government departments, effective structures will have to be created to preserve
links between the regions, and conflicting legislation will have to be streamlined to resolve interagency conflicts over responsibilities. This will require the
executive branch to work closely with Congress to reconcile appropriations with a comprehensive program for the regions and to articulate U.S. interests
through public hearings and testimony. If the administration has appropriate mechanisms in place, some policy innovations should be considered to
address regional problems:
Rethink the U.S. Approach to Central Asia
The Central Asian states require the most serious reassessment in U.S. policy. Central Asia is rapidly becoming a base
for extremism and terrorism, and the U.S. needs to look ahead to avert its "Afghanicization." The pivotal states for
regional security are Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which both border Afghanistan. The United States has bilateral
military relations with Uzbekistan, but is barely present in Tajikistan, where permanent U.S. representation has been
withdrawn because of fears for the safety of Embassy personnel. The Bush administration must change the American
approach to both countries by emphasizing human rights and cooperative regional relations in Uzbekistan (rather than
simply security), and by increasing its focus on Tajikistan.
Productive relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbors are key to regional stability. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan
have significant Uzbek diasporas and are dependent on Uzbekistan for cross-border communications and energy
supplies. Uzbekistan has frequently used this leverage to negative effect with these vulnerable neighbors. The United
States should encourage high-level discussions between Uzbekistan and its neighbors that would address border
access and gas deliveries as well as militant incursions across the Tajik and Kyrgyz borders into Uzbekistan.
Of all the regional states, Tajikistan is the most receptive to outside assistance, serving as a potential model for dealing
with Islamic and political opposition. The Tajik government engaged its opposition in a dialogue that resulted in
power-sharing arrangements and an end to a five-year civil war. Given the precipitous decline of the Tajik economy,
even the reestablishment of a permanent U.S. embassy—with appropriate security precautions—and a modest increase
in aid programs related to job creation and health would be a major boost.
Link Human Rights and Security
As a general rule, the administration should engage Central Asia without reinforcing authoritarian regimes. In
Uzbekistan, while militant groups are real threats to the state, human rights abuses are an equal threat and increase
sympathy for the militants. The United States has considerable leverage with Uzbekistan through its military
engagement activities. In 2000, Uzbekistan came close to losing congressional certification for these programs, and
the Pentagon placed greater emphasis on human rights in its special forces training curriculum. Taking this as a cue,
the Bush administration should emphasize mutually-reinforcing security and human rights objectives throughout
Central Asia and should encourage cooperation among the Pentagon, State Department, and international human
rights groups on security-human rights linkages. The administration should also emphasize U.S. support for regional
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that seek to increase both citizen participation in government and access to
objective sources of information.
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Patriarchy  War
Patriarchy is the root cause of war – The unequal value of women and threat of violence mirror the
coercive order of the war system
Runyan 92 (Anne, Department of PoliSci at Potsdam College of State U of NY, “Criticizing the Gender of International
Relations,” International Relations: Critical concepts in Political Science, pg. 1693-1724)
Betty Reardon takes this thesis even further by equating war with patriarchy, military with sexism, and peace and
world order with feminism. According to Reardon, the war system is a pervasive, “competitive social order, which
is based in authoritarian principles, assumes unequal value among and between human beings, and is held
in place by coercion.” In addition, it is controlled by a few elites in industrialized countries, implemented by
subelites throughout the world, and directed against nonelites to ensure their submission. Similarly, patriarchy “is a
set of beliefs and values supported by institutions and backed up by the threat of violence. It lays down the
supposedly ‘proper’ relations between ‘men and women,’ between ‘women’ and ‘women’ and between
‘men’ and ‘men.’” Thus, patriarchal relations constitute the paradigm on which the war system
is based, and the war system, in turn, consolidates patriarchal relations.
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Patriarchy  War
Manifestation of Evil - Discourse of male dominance for survival affirms the same type of coercion
and violence it defends against
Johnson ’97 The Gender Knot
To support male aggression and therefore male dominance as society's only defense against evil, we have to believe
that evil forces exist out there, in villains, governments, and armies. In this, we have to assume that the bad guys
actually see themselves as evil and not as heroes defending loved ones and principles against bad guys like us. The
alternative to this kind of thinking is to realize that the same patriarchal ethos that creates our masculine heroes
also creates the violent villains they battle and prove themselves against, and that both sides often see themselves
as heroic and self-sacrificing for a worthy cause. For all the wartime propaganda, good and bad guys play similar
games and salute a core of common values, not to mention one another on occasion. At a deep level, war and many
other forms of male aggression are manifestations of the same evil they supposedly defend against. The
evil is the patriarchal religion of control and domination that encourages men to use coercion and
violence to settle disputes, manage human relations, and affirm masculine identity.
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Patriarchy  War
Patriarchy is the root cause of war – The unequal value of women and threat of violence mirror the
coercive order of the war system
Runyan 92 (Anne, Department of PoliSci at Potsdam College of State U of NY, “Criticizing the Gender of
International Relations,” International Relations: Critical concepts in Political Science, pg. 1693-1724)
Betty Reardon takes this thesis even further by equating war with patriarchy, military with sexism, and peace and
world order with feminism. According to Reardon, the war system is a pervasive, “competitive social order, which
is based in authoritarian principles, assumes unequal value among and between human beings, and is held
in place by coercion.” In addition, it is controlled by a few elites in industrialized countries, implemented by
subelites throughout the world, and directed against nonelites to ensure their submission. Similarly, patriarchy “is a
set of beliefs and values supported by institutions and backed up by the threat of violence. It lays down the
supposedly ‘proper’ relations between ‘men and women,’ between ‘women’ and ‘women’ and between
‘men’ and ‘men.’” Thus, patriarchal relations constitute the paradigm on which the war system
is based, and the war system, in turn, consolidates patriarchal relations.
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Patriarchy  War
Manifestation of Evil - Discourse of male dominance for survival affirms the same type of coercion
and violence it defends against
Johnson ’97 The Gender Knot
To support male aggression and therefore male dominance as society's only defense against evil, we have to believe
that evil forces exist out there, in villains, governments, and armies. In this, we have to assume that the bad guys
actually see themselves as evil and not as heroes defending loved ones and principles against bad guys like us. The
alternative to this kind of thinking is to realize that the same patriarchal ethos that creates our masculine heroes
also creates the violent villains they battle and prove themselves against, and that both sides often see themselves
as heroic and self-sacrificing for a worthy cause. For all the wartime propaganda, good and bad guys play similar
games and salute a core of common values, not to mention one another on occasion. At a deep level, war and many
other forms of male aggression are manifestations of the same evil they supposedly defend against. The
evil is the patriarchal religion of control and domination that encourages men to use coercion and
violence to settle disputes, manage human relations, and affirm masculine identity.
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Homophobia  War
Heterosexual dominance justifies genocide – homophobia isolates homosexuals as citizens
undeserving of equal protection of law
Cohen, 2K [“More censorship or less discrimination? Sexual orientation hate propaganda in multiple
perspectives,” McGill law review]
The above phenomena--closetry, deviance, sexism, and supremacy--form the context of homophobia against which
hate propaganda works its harms. These harms are not just those of individual libel writ large; they are, seen
contextually, the implements of heterosexual domination. (24) First among them is a range of physiological and
psychological traumas experienced by members of the targeted group, all of which exacerbate existing feelings
of vulnerability and isolation. (25) Second, these effects extend beyond the targeted group, causing
particular detriment to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and democracy. (26) Third,
sexual orientation hate propaganda reinforces (and is reinforced by) the other tools of homophobia, which include
harassment, gay bashing, overt and covert discrimination, extortion, stigmatization, murder, and genocide.
(27) Finally, the absence of protection from hate propaganda--particularly in jurisdictions such as Canada, where
other target groups receive protection--signals to members of sexual minorities that they are second class
citizens not entitled to equal protection of the law. (28) It is the individual and combined effect of these
interconnected tools of homophobia, and not the mere pluralization of individual defamation or libel, that ultimately
justifies state sanction of anti-gay hate propaganda.
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Patriarchy more dehumanizing than Nuclear War
Patriarchy is the most dehumanizing and violent relationship that strips people of any value to life.
-All life becomes meaningless.
Kuku-Simmons 89 (MPH Tulane is a researcher/writer/consultant based, pursuing a PhD in Sociology
focusing on urban sexuality; Diepiriye “Mary don’t you weep,” and more struggles over sexuality, filth, and
salvation Ashe Journal, Vol. 6 Issue 1, p. 78-89, Spring 2007. http://ashejournal.com/index.php?id=285
accessed)
By virtue that patriarchy
incessantly dehumanizes us and teaches us to mimic the same patterns of
dominance/subordination, it is not our culture; it cannot be. Simply, it is not life affirming for women,
people of color, and anyone else whose very existence challenges its status of control, despite any
amount of cultural currency we may gain in order to play and succeed at the game.
Patriarchal masculinity is not just prejudice. Prejudices based on perceived racial or class differences, for example,
inform everyday interactions—repeating and therefore reinforce the patriarchal power-oriented paradigm of dominance to
mediate relationships. It extends beyond the ability that one individual has to oppress another—for example an adult
slapping a child, an employer yelling at his/her employees, didactic teaching, or even lovers resolving conflict through
deception, coercion or violence. Patriarchal masculinity informs each of these interactions, affirming individual power to
oppress another through repeating the pattern of violence, intimidation, dominance/superiority and underlying subversion
of intimacy in order to create and maintain (power) distance.
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Patriarchy Extinction Inevitable
Unchecked patriarchy makes extinction inevitable
Warren and Cady ‘94
(Karen J., and Duane L., Hypatia, Spring, Vol. 9, Issue 2
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Patriarchy  war
Patriarchy is the root cause of war
Barbara Hope, Director of Data Administration & Project Management at the University of Maryland,
7/30/2003, The Class of Nonviolence, Patriarchy: A State of War, < http://salsa.net/peace/conv/8weekconv55.html>
Why weren't we prepared for this - the imminence of nuclear holocaust. The final silencing of life. The brutal
extinction of the planet. Surely there have been substantial clues throughout history. Male supremacy. Wars. Witchburning. Male religious myths. Institutionalized greed. The enslavement of half the human race. Centuries of violence.
Why weren't we prepared for this? We have lived with violence for so long. We have lived under the rule of the
fathers so long. Violence and patriarchy: mirror images. An ethic of destruction as normative. Diminished love for
life, a numbing to real events as the final consequence. We are not even prepared.
Mary Daly, in Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, writes, "The rulers of the patriarchy - males with
power - wage an unceasing war against life itself. Since female energy is essentially biophilic, the female spirit/body
is the primary target in the perpetual war of aggression against life. Women must understand that the female self is the
enemy under fire from the patriarchy." She further writes that "clearly the primary and essential object of aggression is
not the opposing military force. The members of the opposing team play the same war games and share the same
values. The secret bond that binds the warriors together is the violation of women, acted out physically and constantly
replayed on the level of language and shared fantasies." ‘
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Patriarchy War
Patriarchy is the philosophy behind Militarism- Militarism causes war.
Perpinan, Mary Soledad. 1990. "The militarization of societies and it's [sic] impact on
women." IPRA 25th Anniversary Conference. Groningen. n.d.
Militarism has always had many faces, but now we can see them more clearly. The peace movement failed to see and
define the ideology behind the arms race, use of force in international relations and social conflicts, power games and
domination by the strong actors in the world scene. This ideology is militarism and the philosophy behind that
ideology is patriarchy. The ultimate issue is the issue of power, how is power understood and implemented. Is it power
based on hierarchical structures and legitimately used by those at the top of the structures to dominate, subjugate and
exploit those below; or is it power from below based on potential and ability of people to decide and act together for
common causes? The end of 1970's and the decade of 1980's were a time of an emerging and flourishing of variety of
new people's movements. But most of these movements are not just single issue movements, contrary to what is often
assumed. If we take a closer look we see that peace, justice, healthy environment and sustainable development are the
implicit general aims of many of these movements. The conscious and conscienticizing women's movement becomes the
more peace oriented the more feminist it becomes. Development movements and action groups promote peace by
working for greater equity between people and nations, i.e. for decreasing structural violence. War and militarism are the
worst enemies of movements for the protection of nature and environment, since they literally devour natural resources
and destroy the environment even in times of so called peace.
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AT: Patriarchy Is Root Cause of Violence
Patriarchy is only one cause of violence- feminists view it as the root cause of violence.
Douglas A. Brownridge, Shiva S. Halli “Living in sin” and sinful living: Toward filling a gap in the
explanation of violence against women” Aggression and Violent Behavior, Volume 5, Issue 6,
November-December 2000, Pages 565-583
Following Kurz, D., 1993. Physical assaults by husbands: A major social problem. In: Gelles, R.J. and Loseke, D.R.,
Editors, 1993. Current controversies on family violence, Sage, Newbury Park, CA, pp. 88–103 a.Kurz and Kurz, it has
become conventional when discussing sociological approaches to violence against women to make a distinction
between family violence and feminist approaches. The main difference between the two approaches is that while
family violence theorists see patriarchy as one cause of intimate violence among many, feminist theorists view it as
the cause, or at least the “ultimate root,” of violence among intimates.4 The implications of marital status differences
in violence for feminist theory are unclear in the literature. To the extent that one focuses on male dominance within
marriage, marital status differences can be seen as undermining the feminist argument. Yllö and Straus (1990) write,
“Societal tolerance of wife beating is a reflection of patriarchal norms that … support male dominance in marriage.
Traditional marriage, in turn, is a central element of patriarchal society” (p. 384). Pearson (1997), in critiquing feminist
theory, argues:
That men have used a patriarchal vocabulary to account for themselves doesn't mean that patriarchy causes their violence,
any more than being patriarchs prevents them from being victimized. Studies of male batterers have failed to confirm that
these men are more conservative or sexist about marriage than nonviolent men. To the contrary, some of the highest rates
of violence are found in the least orthodox partnerships—dating or cohabiting lovers. (p. 132)
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Homophobia  War
Heterosexual dominance justifies genocide – homophobia isolates homosexuals as citizens undeserving of equal
protection of law
Cohen, 2K [“More censorship or less discrimination? Sexual orientation hate propaganda in multiple perspectives,” McGill law
review]
The above phenomena--closetry, deviance, sexism, and supremacy--form the context of homophobia against which
hate propaganda works its harms. These harms are not just those of individual libel writ large; they are, seen
contextually, the implements of heterosexual domination. (24) First among them is a range of physiological and
psychological traumas experienced by members of the targeted group, all of which exacerbate existing feelings
of vulnerability and isolation. (25) Second, these effects extend beyond the targeted group, causing
particular detriment to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and democracy. (26) Third,
sexual orientation hate propaganda reinforces (and is reinforced by) the other tools of homophobia, which include
harassment, gay bashing, overt and covert discrimination, extortion, stigmatization, murder, and genocide.
(27) Finally, the absence of protection from hate propaganda--particularly in jurisdictions such as Canada, where
other target groups receive protection--signals to members of sexual minorities that they are second class
citizens not entitled to equal protection of the law. (28) It is the individual and combined effect of these
interconnected tools of homophobia, and not the mere pluralization of individual defamation or libel, that ultimately
justifies state sanction of anti-gay hate propaganda.
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Econ defense
Economic problems don’t increase the likelihood of war
Bennet and Nordstrom, 2k (D. Scott and Timothy Nordstrom, dept of political science @ the University of Penn,
2000,“Foreign Policy)
Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in Enduring Rivalries”, Journal of Conflict resolution, vol.44 no.1 p.
33-61, jstor
Conflict settlement is also a distinct route to dealing with internal problems that leaders in rivalries may pursue when
faced with internal problems. Military competition between states requires large amounts of resources, and rivals
require even more attention. Leaders may choose to negotiate a settlement that ends a rivalry to free up important
resources that may be reallocated to the domestic economy. In a "guns versus butter" world of economic trade-offs,
when a state can no longer afford to pay the expenses associated with competition in a rivalry, it is quite rational for
leaders to reduce costs by ending a rivalry. This gain (a peace dividend) could be achieved at any time by ending a
rivalry. However, such a gain is likely to bemost important and attractive to leaders when internal conditions are bad
and the leader is seeking ways to alleviate active problems. Support for policy change away from continued rivalry is
more likely to develop when the economic situation sours and elites and masses are looking for ways to improve a
worsening situation. It is at these times that the pressure to cut military investment will be greatest and that state
leaders will be forced to recognize the difficulty of continuing to pay for a rivalry. Among other things, this argument
also encompasses the view that the cold war ended because the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could no longer
compete economically with the United States. Hypothesis 2: Poor economic conditions increase the probability of
rivalry termination. Hypotheses 1 and 2 posit opposite behaviors in response to a single cause (internal economic
problems). As such, they demand are search design that can account for substitutability between them.
Us not key to world economy- emerging economies are more independent from the US
The Economist, 5-21 (“Decoupling 2.0” May 21, 2009, http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm
?story_id=13697292)
REMEMBER the debate about decoupling? A year ago, many commentators—including this newspaper—argued that
emerging economies had become more resilient to an American recession, thanks to their strong domestic markets and
prudent macroeconomic policies. Naysayers claimed America’s weakness would fell the emerging world. Over the
past six months the global slump seemed to prove the sceptics right. Emerging economies reeled and decoupling was
ridiculed.
Yet perhaps the idea was dismissed too soon. Even if America’s output remains weak, there are signs that some of the
larger emerging economies could see a decent rebound. China is exhibit A of this new decoupling: its economy began
to accelerate again in the first four months of this year. Fixed investment is growing at its fastest pace since 2006 and
consumption is holding up well. Despite debate over the accuracy of China’s GDP figures (see article), most
economists agree that output will grow faster than seemed plausible only a few months ago. Growth this year could be
close to 8%. Such optimism has fuelled commodity prices which have, in turn, brightened the outlook for Brazil and
other commodity exporters.
That said, even the best performing countries will grow more slowly than they did between 2004 and 2007. Nor will
the resilience be universal: eastern Europe’s indebted economies will suffer as global banks cut back, and emerging
economies intertwined with America, such as Mexico, will continue to be hit hard. So will smaller, more tradedependent countries. Decoupling 2.0 is a narrower phenomenon, confined to a few of the biggest, and least indebted,
emerging economies.
It is based on two under-appreciated facts: the biggest emerging economies are less dependent on American spending
than commonly believed; and they have proven more able and willing to respond to economic weakness than many
feared. Economies such as China or Brazil were walloped late last year not only, or even mainly, because American
demand plunged. (Over half of China’s exports go to other emerging economies, and China recently overtook the
United States as Brazil’s biggest export market.) They were hit hard by the near-collapse of global credit markets and
the dramatic destocking by shell-shocked firms. In addition, many emerging countries had been aggressively
tightening monetary policy to fight inflation just before these shocks hit. The result was that domestic demand
slumped even as exports fell.
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Econ Defense
The economy is resilient
Sehgal, 4-17 (Rohit- chief investment strategist for Dynamic Funds, The Globe and Mail, “Optimism reigns, even after the
humble pie” Lexis-Nexis Academic, April 17, 2009, http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/search/homesubmitForm.do)
We follow two economies very closely, China and the U.S. In China, the numbers look very encouraging. They also
have a fairly aggressive stimulus plan that seems to be sticking. Car sales in China, for instance, in March were more
than 12 million [at an annual pace] so they are already exceeding U.S. car sales.
In the U.S., we are still in a crisis mode. You have to look very closely at housing because that's where the whole
trouble started. If you're looking at affordability, it's improving pretty dramatically. You're seeing mortgage
applications, the numbers are beginning to improve. The retail data in the U.S. are not as bad, durables numbers are
not as bad. Not as bad to me is a good sign.
And if you look at inventories, they're scraping the bottom right now so you could have a pretty fast recovery there,
because industrial production came to a screeching halt. When you look at all this anecdotal evidence, you can make a
case that maybe things are improving a bit.
The bears say that things may get better, but not for long and then they will get worse. What do you say to that?
But maybe it will not get worse again. Look at the amount of stimulus, and look at the valuations in equity markets.
They're at historically low levels. If you look at the last 10 years, equity returns are zero. That's a very rare occurrence.
It doesn't mean we won't have setbacks. I think we will have setbacks. I don't believe we are in a great depression. I
think we have a problem that started in the housing sector with subprime, and it's going to take a long time to clean it
up.
The U.S. economy is very resilient. This is one area where the bears don't want to give too much credit. Unlike Japan
and Europe, it's adaptive. They go and blow their brains out once every five or six years because of excesses, but they
learn their lessons and they do adapt very well and it's still a very productive economy. It will take time, certainly.
Multiple competitive advantages ensure the US economy will remain strong
Francis, 8 (Dianne, Fingold = portfolio manager of Dynamic Funds, The Huffington Post, “U.S. Economy Huge Winner in
Future” May 30, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-francis/us-economy-huge-winner-in_b_104205.html)
The current slowdown is temporary because the U.S. has competitive advantages compared to virtually all other
countries. Said Fingold:
"The United States still has huge competitive advantages to the rest of the world. It has tax advantages, good laws, its
government goes to bat for its corporations around the world, its government protects intellectual property."
Fingold's global funds are under-weighted in Europe because the Euro has risen by 40% and has decimated corporate
profits and exporters. He's also cautious about Asia. "Asian currencies will be the next to rise against the U.S. dollar
which is why we are reluctant to invest in Asian exporters and multinationals," he said.
The U.S. has huge underlying strength:
"America is one of the only free markets in the world, where intellectual property and people can be developed. Its
industrial and technology companies are the hot houses of the world for producing innovation. The low dollar means
that there is a huge wind at the back for companies who can serve the world with exports, services and goods that help
build their economies and enable infrastructure development."
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Terrorism Defense
Nuclear weapons are too expensive
RAND, 5 (RAND research brief, “Combating Nuclear Terrorism” http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/
RB165/index1.html)
Nuclear Acquisition Remains Relatively Difficult for Terrorist Groups
Acquiring a nuclear weapon requires access to specialized material and a high level of technical expertise that has
historically been beyond the reach of terrorist groups. Throughout the 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo tried without success to
hire Russian nuclear experts, to purchase Russian nuclear technology and data, to mine uranium, and to steal sensitive
nuclear power plant information. These efforts were thwarted by Russian officials’ refusal to cooperate and by the
lack of technical expertise within the group. Similarly, al Qaeda has been exposed to numerous scams involving the
sale of radiological waste and other non-weapons-grade material. These difficulties may lead terrorists to conclude
that nuclear acquisition is too difficult and too expensive to pursue.
The threat of terrorism has been greatly exaggerated – empirically proven
Mueller, 05 (John, Professor of Political Science at OhioState. May 2005. International Studies Perspectives, Volume 6
Issue 2 Page 208-234, Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration)
The capacity for small bands of terrorists to do harm is far less than was the case for the great countries behind
international Communism who possessed a very impressive military (and nuclear) capacity and had, in addition, shown
great skill at political subversion. By contrast, for all the attention it evokes, terrorism, in reasonable context, actually
causes rather little damage and the likelihood that any individual will become a victim in most places is microscopic.
Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in "the age of terror" (Hoagland, 2004). However, the number of
people worldwide who die as a result of international terrorism is generally only a few hundred a year, tiny compared
with the numbers who die in most civil wars or from automobile accidents. In fact, until 2001 far fewer Americans were
killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning. And except for 2001,
virtually none of these terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Indeed, outside of 2001, fewer people have
died in America from international terrorism than have drowned in toilets. Even with the September 11 attacks included
in the count, however, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the
State Department began its accounting) is about the same as the number killed over the same period by lightning—or by
accident-causing deer or by severe allergic reaction to peanuts. In almost all years, the total number of people worldwide
who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United
States. Some of this is definitional. When terrorism becomes really extensive, we generally no longer call it terrorism, but war. But people are mainly concerned about random terror, not sustained
warfare. Moreover, even using an expansive definition of terrorism and including domestic terrorism in the mix, it is likely that far fewer people were killed by terrorists in the entire world over the last
hundred years than died in any number of unnoticed civil wars during that century. Obviously, this could change if international terrorists are able to assemble sufficient weaponry or devise new tactics to
kill masses of people and if they come to do so routinely—and this, of course, is the central fear. Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that 9/11 was an extreme event: until then, no more than 329 had
ever been killed in a single terrorist attack (in a 1985 Air India explosion), and during the entire twentieth century fewer than 20 terrorist attacks resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people. The
. A bomb planted in a
piece of checked luggage was responsible for the explosion that caused a PanAm jet to crash into Lockerbie Scotland in
1988. Since that time, hundreds of billions of pieces of luggage have been transported on American carriers and none has
exploded to down an aircraft. This does not mean that one should cease worrying about luggage on airlines, but it does
suggest that extreme events do not necessarily assure repetition—any more than Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City
bombing of 1995 has.
economic destruction on September 11 was also unprecedented, of course. However, extreme events often remain exactly that—aberrations, rather than harbingers
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Terrorism Defense
The costs of fighting terrorism outweigh the small risk of another attack
Fidas, 7 (George- Professor of Practice of International Affair @ Elliot school of international affairs, "Terrorism:
Existensial Threat or Exaggerated Threat: Challenging the Dominant Paradigm" Feb 28, 2007
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p181269_index.html)
But terrorism is not likely to pose the kind of sustained existential threat that strong states, especially nuclear-armed
ones, posed against other strong states in the 20th century. Treating terrorism as such in an endless “war” is likely to
lead to endless fear and the slighting of other, perhaps more salient new and existing security threats, ever larger
budget expenditures that weaken our overall economy, and growing restrictions on civil liberties and freedom of
movement at home and loss of soft power abroad. It will also produce a self-fulfilling sense of fear and terror that will
accomplish the goals of our terrorist adversaries at little risk to themselves.
Terrorist threats are exaggerated
Brookings Institue, 8 (The Brookings Institution, “Have We Exaggerated the Threat of Terrorism?”
http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/0221_terrorism.aspx?p=1, November 2008)
The Crisis in the Middle East Task Force addressed the topic of “Have We Exaggerated the Threat of Terrorism?” in
its sixth session on February 21, 2008. This session, hosted by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, assessed the
risks of and appropriate responses to terrorism. One participant argued that terrorism presents minimal cause for
concern. Discounting war zones, studies show that there have been very few people killed by “Muslim extremists”
each year—in fact, more people drown in bathtubs each year in the United States. The FBI reported in 2005 that it had
not found an al-Qaeda presence in the United States. Additionally, terrorism, by its very nature, can be self-defeating:
many attacks by al-Qaeda have caused the group to lose popularity.
This participant questioned both the intentions and capability of al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden has threatened many
attacks that he has not been able to execute. In specific, this participant thought it unlikely that that al-Qaeda would
obtain nuclear weapons, despite fears to the contrary. Another participant agreed that the fears about terrorism are
exaggerated and differentiated between the actual campaign against al-Qaeda and its supporters and the idea of a
general “war on terrorism.”
No Impact to terrorism
Fidas, 7 (George- Professor of Practice of International Affair @ Elliot school of international affairs, "Terrorism:
Existensial Threat or Exaggerated Threat: Challenging the Dominant Paradigm" Feb 28, 2007
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p181269_index.html)
The overwhelmingly dominant-indeed only-paradigm concerning terrorism is that it is pervasive, highly lethal, and
poses a clear and present danger to the United States, in particular, and tothe world in general. Yet, group think is
rarely correct and this is evident from the facts. There has been no terrorist act in the United States since 9/11 and less
than 10 major terrorist attacks around the world resulting in fewer than 1000 casualties. The riposte is that this is due
to strong countermeasures, especially in the U.S., but this is belied by the fact that borders remain porous and
thousands of people cross them illegally on a daily basis, many counterterrorism measures have failed official and
unofficial tests, and key facilities remain unprotected. Meanwhile, huge funds are being allocated to conduct the socalled war on terror, the balance between liberty and security is tilting toward security, and both law enforcement
officials and publics are "terrorized" by a pervasive uneasiness about impending terrrorist attacks. There is no doubt
that the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they have become an anchoring event in a psychological sense through which
all subsequent events and perceptions are being filtered, and thereby may be skewing our perceptions about the
continued seriousness of the terrorist threat. It is time to at least question the dominant paradigm and that is the topic
of this paper.
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Terrorism doesn’t hurt the economy
Terrorism has no economic impact- empirically proven
Shapiro, 3 (Robert, Slate.com, Former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce “Al-Qaida and the GDP”, 2/28/03,
http://www.slate.com/id/2079298/)
While everyone else is buying duct tape and making evacuation plans, we cold-blooded economists ask, what could
terrorism do to an economy like ours?
There is an economics of everything else, so why not an economics of terrorism? Terrorists have inflicted enough
damage in enough places during the past 30 years for economists to credibly evaluate how terrorism affects economic
activity. The lesson for the United States: The economic cost of terrorism here is likely to be less than you'd expect.
In the few places where terrorist activity has been pervasive and protracted—Colombia, Northern Ireland, the Basque
region of Spain, and Israel—it depresses growth and sometimes stunts development. Where terrorism has been more
occasional and local, the economic impact is modest, resembling ordinary crime. So long as al-Qaida or its
counterparts are unable (or unwilling) to use weapons much more powerful than airliners, especially nuclear weapons,
any ambition to derail a large, advanced economy like ours will fail.
The immediate costs of terrorism are rarely very high for an economy. For small operations—a political murder or
bombing that kills a few people (think Colombian narco-terrorists, IRA operatives, or Palestinian suicide bombers)—
the direct economic impact is negligible. Even a huge terror strike is a blip in a vast economy like the United States'.
The World Trade Center attack did not move the U.S. economy, as consumer spending and GDP accelerated strongly
in the quarter immediately following the attack. Modern economies regularly absorb greater losses from bad weather
and natural disasters—for example, the 1988 heat wave that took the lives of more than 5,000 Americans or the 1999
earthquake in Izmit, Turkey, that killed 17,000—without derailing.
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AT: Healthcare Space Impact
1. Alt causes- their evidence says things like the declining economy will ensure a NASA budget cut
2. The house already wants to cut exploration budget cuts could be reversed later
Kim, 6-25 (Eun, Florida Today, “Senate to keep NASA funds safe”
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20090625/NEWS02/906250315/1006/NEWS01/Senate+to+keep+NASA+funds+safe)
The vote sets up a battle with the House, which last week passed a bill that would slash more than $500 million from the
White House recommendation. Most of the cuts target NASA's human space flight budget.
"We do not agree with the House strategy," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, who oversees the Senate
Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science. "We agree with the president's budget."
The committee approved the measure on a voice vote.
Under the bill, about $3.5 billion would go toward developing NASA's next generation of rockets and space capsules
intended to replace the retiring fleet of space shuttles. The bill also includes about $3 billion for the remaining shuttle
missions and $4.5 billion for science programs.
The House version of the bill would fund NASA next year at $18.2 billion, $421 million more than the current year but $483
million less than what the president requested.
Rep. Alan Mollohan suggested reducing the agency's exploration budget until an independent panel appointed by the White
House completes a study on the future of human space flight.
The West Virginia Democrat, who chairs the House panel that oversees NASA's budget, called the proposed cuts "a pause, a
time out." He said funding could be restored depending on the panel's recommendations, expected by the end of August.
Mikulski said she supports the panel's work, and looks forward to its report. But she also supports the president's priorities.
"And we have funded those priorities," she said.
The full Senate Appropriations Committee was scheduled to take up the bill Thursday. Ultimately, lawmakers will have to
work out a compromise version.
And it is impossible
Lemos, 8 (Robert- technology and science journalist, Wired, cites: assistant professor of aeronautics @ MIT Paulo Lorenzo,
Brice N. Cassenti, an associate professor with the Department of Engineering and Science “Rocket Scientists Say We'll
Never Reach the Stars” 8/19/08, http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/space_limits?currentPage=all)
Many believe that humanity's destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even
get out of the Solar System. At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused
humanity's interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford,
Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The
calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly
impossible. "In those cases, you are talking about a scale of engineering that you can't even imagine," Paulo Lozano, an
assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a conference attendee,
said in a recent interview. The major problem is that propulsion -- shooting mass backwards to go forwards -- requires large
amounts of both time and fuel. For instance, using the best rocket engines Earth currently has to offer, it would take 50,000
years to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, our solar system's nearest neighbor. Even the most theoretically efficient
type of propulsion, an imaginary engine powered by antimatter, would still require decades to reach Alpha Centauri,
according to Robert Frisbee, group leader in the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group within NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. And then there's the issue of fuel. It would take at least the current energy output of the entire world to send a
probe to the nearest star, according to Brice N. Cassenti, an associate professor with the Department of Engineering and
Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. That's a generous figure: More likely, Cassenti says, it would be as much as 100
times that. "We just can't extract the resources from the Earth," Cassenti said during his presentation. "They just don't exist.
We would need to mine the outer planets." A 160-Million-Ton Needle Interstellar propulsion systems are not a new idea.
Rocket scientists, aeronautical engineers and science-fiction enthusiasts have proposed such designs for several decades. In
1958, U.S. scientists explored the possibility of a spaceship propelled by dropping nuclear bombs out the back, a so-called
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nuclear-pulsed rocket. The research, called Project Orion, was killed by the signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the
budgetary requirements of the Apollo Project. In 1978, the British Interplanetary Society designed a mission to Barnard's
Star, almost 6 light years away, using a pulsed fusion rocket fueled by deuterium. Building such a spaceship would require
mining the outer planets for fuel for at least two decades, scientists said at the Joint Propulsion Conference this year. But the
thought experiments continue. At the conference, Frisbee presented a theoretical design for a ship using antimatter to propel
its way to nearby stars. Frisbee's design calls for a long, needle-like spaceship with each component stacked in line to keep
radiation from the engines from harming sensitive equipment or people. At the rocket end, a large superconducting magnet
would direct the stream of particles created by annihilating hydrogen and antihydrogen. A regular nozzle could not be used,
even if made of exotic materials, because it could not withstand exposure to the high-energy particles, Frisbee said. A heavy
shield would protect the rest of the ship from the radiation produced by the reaction. A large radiator would be placed next in
line to dissipate all the heat produced by the engine, followed by the storage compartments for the hydrogen and
antihydrogen. Because antihydrogen would be annihilated if it touched the walls of any vessel, Frisbee's design stores the two
components as ice at one degree above absolute zero. The systems needed to run the spacecraft come after the propellant
tanks, followed by the payload. In its entirety, the spaceship would resemble a large needle massing 80 million metric tons
with another 40 million metric tons each of hydrogen and antihydrogen. In contrast, the Space Shuttle weighs in at a mere
2,000 metric tons. "Interstellar missions are big," Frisbee said, in part because of the massive amounts of energy (and hence
fuel) required to get moving fast enough to make the trip in anything like a reasonable amount of time. "Any time you try to
get something up to the speed of light, Newton is still God." With that fuel, it would still take nearly 40 years to travel the
4.3 light years to Earth's nearest neighbor, Alpha Centuri, he said.
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Space Exploration bad
1. Space exploration will cause environmental exploitation, nuclear annihilation, arms races, and
epidemics
Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, 1999 (Bruce
K., “Space Exploration and Exploitation,” http://www.space4peace.org/articles/scandm.htm)
We are now poised to take the bad seed of greed, environmental exploitation and war into space. Having shown such
enormous disregard for our own planet Earth, the so-called "visionaries" and "explorers" are now ready to rape and pillage
the heavens. Countless launches of nuclear materials, using rockets that regularly blow up on the launch pad, will seriously
jeopardize life on Earth. Returning potentially bacteria-laden space materials back to Earth, without any real plans for
containment and monitoring, could create new epidemics for us. The possibility of an expanding nuclear-powered arms
race in space will certainly have serious ecological and political ramifications as well. The effort to deny years of
consensus around international space law will create new global conflicts and confrontations
A. Space exploration will lead to the spread of pathogenic viruses through biohazardous land
samples
Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, 1999 (Bruce K., “Space
Exploration and Exploitation,” http://www.space4peace.org/articles/scandm.htm)
Potential dangers do exist though. Barry DiGregorio, author and founder of the International Committee Against Mars
Sample Return, has written that "…any Martian samples returned to Earth must be treated as biohazardous material until
proven otherwise." At the present time NASA has taken no action to create a special facility to handle space sample
returns. On March 6, 1997 a report issued by the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council recommended that
such a facility should be operational at least two years prior to launch of a Mars Sample Return mission. Reminding us of
the Spanish exploration of the Americas, and the smallpox virus they carried that killed thousands of indigenous people,
DiGregorio warns that the Mars samples could "contain pathogenic viruses or bacteria." There are vast deposits of mineral
resources like magnesium and cobalt believed to be on Mars. In June of 1997, NASA announced plans for manned mining
colonies on Mars, expected around 2007-2009. The mining colonies, NASA says, would be powered by nuclear reactors
launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
B. Extinction
Daswani, 96 (Kavita, South China Morning Post, 1/4, lexis)
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about
. There is a much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be
the possibility of a virus deadlier than HIV.
alerted to:
If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak
which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two decades of
intensive study and research in the field of virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier
than HIV. "An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said. "It can come from a rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there
is a chain reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago,
few could have predicted the impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was
because it was killed before it had a chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years theoretically, it could happen tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said
"Nature isn't benign.
The survival of the human species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic
variation exist for viruses to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak as an example of how
viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in the Third World and rainforests are
destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation. "This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious
viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and imperil the survival of the human race," he said.
Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said:
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Hard Power doesn’t solve Heg
Hard power doesn’t maintain heg and ultimately causes counterbalancing
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, “Empire Falls”
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)
As China rises, America must avoid this great-power trap. It would be easy to think that greater American military
efforts could offset the consequences of China’s increasing power and possibly even lead to the formation of a
multilateral strategy to contain China in the future. Indeed, when China’s economic star began to rise in the 1990s,
numerous voices called for precisely this, noting that on current trajectories China would overtake the United States as
the world’s leading economic power by 2050.8 Now, as that date draws nearer—indeed, current-dollar calculations put
the crossover point closer to 2040—and with Beijing evermore dependent on imported oil for continued economic
growth, one might think the case for actively containing China is all the stronger.
Absent provocative military adventures by Beijing, however, U.S. military efforts to contain the rising power are most
likely doomed to failure. China’s growth turns mainly on domestic issues—such as shifting the workforce from rural
to urban areas—that are beyond the ability of outside powers to significantly influence. Although China’s growth also
depends on external sources of oil, there is no way to exploit this vulnerability short of obviously hostile alliances
(with India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan) and clearly aggressive military measures (controlling the sea-lanes from the
Persian Gulf to Asia) that together could deny oil to China. Any efforts along these lines would likely backfire—and
only exacerbate America’s problems, increasing the risk of counterbalancing.
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Heg Declining and Unsustainable
Hegemony is declining- counterbalancing and overstretch, hard power and economic recovery
won’t solve
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, “Empire Falls”
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)
The balance of world power circa 2008 and 2013 shows a disturbing trend. True, the United States remains stronger than any
other state individually, but its power to stand up to the collective opposition of other major powers is falling precipitously.
Though these worlds depict potential power, not active counterbalancing coalitions, and this type of alliance may never form,
nonetheless, American relative power is declining to the point where even subsets of major powers acting in concert could
produce sufficient military power to stand a reasonable chance of successfully opposing American military policies.
Indeed, if present trends continue to 2013 and beyond, China and Russia, along with any one of the other major powers,
would have sufficient economic capacity to mount military opposition at least as serious as did the Soviet Union during the
cold war. And it is worth remembering that the Soviet Union never had more than about half the world product of the United
States, which China alone is likely to reach in the coming decade. The faults in the arguments of the unipolar-dominance
school are being brought into sharp relief. The world is slowly coming into balance. Whether or not this will be another
period of great-power transition coupled with an increasing risk of war will largely depend on how America can navigate its
decline. Policy makers must act responsibly in this new era or risk international opposition that poses far greater costs and far
greater dangers.
A COHERENT grand strategy seeks to balance a state’s economic resources and its foreign-policy commitments and to
sustain that balance over time. For America, a coherent grand strategy also calls for rectifying the current imbalance between
our means and our ends, adopting policies that enhance the former and modify the latter.
Clearly, the United States is not the first great power to suffer long-term decline—we should learn from history. Great
powers in decline seem to almost instinctively spend more on military forces in order to shore up their disintegrating strategic
positions, and some like Germany go even further, shoring up their security by adopting preventive military strategies,
beyond defensive alliances, to actively stop a rising competitor from becoming dominant.
For declining great powers, the allure of preventive war—or lesser measures to “merely” firmly contain a rising power—has
a more compelling logic than many might assume. Since Thucydides, scholars of international politics have famously argued
that a declining hegemon and rising challenger must necessarily face such intense security competition that hegemonic war to
retain dominance over the international system is almost a foregone conclusion. Robert Gilpin, one of the deans of realism
who taught for decades at Princeton, believed that “the first and most attractive response to a society’s decline is to eliminate
the source of the problem . . . [by] what we shall call a hegemonic war.”
Yet, waging war just to keep another state down has turned out to be one of the great losing strategies in history. The
Napoleonic Wars, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, German aggression in World War I, and German and
Japanese aggression in World War II were all driven by declining powers seeking to use war to improve their future security.
All lost control of events they thought they could control. All suffered ugly defeats. All were worse-off than had they not
attacked.
As China rises, America must avoid this great-power trap. It would be easy to think that greater American military efforts
could offset the consequences of China’s increasing power and possibly even lead to the formation of a multilateral strategy
to contain China in the future. Indeed, when China’s economic star began to rise in the 1990s, numerous voices called for
precisely this, noting that on current trajectories China would overtake the United States as the world’s leading economic
power by 2050.8 Now, as that date draws nearer—indeed, current-dollar calculations put the crossover point closer to 2040—
and with Beijing evermore dependent on imported oil for continued economic growth, one might think the case for actively
containing China is all the stronger.
Absent provocative military adventures by Beijing, however, U.S. military efforts to contain the rising power are most likely
doomed to failure. China’s growth turns mainly on domestic issues—such as shifting the workforce from rural to urban
areas—that are beyond the ability of outside powers to significantly influence. Although China’s growth also depends on
external sources of oil, there is no way to exploit this vulnerability short of obviously hostile alliances (with India, Indonesia,
Taiwan and Japan) and clearly aggressive military measures (controlling the sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf to Asia) that
together could deny oil to China. Any efforts along these lines would likely backfire—and only exacerbate America’s
problems, increasing the risk of counterbalancing.
Even more insidious is the risk of overstretch. This self-reinforcing spiral escalates current spending to maintain increasingly
costly military commitments, crowding out productive investment for future growth.
Today, the cold-war framework of significant troop deployments to Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf is coming unglued.
We cannot afford to keep our previous promises. With American forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and mounting
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troubles in Iran and Pakistan, the United States has all but gutted its military commitments to Europe, reducing our troop
levels far below the one hundred thousand of the 1990s. Nearly half have been shifted to Iraq and elsewhere. Little wonder
that Russia found an opportunity to demonstrate the hollowness of the Bush administration’s plan for expanding NATO to
Russia’s borders by scoring a quick and decisive military victory over Georgia that America was helpless to prevent. If a
large-scale conventional war between China and Taiwan broke out in the near future, one must wonder whether America
would significantly shift air and naval power away from its ongoing wars in the Middle East in order to live up to its global
commitments. If the United States could not readily manage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time, could it really
wage a protracted struggle in Asia as well? And as the gap between America’s productive resources and global commitments
grows, why will others pass up opportunities to take advantage of America’s overstretched grand strategy?
Since the end of the cold war, American leaders have consistently claimed the ability to maintain a significant forwardleaning military presence in the three major regions of the globe and, if necessary, to wage two major regional wars at the
same time. The harsh reality is that the United States no longer has the economic capacity for such an ambitious grand
strategy. With 30 percent of the world’s product, the United States could imagine maintaining this hope. Nearing 20 percent,
it cannot.
Yet, just withdrawing American troops from Iraq is not enough to put America’s grand strategy into balance. Even assuming
a fairly quick and problem-free drawdown, the risks of instability in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region are likely
to remain for many years to come. Further, even under the most optimistic scenarios, America is likely to remain dependent
on imported oil for decades. Together, these factors point toward the Persian Gulf remaining the most important region in
American grand strategy.
So, as Europe and Asia continue to be low-order priorities, Washington must think creatively and look for opportunities to
make strategic trades. America needs to share the burden of regional security with its allies and continue to draw down our
troop levels in Europe and Asia, even considering the attendant risks. The days when the United States could effectively
solve the security problems of its allies in these regions almost on its own are coming to an end. True, spreading defense
burdens more equally will not be easy and will be fraught with its own costs and risks. However, this is simply part of the
price of America’s declining relative power.
The key principle is for America to gain international support among regional powers like Russia and China for its vital
national-security objectives by adjusting less important U.S. policies. For instance, Russia may well do more to discourage
Iran’s nuclear program in return for less U.S. pressure to expand NATO to its borders.
And of course America needs to develop a plan to reinvigorate the competitiveness of its economy. Recently, Harvard’s
Michael Porter issued an economic blueprint to renew America’s environment for innovation. The heart of his plan is to
remove the obstacles to increasing investment in science and technology. A combination of targeted tax, fiscal and education
policies to stimulate more productive investment over the long haul is a sensible domestic component to America’s new
grand strategy. But it would be misguided to assume that the United States could easily regain its previously dominant
economic position, since the world will likely remain globally competitive.
To justify postponing this restructuring of its grand strategy, America would need a firm expectation of high rates of
economic growth over the next several years. There is no sign of such a burst on the horizon. Misguided efforts to extract
more security from a declining economic base only divert potential resources from investment in the economy, trapping the
state in an ever-worsening strategic dilemma. This approach has done little for great powers in the past, and America will
likely be no exception when it comes to the inevitable costs of desperate policy making.The United States is not just
declining. Unipolarity is becoming obsolete, other states are rising to counter American power and the United States is
losing much of its strategic freedom. Washington must adopt more realistic foreign commitments.
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Index
A2: Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism Frontline (1/2).................. 3
Egalitarianism Frontline (2/2).................. 4
XT 1 – Poverty Turn ................................ 5
XT 2 – Stigma ......................................... 6
XT 3 – Egal Ø Equality ........................... 7
XT 4 – Public Sphere............................... 8
XT 5 – Inegal Inevitable .......................... 9
Egalitarianism Biased ............................ 10
Must Define Poverty .............................. 11
Evaluate the D/A ................................... 12
A2 - Moral Egalitarianism ..................... 13
XT – A2 - Moral Egalitarianism ............ 14
A2 Democratic Egalitarianism............... 15
A2 Radical Egalitarianism ..................... 16
Inegalitarianism Good – Solves ............. 17
Sufficientarianism Good ........................ 18
A2 Egal = Util ....................................... 19
Econ Turns Case .................................... 20
A2 Rawls ............................................... 21
A2 Rescher ............................................ 22
A2 Menand ............................................ 23
A2 Menand ............................................ 24
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism Frontline (1/2) ................. 26
Utilitarianism Frontline (2/2) ................. 27
XT 1 – Nukes End Ethics ...................... 28
XT 2 – Util > Morality .......................... 29
XT 3 – Resolve ...................................... 30
XT 4 – Grand Sacrifice .......................... 31
Util  Deterrence (1/2) ......................... 32
Util  Deterrence (2/2) ......................... 33
Deontology
Deontology Frontline (1/2) .................... 35
Deontology Frontline (2/2) .................... 36
XT 1 – Evil ............................................ 37
XT 2 – Individual .................................. 38
XT 3/4 – Systemic ................................. 39
XT 5 – Util Bad ..................................... 40
A2 Consequentialism............................. 41
Poverty Impacts
AIDS Module ........................................ 43
AIDS => War ........................................ 44
Biodiversity Module .............................. 45
Biodiversity Exts. .................................. 46
Crime – Domestic .................................. 47
Crime - International ............................. 48
Dehumanization Module ....................... 49
Disease Module ..................................... 50
Disease Exts. ......................................... 51
Disease Exts. ......................................... 52
Disease Exts. ......................................... 53
Disease – Government Action Needed .. 54
Human Rights Module........................... 55
Moral Obligation ................................... 56
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Moral Obligation ................................... 57
Moral Obligation ................................... 58
Oceans Module ...................................... 59
Oceans Module ...................................... 60
Overpopulation Module ......................... 61
Poverty Terminal Impact ....................... 62
Poverty Terminal Impact ....................... 63
Small Arms Module............................... 64
Terrorism Module .................................. 65
Terrorism Module .................................. 66
Terrorism Module .................................. 67
Terrorism Exts. ...................................... 68
Tuberculosis Module ............................. 69
War on Drugs Module ........................... 70
War on Drugs Module ........................... 71
War on Drugs Exts. ............................... 72
War on Drugs Impact Exts..................... 73
War on Drugs Impact Exts..................... 74
War on Drugs Impact Exts..................... 75
War on Drugs Impact Exts..................... 76
War on Drugs Impact Exts..................... 77
War on Drugs Racist Exts. ..................... 78
War of Drugs => Terrorism ................... 79
War on Drugs => AIDS ......................... 80
War on Drugs Hurts Human Rights ....... 81
Warming Module ................................... 82
Aff Poverty Answers
A2: Heritage Foundation/Rector ............ 84
A2: Material Conditions Good .............. 85
A2: Alt Causes ....................................... 86
A2: Cap is the Root Cause ..................... 87
Neg Poverty Stuff
International Aid CP .............................. 89
Economy
Econ Growth Solves Poverty ................. 91
US Econ Key to Global Econ ................ 92
US Econ Key to Global Econ ................ 93
Impact Work
Econ- US Key ........................................ 95
Econ- developing countries ................... 96
Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution97
Econ Collapse Bad................................. 98
Econ interdependence prevents war ....... 99
Economic decline turns TB, Malaria, AIDS
............................................................. 100
Economic Decline Turns Soft Power ... 101
Econ turns heg ..................................... 102
Econ turns heg ..................................... 103
US Econ Collapse  global ................ 104
Econ growth good- environment ......... 105
Econ Growth good- environment......... 106
Econ growth good- environment ......... 107
Econ growth good- Poverty ................. 108
Econ growth good- poverty/environment . 109
Econ growth good- social services .......110
Econ growth good- poverty ..................111
AT: Dedev-No mindshift ......................112
Econ growth good-violence..................113
Econ growth good- social services .......114
AT: Trainer...........................................115
Terrorism turns Econ ............................116
Disease turns military readiness ...........117
Disease turns military readiness ...........118
Aids turns military readiness ................119
Disease turns War .................................120
Environmental Destruction/opop turns
disease ..................................................121
Environment Impact/ turns disease .......122
Environment turns war/economy..........123
Environmental destruction turns agriculture
..............................................................124
War causes dehumanization. ................125
War Turns Disease ...............................126
War turns Gender violence ...................127
War turns Human Right Violations ......128
War turns human rights/ disease ...........129
War Turns Racism ................................130
War Turns Everything ..........................131
War Turns Mental Health .....................132
War turns Health ..................................133
War turns domestic violence ................134
War turns the environment ...................135
Health solves War/ War outweighs disease
..............................................................136
Heg collapse turns economy .................137
Human Rights Promo Good- Terrorism138
Human Rights Promo Good- Iran Prolif139
Human Rights Promo Good- Democracy140
Democracy Good- Democide ...............141
Human Rights Promo Good- Central Asia
..............................................................142
Patriarchy  War .................................144
Patriarchy  War .................................145
Patriarchy  War .................................146
Patriarchy  War .................................147
Homophobia  War ............................148
Patriarchy more dehumanizing than Nuclear
War .......................................................149
Patriarchy Extinction Inevitable .......150
Patriarchy  war..................................151
Patriarchy War ..................................152
AT: Patriarchy Is Root Cause of Violence
..............................................................153
Homophobia  War ............................154
Econ defense ........................................155
Econ Defense .......................................156
Terrorism Defense ................................157
Terrorism Defense ................................158
Terrorism doesn’t hurt the economy.....159
AT: Healthcare Space Impact ...............160
Space Exploration bad ..........................162
Hard Power doesn’t solve Heg .............163
Heg Declining and Unsustainable ........164
166
Straight Up Impacts
DDW 2009
“S” and Crew
“Stay Classy”
167