Framework
Our interpretation --- the ballot’s sole purpose is to answer the resolutional question: Is the outcome of
the enactment of a topical plan better than the status quo or a competitive policy option or alternative?
“Resolved” before a colon reflects a legislative forum
Army Officer School ‘04
(5-12, “# 12, Punctuation – The Colon and Semicolon”, http://usawocc.army.mil/IMI/wg12.htm)
The colon introduces the following: a. A list, but only after "as follows," "the following," or a noun for which the list is an
appositive: Each scout will carry the following: (colon) meals for three days, a survival knife, and his sleeping bag. The company had
four new officers: (colon) Bill Smith, Frank Tucker, Peter Fillmore, and Oliver Lewis. b. A long quotation (one or more paragraphs):
In The Killer Angels Michael Shaara wrote: (colon) You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have
been many versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and that war [the Civil War]. (The quote continues for two more paragraphs.) c. A
formal quotation or question: The President declared: (colon) "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The question is: (colon)
what can we do about it? d. A second independent clause which explains the first: Potter's motive is clear: (colon) he wants the
assignment. e. After the introduction of a business letter: Dear Sirs: (colon) Dear Madam: (colon) f. The details following an
announcement For sale: (colon) large lakeside cabin with dock g. A formal resolution, after the word "resolved:" Resolved:
(colon) That this council petition the mayor.
“United States Federal Government should” means the debate is solely about the outcome of a policy
established by governmental means
Ericson ‘03
(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts – California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debater’s Guide, Third Edition, p. 4)
The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key elements, although they have
slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---“The United States” in
“The United States should adopt a policy of free trade.” Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the
subject of the sentence. 2. The verb should—the first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should
in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action though
governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example,
gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic
recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire
debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to
offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.
Changing this stasis is a voting issue:
Having the resolution as the point of stasis is crucial to us debating; this does not reject their advocacy, as
long as it is grounded in the topic
Panetta et. al ’10 (Chair Edward M. Panetta, University of Georgia; co-author, William Mosley-Jensen, University of
Georgia Members Dan Fitzmier, Northwestern University Sherry Hall, Harvard University Kevin Kuswa,
University of Richmond Ed Lee, Emory University David Steinberg, University of Miami (FL) Fred
Sternhagen, Concordia College (MN) John Turner, Dartmouth College, “Navigating Opportunity: Policy
Debate in the 21st Century”, “Controversies in Debate Pedagogy: Working Paper”, p. 220)
For adherents to the traditional mode of debate, when one retreats from grounding stasis in the annual proposition, there
are two predicted intellectual justifications that surface. First, there is the claim that the existence of a resolution (without
substantive content) and time limits is enough of a point of departure to allow for a debate. For traditionalists, this
move seems to reduce the existing stasis to the point that it has no real meaning. How does the resolution mold
the argument choices of students when one team refuses to acknowledge the argumentative foundation
embedded in the sentence? What educational benefit is associated with the articulation of a two-hour and fortyfive minute limit for a debate and decision where there is not an agreed point of departure for the initiation of
the debate? Second, advocates of moving away from a resolutionbased point of stasis contend that valuable
arguments do take place. Yes, but that argumentation does not meet some of the core assumptions of a debate for
someone who believes that treatment of a stated proposition is a defining element of debate. Participants in a
debate need to have some type of loosely shared agreement to focus the clash of arguments in a round of debate.
Adherence to this approach does not necessarily call for the rejection of innovative approaches, including the
use of individual narratives as a form of support or the metaphorical endorsement of the proposition. This
perspective on contest debate does, however, require participants to make an effort to relate a rhetorical strategy
to the national topic.
Topicality is a voting issue because without stasis, debate is impossible
Shively ‘2K
(Ruth Lessl, Assistant Prof Political Science – Texas A&M U., Partisan Politics and Political Theory, p. 181-2)
The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say "no" to-they must reject and limit-some
ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say "yes" to some things. In particular, they must say "yes" to the
idea of rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord
that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks
the end of contest-that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect-if there is nothing at all left to question or
contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not
on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of
contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems
to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic
sense, the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement.
(Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot
agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or
good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it.
For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a musical
group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if
those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that
it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about
what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject
and/or the terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the
complaint at hand. And a demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an
idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In
other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
Continued page 184…
But, again, the response to the ambiguist must be that the practice of questioning and undermining rules, like all other social
practices, needs a certain order. The subversive needs rules to protect subversion. And when we look more
closely at the rules protective of subversion, we find that they are roughly the rules of argument discussed above. In
fact, the rules of argument are roughly the rules of democracy or civility: the delineation of boundaries necessary
to protect speech and action from violence, manipulation, and other forms of tyranny.
Our framework preserves plan focus --- the role of the ballot is to answer the resolutional question:
Should the federal government expand its visa policy? Considering any impact other than the outcome of
the enactment of the plan creates the illogical decision where you vote Aff even though their policy is a
bad idea that should not be affirmed.
This teaches the best decision-making skills. Changing the role of the ballot from a yes/no question about
the desirability of the plan to something else. This undermines the singular logical purpose of debate: the
search for the best policy.
3) Biggest educational impact --- learning is useless if it’s not connected to the real world
Strait and Wallace ‘07
(L. Paul, USC and Brett, George Mason U., The Scope of Negative Fiat and the Logic of Decision Making, Policy Cures? Health
Assistance to Africa, Debaters Research Guide, p. A2)
More to the point, debate certainly helps teach a lot of skills, yet we believe that the way policy debate participation encourages you to think
is the most valuable educational benefit, because how someone makes decisions determines how they will employ the rest of their abilities,
including the research and communication skills that debate builds. Plenty of debate theory articles have explained either the value of
debate, or the way in which alternate actor strategies are detrimental to real-world education, but none so far have attempted to tie
these concepts together. We will now explain how decision-making skill development is the foremost value of policy debate and how this
benefit is the decision-rule to resolving all theoretical discussions about negative fiat. Why debate? Some do it for scholarships, some
do it for social purposes, and many just believe it is fun. These are certainly all relevant considerations when making the decision to
join the debate team, but as debate theorists they aren’t the focus of our concern. Our concern is finding a framework for debate that
educates the largest quantity of students with the highest quality of skills, while at the same time preserving competitive equity. The
ability to make decisions deriving from discussions, argumentation or debate, is the key skill. It is the one thing every single one of us will do
every day of our lives besides breathing. Decision-making transcends boundaries between categories of learning learning like “policy
education” and “kritik education,” it makes irrelevant considerations of whether we will eventually be policymakers, and it transcends
questions of what substantive content a debate round should contain. The implication for this analysis is that the critical thinking and
argumentative skills offered by real-world decision-making are comparatively greater than any educational disadvantage weighed against them. It
is the skills we learn, not the content of our arguments, that can best improve all of our lives. While policy comparison skills are going to
be learned through debate in one way or another, those skills are useless if they are not grounded in the kind of logic actually used to
make decisions.
Limits
Our framework narrows the topics of debate to a finite set of political potentialities. Expanding beyond
this makes an infinite number of philosophical beliefs germane.
Lutz ‘2K
(Donald, Professor of Political Science – U Houston, Political Theory and Partisan Politics, p. 39-40)
Aristotle notes in the Politics that political theory simultaneously proceeds at three levels – discourse about the ideal, about the best
possible in the real world, and about existing political systems. Put another way, comprehensive political theory must ask several
different kinds of questions that are linked, yet distinguishable. In order to understand the interlocking set of questions that
political theory can ask, imagine a continuum stretching from left to right. At the end, to the right is an ideal
form of government, a perfectly wrought construct produced by the imagination. At the other end is the perfect
dystopia, the most perfectly wretched system that the human imagination can produce. Stretching between these two
extremes is an infinite set of possibilities, merging into one another, that describe the logical possibilities created by the
characteristics defining the end points. For example, a political system defined primarily by equality would have a perfectly
inegalitarian system described at the other end, and the possible states of being between them would vary primarily in the extent to
which they embodied equality. An ideal defined primarily by liberty would create a different set of possibilities between the extremes.
Of course, visions of the ideal often are inevitably more complex than these single-value examples indicate, but it is also true that in
order to imagine an ideal state of affairs a kind of simplification is almost always required since normal states of affairs invariably
present themselves to human consciousness as complicated, opaque, and to a significant extent indeterminate. A non-ironic reading of
Plato’s republic leads one to conclude that the creation of these visions of the ideal characterizes political philosophy. This is not the
case. Any person can generate a vision of the ideal. One job of political philosophy is to ask the question “Is this ideal worth
pursuing?” Before the question can be pursued, however, the ideal state of affairs must be clarified, especially with respect to
conceptual precision and the logical relationship between the propositions that describe the ideal. This pre-theoretical analysis raises
the vision of the ideal from the mundane to a level where true philosophical analysis and the careful comparison with existing systems
can proceed fruitfully. The process of pre-theoretical analysis, probably because it works on clarifying ideas that most
capture the human imagination, too often looks to some like the entire enterprise of political philosophy.
However, the value of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the General Will, for example, lies not in its formal logical implications,
nor in its compelling hold on the imagination, but on the power and clarity it lends to an analysis and comparison of the actual
political systems. Among other things it allows him to show that anyone who wishes to pursue a state of affairs closer to that summer
up in the concept of the General Will must successfully develop a civil religion. To the extent politicians believe theorists
who tell them that pre-theoretical clarification of language describing an ideal is the essence and sum total of
political philosophy, to that extent they will properly conclude that political philosophers have little to tell them,
since politics is the realm of the possible not the realm of logical clarity. However, once the ideal is clarified, the
political philosopher will begin to articulate and assess the reasons why we might want to pursue such an ideal. At this point, analysis
leaves the realm of pure logic and enters the realm of the logic of human longing, aspiration, and anxiety. The analysis is now limited
by the interior parameters of the human heart (more properly the human psyche) to which the theorist must appeal. Unlike the
clarification stage where anything that is logical is possible, there are now define limits on where logical can
take us. Appeals to self-destruction, less happiness rather than more, psychic isolation, enslavement, loss of
identity, a preference for the lives of mollusks over that of humans, to name just a few ,possibilities, are
doomed to failure. The theorist cannot appeal to such values if she or he is to attract an audience of politicians.
Much political theory involves the careful, competitive analysis of what a given ideal state of affairs entails, and as Plato shows in his
dialogues the discussion between the philosopher and the politician will quickly terminate if he or she cannot convincingly
demonstrate the connection between the political ideal being developed and natural human passions. In this way, the politician can be
educated by the possibilities that the political theorist can articulate, just as the political theorist can be educated by the relative
success the normative analysis has in “setting the Hook” of interest among nonpolitical theorists. This realm of discourse,
dominated by the logic of humanly worthwhile goals, requires that the theorist carefully observe the responses
of others in order not to be seduced by what is merely logical as opposed to what is humanly rational. Moral
discourse conditioned by the ideal, if it is to e successful, requires the political theorist to be fearless in pursuing normative logic, but it
also requires the theorist to have enough humility to remember that, if a non-theorist cannot be led toward an idea, the fault may well
lie in the theory, not in the moral vision of the non-theorist.
Limits are critical to ensuring fair debate with a baseline of predictability. A narrow, mutually agreedupon understanding of the topic is a pre-requisite to meaningful research and strategy. The Neg can
always say the exact opposite of the Aff, but it isn’t fair or productive unless they have the opportunity to
prepare those arguments in advance.
3) Ground: their framework inevitably caters to the Aff --- resolutionally-divided ground is chosen by the
community because it is balanced and educational - --- ground is key to fairness --- without it, we couldn’t
possibly prepare to compete
Fairness key to education
Lahman ‘36
(Carroll Pollack, Director of Men’s Forensics – Western State Teacher’s College, Debate Coaching: A Handbook for
Teachers and Coaches, p.19)
Not knowledge but thought is the end of education. Educational values lie not so much in knowledge of subjects in themselves as in the
processes of investigation, judgment, and expression by which the debater strives to win an audience to his opinion. This end can be attained
only when the student is working with material which is of genuine interest both to himself and to his audience. The discussion of such a
question, if engaged in voluntarily, enlists the earnestness and enthusiasm of the student in an effort to learn and weigh the facts, to
balance evidence, and to make the results of his own thoughts clear and interesting to others. Those are truly educational values.8
Only our framework promotes switch-side debate: being affirmative means affirming the resolution, and
being neg means negating the resolution by reading non-topical arguments
Our framework forces debates on both sides of a social issue which stimulates critical thinking and helps
students understand the complexities of policy dilemmas – this is critical to check dogmatism
Keller, et. al, 01 – Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of Chicago
(Thomas E., James K., and Tracly K., Asst. professor School of Social Service Administration U. of Chicago,
professor of Social Work, and doctoral student School of Social Work, “Student debates in policy courses:
promoting policy practice skills and knowledge through active learning,” Journal of Social Work Education,
Spr/Summer 2001, EBSCOhost)
SOCIAL WORKERS HAVE a professional responsibility to shape social policy and legislation (National Association of Social Workers, 1996). In recent decades, the
concept of policy practice has encouraged social workers to consider the ways in which their work can be advanced through active participation in the policy arena
(Jansson, 1984, 1994; Wyers, 1991). The
emergence of the policy practice framework has focused greater attention on the
competencies required for social workers to influence social policy and placed greater emphasis on preparing social work
students for policy intervention (Dear & Patti, 1981; Jansson, 1984, 1994; Mahaffey & Hanks, 1982; McInnis-Dittrich, 1994). The curriculum standards
of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) require the teaching of knowledge and skills in the political process (CSWE, 1994). With this formal
expectation of policy education in schools of social work, the best instructional methods must be employed to ensure
students acquire the requisite policy practice skills and perspectives.
The authors believe that structured student debates have great potential for promoting competence in policy practice and
in-depth knowledge of substantive topics relevant to social policy. Like other interactive assignments designed to more closely
resemble "real-world" activities, issue-oriented debates actively engage students in course content. Debates also allow
students to develop and exercise skills that may translate to political activities, such as testifying before
legislative committees. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, debates may help to stimulate critical thinking
by shaking students free from established opinions and helping them to appreciate the complexities involved
in policy dilemmas.
Relationships between Policy Practice Skills, Critical Thinking, and Learning
Policy practice encompasses social workers' "efforts to influence the development, enactment, implementation, or assessment of social policies" (Jansson, 1994, p. 8).
Effective policy practice involves analytic activities, such as defining issues, gathering data, conducting research, identifying and prioritizing policy options, and
creating policy proposals (Jansson, 1994). It also involves persuasive activities intended to influence opinions and outcomes, such as discussing and debating issues,
organizing coalitions and task forces, and providing testimony. According to Jansson (1984,pp. 57-58), social workers rely upon five fundamental skills when pursuing
policy practice activities:
value-clarification skills for identifying and assessing the underlying values inherent in policy positions;
conceptual skills for identifying and evaluating the relative merits of different policy options;
interactional skills for interpreting the values and positions of others and conveying one's own point of view in a convincing manner;
political skills for developing coalitions and developing effective strategies; and
position-taking skills for recommending, advocating, and defending a particular policy.
These policy practice skills reflect the hallmarks of critical thinking (see Brookfield, 1987; Gambrill, 1997). The central activities of critical thinking are identifying and
challenging underlying assumptions, exploring alternative ways of thinking and acting, and arriving at commitments after a period of questioning, analysis, and
reflection (Brookfield, 1987). Significant parallels exist with the policy-making process--identifying the values underlying policy choices, recognizing and evaluating
multiple alternatives, and taking a position and advocating for its adoption. Developing policy practice skills seems to share much in common with developing
capacities for critical thinking.
R.W. Paul (as cited in Gambrill, 1997) states that critical
thinkers acknowledge the imperative to argue from opposing points of
view and to seek to identify weakness and limitations in one's own position. Critical thinkers are aware that
there are many legitimate points of view, each of which (when thought through) may yield some level of
insight. (p. 126)
John Dewey, the philosopher and educational reformer, suggested that the initial advance in the development of
reflective thought occurs in the transition from holding fixed, static ideas to an attitude of doubt and questioning
engendered by exposure to alternative views in social discourse (Baker, 1955, pp. 36-40). Doubt, confusion, and conflict
resulting from discussion of diverse perspectives "force comparison, selection, and reformulation of ideas and
meanings" (Baker, 1955, p. 45). Subsequent educational theorists have contended that learning requires openness to divergent ideas in
combination with the ability to synthesize disparate views into a purposeful resolution (Kolb, 1984; Perry, 1970). On the one
hand, clinging to the certainty of one's beliefs risks dogmatism, rigidity, and the inability to learn from new
experiences. On the other hand, if one's opinion is altered by every new experience, the result is insecurity, paralysis, and the inability to take effective action. The
educator's role is to help students develop the capacity to incorporate new and sometimes conflicting ideas and experiences into a coherent cognitive framework. Kolb
suggests that, "if the education process begins by bringing out the learner's beliefs and theories, examining and testing them, and then integrating the new, more refined
ideas in the person's belief systems, the learning process will be facilitated" (p. 28).
The authors believe that involving
students in substantive debates challenges them to learn and grow in the fashion described by
Dewey and Kolb. Participation in a debate stimulates clarification and critical evaluation of the evidence, logic, and
values underlying one's own policy position. In addition, to debate effectively students must understand and
accurately evaluate the opposing perspective. The ensuing tension between two distinct but legitimate views is
designed to yield a reevaluation and reconstruction of knowledge and beliefs pertaining to the issue.
1NC/2AC – Util Good
Their moral decision-making is evil
Issac, 02—Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center for the Study of
Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale (Jeffery C., Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, “Ends, Means,
and Politics,” p. Proquest)
As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an
act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response. The
status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted
by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that
most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam Hussein, or
a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for
diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of
global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how
diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no such
account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility.
Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of
the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests
over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the
means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is
not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as
Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral
goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but
it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one
intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem
like
the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good
beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice,
moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from
the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In
categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and
(3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects
of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender
impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not
enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these
goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits
this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political
effectiveness.
Utilitarianism is the only moral framework and alternatives are inevitability self-contradictory
Nye, 86 (Joseph S. 1986; Phd Political Science Harvard. University; Served as Assistant Secretary of Defense
for International Security Affairs; “Nuclear Ethics” pg. 18-19)
The significance and the limits of the two broad traditions can be captured by contemplating a hypothetical case.34 Imagine that you
are visiting a Central American country and you happen upon a village square where an army captain is about to order his
men to shoot two peasants lined up against a wall. When you ask the reason, you are told someone in this village shot at the
captain's men last night. When you object to the killing of possibly innocent people, you are told that civil wars do not permit moral
niceties. Just to prove the point that we all have dirty hands in such situations, the captain hands you a rifle and tells you that if
you will shoot one peasant, he will free the other. Otherwise both die. He warns you not to try any tricks because his men
have their guns trained on you. Will you shoot one person with the consequences of saving one, or will you allow
both to die but preserve your moral integrity by refusing to play his dirty game? The point of the story is to show
the value and limits of both traditions. Integrity is clearly an important value, and many of us would refuse to
shoot. But at what point does the principle of not taking an innocent life collapse before the consequentialist
burden? Would it matter if there were twenty or 1,000 peasants to be saved? What if killing or torturing one innocent
person could save a city of 10 million persons from a terrorists' nuclear device? At some point does not integrity
become the ultimate egoism of fastidious self-righteousness in which the purity of the self is more important than the lives of
countless others? Is it not better to follow a consequentialist approach, admit remorse or regret over the immoral
means, but justify the action by the consequences? Do absolutist approaches to integrity become self-contradictory in a
world of nuclear weapons? "Do what is right though the world should perish" was a difficult principle even when Kant expounded it
in the eighteenth century, and there is some evidence that he did not mean it to be taken literally even then. Now that it may be
literally possible in the nuclear age, it seems more than ever to be self-contradictory.35 Absolutist ethics
bear a heavier burden of proof in the nuclear age than ever before.
Their ethical purity ignores human suffering
Chomsky 2004 (Noam, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, “Advocacy and Realism: A reply to Noah Cohen,”
ZNet, August 26, http://www.chomsky.info/letters/20040826.htm)
Right now, there are several possible stands that might be taken by those concerned with the people of the region, justice for
Palestinians in particular. Evidently, such stands are of only academic interest unless they are accompanied by
programs of action that take into account the real world. If not, they are not advocacy in any serious sense of the term.
Perhaps another word of clarification is in order. Attention to feasible programs of action is sometimes dismissed as
“realism” or “pragmatism,” and is placed in opposition to “acting on principle.” That is a serious delusion. There is
nothing “principled” about refusal to pay attention to the real world and the options that exist within it – including, of
course, the option of making changes, if a feasible course of action can be developed, as was clearly and explicitly the case with
regard to Vietnam, discussed in the comments that Cohen brings up and completely misunderstands. Those who ignore or deride
such “realism” and “pragmatism,” however well-intentioned they may be, are simply choosing to ignore the
consequences of their actions. The delusion is not only a serious intellectual error, but also a harmful one, with
severe human consequences. That should be clear without further elaboration. I will keep here to advocacy in the serious
sense: accompanied by some kind of feasible program of action, free from delusions about “acting on principle” without
regard to “realism” -- that is, without regard for the fate of suffering people.
***Biopower
Their impact claims are overgeneralized, non-causal assertions—modern biopolitics includes economic
pluralization and democracy that inhibits the rise to totalitarianism, even if it involves centralized state
coercion
O’Kane, 1997 (“Modernity, the Holocaust, and politics”, Economy and Society, February, ebsco)
Chosen policies cannot be relegated to the position of immediate condition (Nazis in power) in the explanation of the Holocaust.
Modern bureaucracy is not ‘intrinsically capable of genocidal action’ (Bauman 1989: 106). Centralized state
coercion has no natural move to terror. In the explanation of modern genocides it is chosen policies which play
the greatest part, whether in effecting bureaucratic secrecy, organizing forced labour, implementing a system of terror, harnessing
science and technology or introducing extermination policies, as means and as ends. As Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR
have shown, furthermore, those chosen policies of genocidal government turned away from and not towards
modernity. The choosing of policies, however, is not independent of circumstances. An analysis of the history of
each case plays an important part in explaining where and how genocidal governments come to power and analysis of political
institutions and structures also helps towards an understanding of the factors which act as obstacles to modern genocide. But it is not
just political factors which stand in the way of another Holocaust in modern society. Modern societies have not only pluralist
democratic political systems but also economic pluralism where workers are free to change jobs and bargain
wages and where independent firms, each with their own independent bureaucracies, exist in competition with statecontrolled enterprises. In modern societies this economic pluralism both promotes and is served by the open scientific method.
By ignoring competition and the capacity for people to move between organizations whether economic, political, scientific or social,
Bauman overlooks crucial but also very ‘ordinary and common’ attributes of truly modern societies. It is these very ordinary
and common attributes of modernity which stand in the way of modern genocides.
Turn – Rejecting biopower results in the impacts they isolate
Ojakangas, 2005 (Mike, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland “Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power Agamben and
Foucault,” Foucault Studies, May, http://www.foucault-studies.com/no2/ojakangas1.pdf)
In fact, the history of modern Western societies would be quite incomprehensible without taking into account that there exists a form
of power which refrains from killing but which nevertheless is capable of directing people’s lives. The effectiveness of
bio‐power can be seen lying precisely in that it refrains and withdraws before every demand of killing, even
though these demands would derive from the demand of justice. In bio‐ political societies, according to Foucault, capital punishment
could not be maintained except by invoking less the enormity of the crime itself than the monstrosity of the criminal: “One had the
right to kill those who represented a kind of biological danger to others.”112 However, given that the “right to kill” is precisely a
sovereign right, it can be argued that the bio‐political societies analyzed by Foucault were not entirely bio‐political. Perhaps, there
neither has been nor can be a society that is entirely bio‐political. Nevertheless, the fact is that present‐day European
societies have abolished capital punishment. In them, there are no longer exceptions. It is the very “right to kill” that
has been called into question. However, it is not called into question because of enlightened moral sentiments, but rather
because of the deployment of bio‐political thinking and practice. For all these reasons, Agamben’s thesis,
according to which the concentration camp is the fundamental bio‐political paradigm of the West, has to be
corrected.113 The bio‐political paradigm of the West is not the concentration camp, but, rather, the present‐day
welfare society and, instead of homo sacer, the paradigmatic figure of the bio‐political society can be seen, for
example, in the middle‐class Swedish social‐democrat. Although this figure is an object – and a product – of
the huge bio‐political machinery, it does not mean that he is permitted to kill without committing homicide. Actually, the fact
that he eventually dies, seems to be his greatest “crime” against the machinery. (In bio‐political societies, death is not only
“something to be hidden away,” but, also, as Foucault stresses, the most “shameful thing of all”.114) Therefore, he is not
exposed
to an unconditional threat of death, but rather to an unconditional retreat of all dying. In fact, the bio‐political
machinery does not want to threaten him, but to encourage him, with all its material and spiritual capacities, to
live healthily, to live long and to live happily – even when, in biological terms, he “should have been dead long ago”.115
This is because bio‐power is not bloody power over bare life for its own sake but pure power over all life for
the sake of the living. It is not power but the living, the condition of all life – individual as well as collective – that is the measure
of the success of bio‐power. Another important question is whether these bio‐political societies that started to take shape in the
seventeenth century (but did not crystallize until the 1980s) are ideologically, especially at the level of practical politics, collapsing –
to say nothing about the value of the would‐be collapse. One thing is clear, however. At the global level, there has not been, and
likely will not be, a completely bio‐political society. And to the extent that globalization takes place without
bio‐political considerations of health and happiness of individuals and populations, as it has done until now, it
is possible that our entire existence will someday be reduced to bare life, as has already occurred, for instance,
in Chechnya and Iraq. On that day, perhaps, when bio‐political care has ceased to exist, and we all live within
the sovereign ban of Empire without significance, we can only save ourselves, as Agamben suggests, “in perpetual
flight or a foreign land”116 – although there will hardly be either places to which to flee, or foreign lands.
Biopower Good – Extinction
Biopower does not result in bare-life – increase in biopower increases the potentialities of life
Ojakangas ‘05
(Mika, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Finland “Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power,” Foucault Studies, No. 2, p. 5-28,
May)
<Moreover, life as the object and the subject of bio‐power – given that life is everywhere, it becomes everywhere
– is in no way bare, but is as the synthetic notion of life implies, the multiplicity of the forms of life, from the nutritive life to the
intellectual life, from the biological levels of life to the political existence of man.
43
Instead of bare life, the life of bio‐power
44
is a plenitude of life, as Foucault puts it. Agamben is certainly right in saying that the production of bare life is, and has
been since Aristotle, a main strategy of the sovereign power to establish itself – to the same degree that sovereignty has been the main
fiction of juridico‐institutional thinking from Jean Bodin to Carl Schmitt. The sovereign power is, indeed, based on bare life because it
is capable of confronting life merely when stripped off and isolated from all forms of life, when the entire existence of a man is
reduced to a bare life and exposed to an unconditional threat of death. Life is undoubtedly sacred for the sovereign power in the sense
that Agamben defines it. It can be taken away without a homicide being committed. In the case of bio‐power, however, this does not
hold true. In order to function properly, bio‐power cannot reduce life to the level of bare life, because bare life is
life that can only be taken away or allowed to persist – which also makes understandable the vast critique of
sovereignty in the era of bio‐power. Bio‐power needs a notion of life that corresponds to its aims. What then is
45
the aim of bio‐power? Its aim is not to produce bare life but, as Foucault emphasizes, to “multiply life”, to
46
produce “extra‐life.” Bio‐power needs, in other words, a notion of life which enables it to accomplish this task. The modern
synthetic notion of life endows it with such a notion. It enables bio ‐power to “invest life through and through”, to “optimize forces,
47
aptitudes, and life in general without at the same time making them more difficult to govern.” It could be argued, of course, that
instead of bare life (zoe) the form of life (bios) functions as the foundation of bio‐power. However, there is no room either for a bios in
the modern bio‐political order because every bios has always been, as Agamben emphasizes, the result of the exclusion of zoe from
the political realm. The modern bio‐political order does not exclude anything – not even in the form of “inclusive
exclusion”. As a matter of fact, in the era of bio‐politics, life is already a bios that is only its own zoe. It has already
moved into the site that Agamben suggests as the remedy of the political pathologies of modernity, that is to say, into the site where
48
politics is freed from every ban and “a form of life is wholly exhausted in bare life.” At the end of Homo Sacer, Agamben gives this
life the name “form‐of‐life”, signifying “always and above all possibilities of life, always and above all power”, understood as
49
potentiality (potenza). According to Agamben, there would be no power that could have any hold over men’s existence if life were
understood as a “form‐of‐life”. However, it is precisely this life, life as untamed power and potentiality, that bio ‐power invests and
optimizes. If bio‐power multiplies and optimizes life, it does so, above all, by multiplying and optimizing
50
potentialities of life, by fostering and generating “forms‐of‐life”. >
Turn: Biopolitics is good – only seeing it as bad ignores the massive decrease in structural violence it has
caused and views power unidirectionally
Dickinson ‘04
(Edward Ross, University of Cincinnati, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About “Modernity,”
Central European History, vol. 37, no. 1, March)
<This understanding of the democratic and totalitarian potentials of biopolitics at the level of the state needs to be underpinned by a
reassessment of how biopolitical discourse operates in society at large, at the “prepolitical” level. I would like to try to offer here the
beginnings of a reconceptualization of biopolitical modernity, one that focuses less on the machinations of technocrats and experts,
and more on the different ways that biopolitical thinking circulated within German society more broadly. It is striking, then, that the
new model of German modernity is even more relentlessly negative than the old Sonderweg model. In that older model, premodern
elites were constantly triumphing over the democratic opposition. But at least there was an opposition; and in the long run, time was
on the side of that opposition, which in fact embodied the historical movement of modern- ization. In the new model, there is virtually
a biopolitical consensus.92 And that consensus is almost always fundamentally a nasty, oppressive thing, one that partakes in crucial
ways of the essential quality of National Socialism. Everywhere biopolitics is intrusive, technocratic, top-down, constraining, limiting.
Biopolitics is almost never conceived of— or at least discussed in any detail— as creating possibilities for people, as
expanding the range of their choices, as empowering them, or indeed as doing anything positive for them at all.
Of course, at the most simple-minded level, it seems to me that an assessment of the potentials of modernity that ignores
the ways in which biopolitics has made life tangibly better is somehow deeply flawed. To give just one example, infant
mortality in Germany in 1900 was just over 20 percent; or, in other words, one in five children died before reaching the age of one
year. By 1913, it was 15 percent; and by 1929 (when average real purchasing power was not significantly higher than in 1913) it was
only 9.7 percent.93 The expansion of infant health programs— an enormously ambitious, bureaucratic, medicalizing, and sometimes
intrusive, social engineering project— had a great deal to do with that change. It would be bizarre to write a history of biopolitical
modernity that ruled out an appreciation for how absolutely wonderful and astonishing this achievement— and any number of others
like it — really was. There was a reason for the “Machbarkeitswahn” of the early twentieth century: many marvelous things were in
fact becoming machbar. In that sense, it is not really accurate to call it a “Wahn” (delusion, craziness) at all; nor is it accurate to
focus only on the “inevitable” frustration of “delusions” of power. Even in the late 1920s, many social
engineers could and did look with great satisfaction on the changes they genuinely had the power to accomplish.
Concretely, moreover, I am not convinced that power operated in only one direction — from the top down— in
social work. Might we not ask whether people actually demanded welfare services, and whether and how social
workers and the state struggled to respond to those demands? David Crew and Greg Eghigian, for example, have given us detailed
studies of the micropolitics of welfare in the Weimar period in which it becomes clear that conflicts between welfare administrators
and their “clients” were sparked not only by heavyhanded intervention, but also by refusal to help.94 What is more, the specific nature
of social programs matters a great deal, and we must distinguish between the different dynamics (and histories) of
different programs. The removal of children from their families for placement in foster families or reformatories was bitterly hated
and stubbornly resisted by working-class families; but mothers brought their children to infant health clinics voluntarily and in
numbers, and after 1945 they brought their older children to counseling clinics, as well. In this instance, historians of the German
welfare state might profit from the “demand side” models of welfare development that are sometimes more explicitly explored in
some of the international literature.95 In fact, even where social workers really were attempting to limit or subvert the autonomy and
power of parents, I am not sure that their actions can be characterized only and exclusively as part of a microphysics of oppression.
Progressive child welfare advocates in Germany, particularly in the National Center for Child Welfare, waged a campaign in the
1920s to persuade German parents and educators to stop beating children with such ferocity, regularity, and nonchalance. They did so
because they feared the unintended physical and psychological effects of beatings, and implicitly because they believed physical
violence could compromise the development of the kind of autonomous, selfreliant subjectivity on which a modern state had to rely in
its citizenry.96 Or, to give another common example from the period, children removed from their families after being subjected by
parents or other relatives to repeated episodes of violence or rape were being manipulated by biopolitical technocrats, and were often
abused in new ways in institutions or foster families; but they were also being liberated. Sometimes some forms of the exercise
of power in society are in some ways emancipatory; and that is historically significant. Further, of course we must
ask whether it is really true that social workers’ and social agencies’ attempts to manipulate people worked. My own impression is that
social policy makers grew increasingly aware, between the 1870s and the 1960s, that their own ends could not be achieved unless they
won the cooperation of the targets of policy. And to do that, they had to offer people things that they wanted and needed.
Policies that incited resistance were — sometimes with glacial slowness, after stubborn and embittered struggles—de-
emphasized or even abandoned. Should we really see the history of social welfare policy as a more or less static
(because the same thing is always happening) history of the imposition of manipulative policies on populations? I believe a
more complex model of the evolution of social policy as a system of social interaction, involving conflicting and converging demands,
constant negotiation, struggle, and— above all— mutual learning would be more appropriate. This is a point Abram de Swaan and
others have made at some length; but it does not appear to have been built into our theory of modernity very systematically, least of all
in German history.97
Biopower Good – Deterrence
Biopower key to nuclear deterrence
William Bogard, professor at Whitman College, 1991 [Social Science Journal, Vol. 28 Issue 3 p. 325]
Although there are many places in the History of Sexuality that might indicate what Foucault had in mind was indeed what
we commonly mean by “deterrence,” the general context remains one of discipline, expanded to encompass the
issues of bio-power and the control over life. But there are a number of reasons to believe that such developments raise
problems for the economy of power relations that, while related to those of discipline, are nonetheless conceptually distinct. The
following appear to me to be the most relevant of those distinctions. With discipline, the problem of power is that of producing and
finalizing functions within a human multiplicity, to maximize utility through the strategic ordering of spatial and temporal relations,
ultimately to foster or disallow life itself. With deterrence, on the other hand, we might say that the problem is one of
reintroducing an asymmetry between opposing forces which have evolved too close to a point of equivalence or
parity, or to a saturation point where it is no longer possible to increase their respective utilities.
<continued…>
Where discipline sets forces in motion, deterrence indefinitely postpones the equivalence of forces. Here again,
the case of nuclear deterrence serves as a paradigm, but this is only because it is the most concentrated and
extreme form of a whole multiplicity of tactical maneuvers—of postponement, disinclination, destabilization, etc.—that,
like the disciplines in the 1 8th century, have evolved into a general mechanism of domination, and which today pervades
the most diverse institutional settings.
Attempts to move away from nuclear deterrence ensures WMD attacks against the United States – turns
case
Schneider ‘9
[Mark. Fellow @ National Institute for Public Policy. “Prevention Through Strength: Is Nuclear Superiority Enough” Comparative
Strategy, April 2009. EBSCO]
stern nuclear powers—the United States, Britain, and France—vastly outgun the rogue states in every measurable respect. However, this
ne may not be enough to ensure deterrence. The problem, as Dr. Keith B. Payne has observed, is that, “Effective deterrence threats must
credible to the opponents. Unfortunately, leaders of terrorist states and tyrants who recognize the appropriate priority we place on avoiding civilian
alties may not believe U.S. deterrent threats that would produce the high yields and moderate accuracies of the remaining Cold War arsenal.”36 The problem
mplicated by the ceaseless efforts of the political left to delegitimize nuclear deterrence. In the pre–World War II era, or even during the late Cold War, the
of chemical and biological agents by a minor nation against a great power would have been suicidal . Today, however, we have to take
threat of WMD attacks, even by a much weaker nation, very seriously in significant part because of the delegitimization of nuclear
errence in the Western world. In my view, the delegitimization of nuclear deterrence by the political left is one of the most serious
blems we face in dealing with WMD proliferation. The left-wing view of nuclear weapons in the United States has moved, to some degree, into the
stream. Distinguished former American leaders such a George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, despite the manifest
ure of arms control to constrain the WMD threat, call for “A world free of Nuclear Weapons” because “ . . . the United States can
ress almost all of its military objectives by non-nuclear means.”37 This view ignores the complete lack of plausibility of creating a
fication regime involving the abolition of nuclear weapons with acceptable risk, the consequences of cheating and the lack of any
dible response option if it is actually discovered that an authoritarian regime had retained a sizable nuclear stockpile, and the military
lication of the other types of weapons of mass destruction—chemical and biological (CBW) attack, including the advanced agents now available to
ntial enemies of the United States and our allies. A credible U.S. nuclear deterrent is necessary to deal with existing threats to the very
vival of the U.S., its allies, and its armed forces if they are subject to an attack using WMD. As former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and
er Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutch wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “However, the goal, even the aspirational goal, of eliminating all nuclear
apons is counterproductive. It will not advance substantive progress on nonproliferation; and it risks compromising the value that nuclear
pons continue to contribute, through deterrence, to U.S. security and international stability.”38 If WMD attacks were actually made against Western
s, the reaction to them by civilian populations would likely be extreme but it would be too late to impact deterrence . There would likely be
whelming demand by the affected populations to make the attacks stop. The U.S. National Strategy for Combating the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass
ruction recognized that we must respond to WMD attack rapidly and that, “The primary objective of a response is to disrupt an imminent
ck or an attack in progress, and eliminate the threat of future attacks .”39 In the words of Dr. William Graham, Chairman of the Congressional
tromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission: Failure to provide a credible deterrent will result in a wave of nuclear proliferation with serious
onal security implications. When dealing with the rogue states the issue is not the size of the U.S. nuclear deterrent but the credibility of its use in
onse to chemical or biological weapons use and its ability to conduct low collateral damage nuclear attacks against WMD capabilities and delivery systems
ding very hard underground facilities for purposes of damage limitation. We must also have the capability to respond promptly. The United States nuclear
rantee is a major deterrent to proliferation. If we do not honor that guarantee, or devalue it, many more nations will obtain nuclear
apons.40 There are only two ways to achieve a rapid end to a conflict: surrender or, alternatively, prompt and effective counterforce
kes designed to limit damage by destroying the adversary’s offensive capability. In such a charged atmosphere there likely would be demands in many states
massive retaliation against the attacker. Prewar debates about nuclear strategy, proportionality, and international law may vanish once the scope of the tragedy
fully appreciated.
Biopower Good – Disease
Government surveillance is good–it solves flu pandemics that risk extinction
Knight ridder 4-15-06
Given the lack of an adequate vaccine, experts at the conference stressed the importance of a strong surveillance
system to detect a local flu outbreak promptly, before it can spread into a pandemic. Such a system helped limit the
SARS epidemic, which killed 774 people in Canada and Asia in 2003. "We need a computerized system to collect events and spot
clusters," said Roy Anderson, an epidemiologist at London's Imperial College. "Two days is the critical threshold for a quarantine to
control H5N1." "The key to our survival in the next two or three years is good surveillance," Shaw said. "We need
to be on a wartime footing," Gellin told the conference. "Innovation comes out of crisis."
Mutated disease cause extinction
Discover 2000 (“Twenty Ways the World Could End” by Corey Powell in Discover Magazine, October 2000,
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld)
If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always
coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th
century; influenza took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is
still going strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the
United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to
antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens.
International travel means diseases can spread faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert
who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim against the current
of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that spreads so fast we are
caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological
pot. About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross MacPhee of the American
Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into the
New World.
Biopower Good – Environment
Our economy and government is unsustainable – Lack of restraint on liberty causes extinction
Ophuls, former member of the U.S. Foreign Service, prof political science at NU, 1996 [William, Part One,
“Designing Sustainable Societies,” Ch 2 “Unsustainable Liberty, Sustainable Freedom,” Building Sustainable
Societies, editor Dennis Pirages, p 33-35]
Sustainable development is an oxymoron. Modern political economy in any form is unsustainable, precisely
because it involves “development” –that is, more and more people consuming more and more goods with the aid of
ever more powerful technologies. Such an economy produces nothing, it merely exploits nature. Such an economy
reckons without the laws of thermodynamics and other basic physical laws: these ordain limitation as the price of life and guarantee
that the invisible hand will generate the tragedy of the commons.2 To put it another way, such an economy is based on stolen
goods, deferred payments, and hidden costs; it continues to exist or even thrive today only because we do not
account for what we steal from nature or for what posterity will have to pay for our pleasures or for what we
sweep under the ecological carpet. In sum, development as commonly understood is intrinsically unsustainable. In
addition, to treat sustainability as if it were a merely technical problem- how can we make economies compatible
with ecology? – is to miss the point almost entirely. The ecological crisis calls into question not our means, but
our ends; not our ability to sustain so-called development, but its very meaning and purpose.3 Therefore, achieving
a form of development that is truly sustainable over the long term – that is, one does not involve more and more people
consuming more and more goods with the aid of ever more powerful technologies – will necessarily require a radical change
in our basic values, perhaps even in our very notion of “civilization.” Above all, the standard discussion of sustainability
begs an enormous question. That is, even supposing that development as usual were technically possible and
morally desirable, would it be politically feasible? I believe the answer is no: the basic premises of modern political
economy are not only ecologically self-destructive but socially and psychologically damaging as well, and the
aftermath of this damage is a large part of the reason that governance is in such trouble almost everywhere in
the modern world today. In short, the most critical challenge confronting us is not economic but political
sustainability – for moral and social collapse will hit us sooner and with more devastating effect than the
ultimate ecological collapse. To reduce the question of political sustainability to more manageable proportions, I propose to
focus on the tension between liberty and freedom, for this core political issue illuminates the profound challenge to
modern values that lurks within the ecological crisis. In effect, I shall respond to the question Ivan Illich raised about the
developed world’s near total dependence on so-called energy slaves: “The energy crisis focuses concern on the scarcity of fodder for
these slaves. I prefer to ask whether freemen need them.”4 I begin with Isaiah Berlin’s famous distinction between negative
and positive freedom.5 The former means the freedom to do what we want, provided only that our acts do not directly
injure others; in other words, what liberty usually denotes in the modern, or “liberal,” tradition (so this is the term I shall
use from now on.) By contrast, positive freedom means subordinating desires to ideals in order to achieve some more
virtuous or nobler state of being that better accords with our “higher nature.” Freedom thus resides in selffulfillment, not self-indulgence: to promote the former and check the latter, it follows that restraints on
individual liberty may be necessary.
Government authority prevents ecological extinction
Ophuls, 1977 (William, Prof. of Political Science at Northwestern U, “Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity,”
pg. 151-152)
It therefore appears that if under conditions of ecological scarcity individuals rationally pursue their material
self-interest unrestrained by a common authority that upholds the common interest, the eventual result is
bound to be common environmental ruin. In that case, we must have political institutions that preserve the
ecological common good from destruction by unrestrained human acts. The problem that the environmental
crisis forces us to confront is, in fact, at the core of political philosophy: how to protect or advance the interests
of the collectivity, when the individuals that make it up (or enough of them to create a problem) behave (or are impelled to behave) in
a selfish, greedy, and quarrelsome fashion. The only solution is a sufficient measure of coercion (see Box 4-2). Following Hobbes, a
certain minimum level of ecological order or peace must be established; following Rousseau, a certain minimum level of ecological virtue must be imposed by our political institutions. It hardly need be said that these conclusions about the tragedy of the commons
the individual, possessing an individual alienable right to pursue
happiness in a basically laissez-faire system, will inevitably produce the ruin of the commons. Accordingly, the individualistic basis
of society, the concept of inalienable rights, the purely self-defined pursuit of happiness, liberty as maximum freedom of action, and
laissez faire itself all become problematic, requiring major modification or perhaps even abandonment if we wish to avert inexorable
environmental degredation and eventual extinction as a civilization. Certainly, democracy as we know it cannot conceivably survive. This is an extreme conclusion, but it seems to follow
radically challenge fundamental American and Western values. Under conditions of ecological scarcity
from the extremity of the ecological predicament industrial man has created for himself. Even Hobbes' severest critics concede that he is most cogent when stark political choices are faced, for self-interest moderated by self-restraint may not be workable when extreme
when social or
natural disaster leads to a breakdown in the ordered patterns of society that ordinarily restrain men, even the most libertarian governments have never
hesitated to impose martial law as the only alternative to anarchy. Therefore, if nuclear holocaust rather than mere war, or anarchy rather than a moderate level of disorder, or destruction of the biosphere rather than mere loss
conditions prevail. Thus theorists have long analyzed international relations in Hobbesian terms, because the state of nature mirrors the state of armed peace existing between competing nation-states owing obedience to no higher power. Also,
of amenity is the issue, the extremity of Hobbes' analysis fits reality, and it becomes difficult to avoid his conclusions.
Biopower Good – Heg
Biopolitics is key to maintaining US hegemony globally
Reid 2005 (Julian; Professor of International Relations – University of Sussex) “The Biopolitics of the War on Terror” Third World
Quarterly v. 26 n. 2 June
The defining feature of the modern international system has been the ongoing conflict between the sovereign
powers of nation-states that constituted it at its outset and the development of bipolitical organs generated in
pursuit of an ethical commitment to the enfranchisement of a universalised humanity. Yet the account of humanity
rendered in the institutionalisation of biopolitical practices and through the creation of agencies for the defence of the rights of
humanity in universal terms is itself, a statically imperial one. Defining humanity in accordance with internationalised laws, reducing
it to another imperial injunction, biopolitical modernity plays into the hands of modern sovereignty. Coordinating its global
deterritorializations of humanity via a concomitant universalisation realises the conditions for the imposition of a new form of
transcendent sovereign power, also, on a global scale. Global deterritorializations beget global reterritorializations. The idea and
pursuit of a universally coded and legally enfranchised humanity invokes necessarily the idea and pursuit of a
universal state. It is for these reasons that we cannot account for the globality with which the sovereign power
of the United States is asserted today other than in the context of a global biopolitics.
Nuclear war.
Khalilzad, Rand Corporation 95 (Zalmay Khalilzad, Spring 1995. RAND Corporation. “Losing the Moment?” The Washington
Quarterly 18.2, Lexis.)
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to
multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not
as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages.
First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of
law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as
nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S.
leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to
avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S.
leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
Biopower Good – Science
Biopolitics is key to Modern Science and Medicine
Rose 2001 (Nikolas; Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College – University of London) “The Politics of Life Itself” Theory,
Culture & Society Vol. 18(6): 1–30
THE BIOLOGICAL existence of human beings has become political in novel ways. The object, target and stake of this new ‘vital’
politics are human life itself. How might we analyse it?1 I would like to start from a well known remark by Michel Foucault, in the
first volume of The History of Sexuality: ‘For millennia man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living being with the additional
capacity for political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics calls his existence as a living being into question’ (Foucault,
1979: 188). Foucault’s thesis, as is well known, was that, in Western societies at least, we lived in a ‘biopolitical’ age. Since the 18th
century, political power has no longer been exercised through the stark choice of allowing life or giving death. Political authorities, in
alliance with many others, have taken on the task of the management of life in the name of the well-being of the population as a vital
order and of each of its living subjects. Politics now addresses the vital processes of human existence: the size and quality of the
population; reproduction and human sexuality; conjugal, parental and familial relations; health and disease; birth and death.
Biopolitics was inextricably bound up with the rise of the life sciences, the human sciences, clinical medicine. It
has given birth to techniques, technologies, experts and apparatuses for the care and administration of the life of
each and all, from town planning to health services. And it has given a kind of ‘vitalist’ character to the
existence of individuals as political subjects.
Western Science is key to survival
Locke 1997 (Edwin A.; Professor of Management – University of Maryland-College Park and Senior Writer – Ayn Rand Institute)
“The Greatness of Western Civilization”
www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr001=7xcem0b1i1.app7a&page=NewsArticle&id=6164&news_iv_ctrl=1077
The triumph of reason and rights made possible the full development and application of science and technology
and ultimately modern industrial society. Reason and rights freed man's mind from the tyranny of religious dogma and freed
man's productive capacity from the tyranny of state control. Scientific and technological progress followed in several
interdependent steps. Men began to understand the laws of nature. They invented an endless succession of new products. And they
engaged in large-scale production, that is, the creation of wealth, which in turn financed and motivated further invention and
production. As a result, horse-and-buggies were replaced by automobiles, wagon tracks by steel rails, candles by electricity. At last,
after millennia of struggle, man became the master of his environment. The result of the core achievements of Western
civilization has been an increase in freedom, wealth, health, comfort, and life expectancy unprecedented in the
history of the world. The achievements were greatest in the country where the principles of reason and rights were implemented
most consistently--the United States of America. In contrast, it was precisely in those Eastern and African countries which did not
embrace reason, rights, and technology where people suffered (and still suffer) most from both natural and man-made disasters
(famine, poverty, illness, dictatorship) and where life-expectancy was (and is) lowest. It is said that primitives live "in harmony with
nature," but in reality they are simply victims of the vicissitudes of nature--if some dictator does not kill them first. The greatness of
the West is not an "ethnocentric" prejudice; it is an objective fact. This assessment is based on the only proper standard for judging a
government or a society: the degree to which its core values are pro- or anti-life. Pro-life cultures acknowledge and respect
man's nature as a rational being who must discover and create the conditions which his survival and happiness require--
which means that they advocate reason, rights, freedom, and technological progress. Despite its undeniable
triumphs, Western civilization is by no means secure. Its core principles are under attack from every direction--by
religious fanatics, by dictators and, most disgracefully, by Western intellectuals, who are denouncing reason in the name of
skepticism, rights in the name of special entitlements, and progress in the name of environmentalism. We are heading rapidly
toward the dead end of nihilism. The core values and achievements of the West and America must be asserted
proudly and defended to the death. Our lives depend on them.
Biopower Good – Terrorism
State surveillance is key to solve terrorism and bioweapon attacks
Kerr 2000 (Donald, Assistant Director of the FBI, Laboratory Division, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
September 6 http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress00/kerr090600.htm)
Terrorist groups are increasingly using new information technology (IT) and the Internet to formulate plans,
raise funds, spread propaganda, and communicate securely. In his statement on the worldwide threat in the year 2000,
Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified that terrorist groups, "including Hezbollah, HAMAS, the Abu Nidal
organization, and Bin Laden's al Qa'ida organization are using computerized files, E-mail, and encryption to support their operations."
As one example, convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, stored detailed plans to
destroy United States airliners on encrypted files on his laptop computer. Other terrorist groups, such as the Internet Black Tigers
(who are reportedly affiliated with the Tamil Tigers), engage in attacks on foreign government websites and E-mail servers. "Cyber
terrorism" -- the use of Cyber tools to shut down critical national infrastructures (such as energy, telecommunications, transportation,
or government operations) for the purpose of coercing or intimidating a government or civilian population -- is emerging as a very real
threat. Recently, the FBI uncovered a plot to break into National Guard armories and to steal the armaments and
explosives necessary to simultaneously destroy multiple power transmission facilities in the Southern United States.
After introducing a cooperating witness into the inner circle of this domestic terrorist group, it became clear that many of the
communications of the group were occurring via E-mail. As the investigation closed, computer evidence disclosed that the
group was downloading information about Ricin, the third most deadly toxin in the world. Without the fortunate
ability to place a person in this group, the need and technological capability to intercept their E-mail
communications' content and addressing information would have been imperative, if the FBI were to be able to
detect and prevent these acts and successfully prosecute.
Terrorism Causes Extinction
Sid-Ahmed, political analyst 04 (Mohamed, Managing Editor for Al-Ahali, “Extinction!” August 26-September 1, Issue no. 705,
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm)
What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would further exacerbate
the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living. Societies would close in on
themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between civilisations and religions
would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness
that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack
succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional
war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear pollution
infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.
***Intervention
Peacekeeping intervention Prevents Nuclear War.
Dean 1995 (Jonathan is an advisor on international security, Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists, “A stronger U.N. Strengthens America”
Online, TheBulletin.org)
Experts throughout the world expect growing population pressures and increasing environmental stress to
develop over the coming decades into intense, far-reaching social unrest and regional conflict. Economic
development is the solution, however slow and uncertain it may be in coming. But the world also needs effective regional
conflict-prevention procedures. Left on its own, regional violence can lead to confrontation and even war
between the great powers, including the United States, as might occur, for example, in the event of conflict between Ukraine and
Russia or between China and its neighbors. In the final analysis, unchecked regional violence and the fear of further
violence will lead more states to develop nuclear weapons. In past decades, this process occurred in Israel, South
Africa, India, Pakistan, Iraq, and presumably, in North Korea. A world with 20 or 30 nuclear weapon states would
not only make a more effective global security system impossible, it would lead the present nuclear weapon
states to modernize and increase their weapons-and it would markedly increase the vulnerability of the United
States to direct attack. Instead of shrugging at human fallibility, accepting war as inevitable, and reacting after it happens, U.S.
policy should aim at establishing an international peacekeeping system that can head off an increasing number
of conflicts.
Militaristic solutions are the only way to contain Iran by striking them – complacency only delays an
inevitable war with more casualties
Podhoretz, 7 (Norman Podhoretz, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, “The
Case for Bombing Iran.” Commentary Magazine, June 2007,
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.html?id=10882&page=all )
It was thanks to Munich that “appeasement” became one of the dirtiest words in the whole of our political
vocabulary. Yet appeasement had always been an important and entirely respectable tool of diplomacy,
signifying the avoidance of war through the alleviation of the other side’s grievances. If Hitler had been what his eventual
victims imagined he was—that is, a conventional statesman pursuing limited aims and using the threat of war only as a way of
strengthening his bargaining position—it would indeed have been possible to appease him and thereby to head off the outbreak of
another war. But Hitler was not a conventional statesman and, although for tactical reasons he would sometimes pretend
otherwise, he did not have limited aims. He was a revolutionary seeking to overturn the going international
system and to replace it with a new order dominated by Germany, which also meant the political culture of Nazism. As such , he
offered only two choices: resistance or submission. Finding this reality unbearable, the world persuaded itself that there was
a way out, a third alternative, in negotiations. But given Hitler’s objectives, and his barely concealed lust for war,
negotiating with him could not conceivably have led to peace. It could have had only one outcome, which was
to buy him more time to start a war under more favorable conditions. As most historians now agree, if he had been
taken at his own word about his true intentions, he could have been stopped earlier and defeated at an infinitely
lower cost. Which brings us back to Ahmadinejad. Like Hitler, he is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the
going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religiopolitical culture of Islamofascism. Like Hitler, too, he is entirely open about his intentions, although—again like Hitler—
he sometimes pretends that he wants nothing more than his country’s just due. In the case of Hitler in 1938, this
pretense took the form of claiming that no further demands would be made if sovereignty over the Sudetenland were transferred from
Czechoslovakia to Germany. In the case of Ahmadinejad, the pretense takes the form of claiming that Iran is
building nuclear facilities only for peaceful purposes and not for the production of bombs. But here we come upon an
interesting difference between then and now. Whereas in the late 1930’s almost everyone believed, or talked himself into believing, that Hitler
was telling the truth when he said he had no further demands to make after Munich, no one believes that Ahmadinejad is telling the truth when he says that Iran has no wish to develop a
nuclear arsenal. In addition, virtually everyone agrees that it would be best if he were stopped, only not, God forbid, with military force—not now, and not ever. _____________ But if military
force is ruled out, what is supposed to do the job? Well, to begin with, there is that good old standby, diplomacy. And so, for three-and-a-half years, even pre-dating the accession of
Ahmadinejad to the presidency, the diplomatic gavotte has been danced with Iran, in negotiations whose carrot-and-stick details no one can remember—not even, I suspect, the parties
involved. But since, to say it again, Ahmadinejad is a revolutionary with unlimited aims and not a statesman with whom we can “do business,” all this negotiating has had the same result as
Munich had with Hitler. That is, it has bought the Iranians more time in which they have moved closer and closer to developing nuclear weapons. Then there are sanctions. As it happens,
sanctions have very rarely worked in the past. Worse yet, they have usually ended up hurting the hapless people of the targeted country while leaving the leadership unscathed. Nevertheless,
much hope has been invested in them as a way of bringing Ahmadinejad to heel. Yet thanks to the resistance of Russia and China, both of which have reasons of their own to go easy on Iran, it
has proved enormously difficult for the Security Council to impose sanctions that could even conceivably be effective. At first, the only measures to which Russia and China would agree were
much too limited even to bite. Then, as Iran continued to defy Security Council resolutions and to block inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was bound by
treaty to permit, not even the Russians and the Chinese were able to hold out against stronger sanctions. Once more, however, these have had little or no effect on the progress Iran is making
toward the development of a nuclear arsenal. On the contrary: they, too, have bought the Iranians additional time in which to move ahead. Since hope springs eternal, some now believe that the
answer lies in more punishing sanctions. This time, however, their purpose would be not to force Iran into compliance, but to provoke an internal uprising against Ahmadinejad and the regime
as a whole. Those who advocate this course tell us that the “mullocracy” is very unpopular, especially with young people, who make up a majority of Iran’s population. They tell us that these
young people would like nothing better than to get rid of the oppressive and repressive and corrupt regime under which they now live and to replace it with a democratic system. And they tell
us, finally, that if Iran were so transformed, we would have nothing to fear from it even if it were to acquire nuclear weapons. Once upon a time, under the influence of Bernard Lewis and
others I respect, I too subscribed to this school of thought. But after three years and more of waiting for the insurrection they assured us back then was on the verge of erupting, I have lost
confidence in their prediction. Some of them blame the Bush administration for not doing enough to encourage an uprising, which is why they have now transferred their hopes to sanctions that
would inflict so much damage on the Iranian economy that the entire populace would rise up against the rulers. Yet whether or not this might happen under such circumstances, there is simply
no chance of getting Russia and China, or the Europeans for that matter, to agree to the kind of sanctions that are the necessary precondition. _____________ At the outset I stipulated that the
In exerting
pressure for reform on countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, these nonmilitary instruments are the right ones
to use. But it should be clear by now to any observer not in denial that Iran is not such a country. As we know from
weapons with which we are fighting World War IV are not all military—that they also include economic, diplomatic, and other nonmilitary instruments of power.
Iran’s defiance of the Security Council and the IAEA even while the United States has been warning Ahmadinejad that “all options”
remain on the table, ultimatums and threats of force can no more stop him than negotiations and sanctions have
managed to do. Like them, all they accomplish is to buy him more time. In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if
Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military
force—any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938. Since a ground invasion of
Iran must be ruled out for many different reasons, the job would have to be done, if it is to be done at all, by a campaign of
air strikes. Furthermore, because Iran’s nuclear facilities are dispersed, and because some of them are underground, many sorties
and bunker-busting munitions would be required. And because such a campaign is beyond the capabilities of Israel, and the will, let
alone the courage, of any of our other allies, it could be carried out only by the United States. * Even then, we would probably be
unable to get at all the underground facilities, which means that, if Iran were still intent on going nuclear, it would not have to start
over again from scratch. But a bombing campaign would without question set back its nuclear program for years to
come, and might even lead to the overthrow of the mullahs.
Strikes don’t go nuclear.
Dr Dan Plesch, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies'Centre for International Studies and
Diplomacy, and Martin Butcher, international consultant on security politics, September 2007, Considering a war
with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East, http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/IranStudy082807a.pdf
The US has strategic forces prepared to launch massive strikes on Iran with hours of the order being given. Although there is clear
evidence that nuclear weapons use is being given serious political consideration, actual use is unlikely given the lack of effectiveness
of nuclear weapons against concealed and buried targets and the negative political consequences of such use. The aim of the new
Triad and the Global Strike capability developed under the Bush administration is stated to be making nuclear weapons use less likely.
And, even if strikes are nuclear, there’ll be no escalation.
Dave Schuler, Glittering Eye analyst, 2007, Restating the U.S. Policy of Nuclear Deterrence,
http://theglitteringeye.com/?p=459
* A nuclear retaliation Iran in response to a terrorist nuclear attack would inevitably draw France, Russia, and China to enter the
conflict. To believe this you must believe that France, Russia, and China will act irrationally. There is absolutely no reason to believe
that this is the case. All three nations know that their intervention against the U. S. would result in total annihilation. There are other
issues as well and let’s examine the two distinct cases: Russia on the one hand and France and China on the other. As a major nonGulf producer of oil Russia would be in a position to benefit enormously in case of a disruption of Gulf oil production or shipment.
That being the case they would publicly deplore a retaliation against Iran but privately rejoice. Both France and China are in an
extremely delicate position. A nuclear response by either would result in total annihilation and, equally importantly, wouldn’t keep
the oil flowing. Lack of a blue water navy means that both nations are completely at the mercy of the United States’s (or more
specifically the U. S. Navy’s) willingness to keep shipments of oil moving out of the Gulf. China is particularly vulnerable since it has
only about two weeks’ worth of strategic oil reserves. Neither France nor China has any real ability to project military force other than
nuclear force beyond their borders. They’d be upset. But they’re in no position to do anything about it.
Iran can’t retaliate against attack.
Jeff Burt, November 28, 2007, Newsmax, “Expert: U.S. Attack on Iran Would Have Terrible Consequences,”
http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/U.S_Iran_attack/2007/11/28/52858.html
Still, if struck, there is little Iran could do to retaliate. Its air force is a sorry collection of old U.S.-made aircraft left over from the
Iran-Iraq War, some Russian-made fighters and homebuilt Saeqeh jets modeled after the American F5 Tiger, an aircraft last updated in
the 1960s and rejected by the U.S. Air Force, he says. Iran could foment terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Israel, but, at best, they
would be ad hoc events with little strategic impact, he adds. “Coordinated terrorist attacks are very, very difficult to organize,” van
Creveld tells Newsmax. “There may be an occasional act of terrorism … but it won’t make any difference. Tomorrow, if Iranians blew
up the White House, would it make any difference in the United States’ ability to wage war against Iran? Not really.” NOTE: van
Creveld = professor of military history and strategy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem
A. Attacking Iran is feasible and successful – we only need to delay for a small period of time to doom the
entire program.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, resident fellow @ American Enterprise Institute, 7-10-2006, Cognitive Dissonance: The State of America's
Iran Policy, http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.24637/pub_detail.asp
Yes, it will be difficult to bomb all of the sites in Iran, but the most critical are well known--Natanz, Isfahan, Arak, Tehran, and
Bushehr. These facilities took the Iranians years to build under ideal circumstances. Under siege, building new sites clandestinely will
be a demanding, time-consuming task. The issue isn’t feasibility, but the determination to strike whenever required since the
assessment of risk does not allow any other course of action. Delay the program by several years, and you may end it. Delay the
program, and you could deny the nuke to extremists who would’ve used or exploited it. (A parallel with Saddam Hussein after Osirak
comes to mind.) Supervening events can always change history to your advantage. If you think the risks of a clerical bomb are too
high--that a nuclear weapon in the hands of Islamic militants in an age of increasing Islamic terrorism is unacceptable--then you will
be in favor of striking, knowing the grave repercussions from such strikes.
B. That solves nuclear war
Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress, former Senior Associate and Director for NonProliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Uri Leventer,
graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, August 14, 2007, The International Herald Tribune, “The Middle
East's nuclear surge: Recipe for war,” p. Lexis
Iran is still probably five to 10 years away from gaining the ability to make nuclear fuel or nuclear bombs. But its program is already
sending nuclear ripples through the Middle East. The race to match Iran's capabilities has begun. Almost a dozen Muslim nations
have declared their interest in nuclear energy programs in the past year. This unprecedented demand for nuclear programs is all the
more disturbing paired with the unseemly rush of nuclear salesman eager to supply the coveted technology. While U.S. officials were
reaching a new nuclear agreement with India last month, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France signed a nuclear cooperation deal with
Libya and agreed to help the United Arab Emirates launch its own civilian nuclear program. Indicating that this could be just the
beginning of a major sale and supply effort, Sarkozy declared that the West should trust Arab states with nuclear technology. Sarkozy
has a point: No one can deny Arab states access to nuclear technology, especially as they are acquiring it under existing international
rules and agreeing to the inspection of International Atomic Energy Agency officials. But is this really about meeting demands for
electric power and desalinization plants? There is only one nuclear power reactor in the entire Middle East – the one under
construction in Busher, Iran. In all of Africa there are only two, both in South Africa. (Israel has a research reactor near Dimona, as do
several other states.) Suddenly, after multiple energy crises over the 60 years of the nuclear age, these countries that control over onefourth of the world's oil supplies are investing in nuclear power programs. This is not about energy; it is a nuclear hedge against
Iran. King Adbdullah of Jordan admitted as much in a January 2007 interview when he said: ''The rules have changed on the nuclear
subject throughout the whole region. . . . After this summer everybody's going for nuclear programs.'' He was referring to the war in
Lebanon last year between Israel and Hezbollah, perceived in the region as evidence of Iran's growing clout. Other leaders are not as
frank in public, but confide similar sentiments in private conversations. Here is where the nuclear surge currently stands. Egypt and
Turkey, two of Iran's main rivals, are in the lead. Both have flirted with nuclear weapons programs in the past and both have
announced ambitious plans for the construction of new power reactors. Gamal Mubarak, son of the current Egyptian president and his
likely successor, says the country will build four power reactors, with the first to be completed within the next 10 years. Turkey will
build three new reactors, with the first beginning later this year. Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia and the five other members of the
Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) at the end of 2006 ''commissioned a joint
study on the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.'' Algeria and Russia quickly signed an agreement on nuclear
development in January 2007, with France, South Korea, China, and the United States also jockeying for nuclear sales to this oil state.
Jordan announced that it, too, wants nuclear power. King Abdullah met Canada's prime minister in July and discussed the purchase of
heavy water Candu reactors. Morocco wants assistance from the atomic energy agency to acquire nuclear technology and in March
sponsored an international conference on Physics and Technology of Nuclear Reactors. Finally, the Arab League has provided an
overall umbrella for these initiatives when, at the end of its summit meeting in March, it ''called on the Arab states to expand the use of
peaceful nuclear technology in all domains serving continuous development.'' Perhaps these states are truly motivated to join the
''nuclear renaissance'' promoted by the nuclear power industry and a desire to counter global warming. But the main message to the
West from these moderate Arab and Muslim leaders is political, not industrial. ''We can't trust you,'' they are saying, ''You are failing
to contain Iran and we need to prepare.'' It is not too late to prove them wrong. Instead of seeing this nuclear surge as a new market,
the countries with nuclear technology to sell have a moral and strategic obligation to ensure that their business does not result in the
Middle East going from a region with one nuclear weapon state – Israel – to one with three, four, or five nuclear nations. If the
existing territorial, ethnic, and political disputes continue unresolved, this is a recipe for nuclear war.
( ) Scenario planning is possible in a catastrophe-ridden world—it’s vital to make predictions about the
future.
Kurasawa, 04 (Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Fuyuki, Constellations Volume 11, No 4,
2004). SAS
Independently of this contractualist justification, global civil society actors are putting forth a number of
arguments countering temporal myopia on rational grounds. They make the case that no generation, and no part
of the world, is immune from catastrophe. Complacency and parochialism are deeply flawed in that even if we
earn a temporary reprieve, our children and grandchildren will likely not be so fortunate unless steps are taken
today. Similarly, though it might be possible to minimize or contain the risks and harms of actions to faraway
places over the short-term, parrying the eventual blowback or spillover effect is improbable. In fact, as I argued
in the previous section, all but the smallest and most isolated of crises are rapidly becoming globalized due to
the existence of transnational circuits of ideas, images, people, and commodities. Regardless of where they live,
our descendants will increasingly be subjected to the impact of environmental degradation, the spread of
epidemics, gross North-South socioeconomic inequalities, refugee flows, civil wars, and genocides. What may
have previously appeared to be temporally and spatially remote risks are ‘coming home to roost’ in ever faster
cycles. In a word, then, procrastination makes little sense for three principal reasons: it exponentially raises the
costs of eventual future action; it reduces preventive options; and it erodes their effectiveness. With the
foreclosing of long-range alternatives, later generations may be left with a single course of action, namely, that
of merely reacting to large-scale emergencies as they arise. We need only think of how it gradually becomes
more difficult to control climate change, let alone reverse it, or to halt mass atrocities once they are underway.
Preventive foresight is grounded in the opposite logic, whereby the decision to work through perils today
greatly enhances both the subsequent room for maneuver and the chances of success. Humanitarian,
environmental, and techno-scientific activists have convincingly shown that we cannot afford not to engage in
preventive labor. Moreover, I would contend that farsighted cosmopolitanism is not as remote or idealistic a
prospect as it appears to some, for as Falk writes, “[g]lobal justice between temporal communities, however,
actually seems to be increasing, as evidenced by various expressions of greater sensitivity to past injustices and
future dangers.”36 Global civil society may well be helping a new generational self-conception take root,
according to which we view ourselves as the provisional caretakers of our planetary commons. Out of our sense
of responsibility for the well-being of those who will follow us, we come to be more concerned about the here
and now.