1AC
Contention {X}: Economy [1/2] (3:50)
Decline goes nuclear- stats
Royal ‘10 (Director of CTR Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction – U.S. Department of
Defense, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises”, Economics of
War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, Ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a
moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in
this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins
(2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms
in the global economy are
associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to
the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin.
1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a
relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge
a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership
cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections
between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of
trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security
behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view
of future trade relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy
resources, the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially
be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third,
others have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find
a
strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic
downturn. They write: The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic
conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to
which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with
an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to
external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. "Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing
unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased
incentives to fabricate external military
conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find
supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller
(1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than
autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic
support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak
Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates
economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with
external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not
featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.
Collapse causes global transition wars – turns their impacts
Panzner ‘8 (Faculty at the New York Institute of Finance, 25-year veteran of the global stock, bond,
and currency markets who has worked in New York and London for HSBC, Soros Funds, ABN Amro,
Dresdner Bank, and JPMorgan Chase (Michael, Financial Armageddon: Protect Your Future from
Economic Collapse, Revised and Updated Edition, p. 136-138, googlebooks)
Continuing calls for curbs on the flow of finance and trade will inspire the United States and other nations to spew forth protectionist legislation
like the notorious Smoot-Hawley
bill. Introduced at the start of the Great Depression, it triggered a series of tit-for-tat
economic responses, which many commentators believe helped turn a serious economic downturn into a
prolonged and devastating global disaster, But if history is any guide, those lessons will have been long
forgotten during the next collapse. Eventually, fed by a mood of desperation and growing public anger, restrictions on trade,
finance, investment, and immigration will almost certainly intensify. Authorities and ordinary citizens will likely scrutinize the cross-border
movement of Americans and outsiders alike, and lawmakers may even call for a general crackdown on nonessential travel. Meanwhile, many
nations will make transporting or sending funds to other countries exceedingly difficult. As desperate officials try to limit the fallout from
decades of ill-conceived, corrupt, and reckless policies, they will introduce controls on foreign exchange, foreign individuals and companies
seeking to acquire certain American infrastructure assets, or trying to buy property and other assets on the (heap thanks to a rapidly
depreciating dollar, will be stymied by limits on investment by noncitizens. Those efforts will cause spasms to ripple across economies and
markets, disrupting global payment, settlement, and clearing mechanisms. All of this will, of course, continue to undermine business confidence
and consumer spending. In a world of lockouts and lockdowns, any link that transmits systemic financial pressures across markets through
arbitrage or portfolio-based risk management, or that allows diseases to be easily spread from one country to the next by tourists and wildlife,
or that otherwise facilitates unwelcome exchanges of any kind will be viewed with suspicion and dealt with accordingly. The
rise in
isolationism and protectionism will bring about ever more heated arguments and dangerous
confrontations over shared sources of oil, gas, and other key commodities as well as factors of production that
must, out of necessity, be acquired from less-than-friendly nations. Whether involving raw materials used in strategic industries or basic
necessities such as food, water, and energy, efforts to secure adequate supplies will take increasing precedence in a world where demand
seems constantly out of kilter with supply. Disputes over
the misuse, overuse, and pollution of the environment and
natural resources will become more commonplace. Around the world, such tensions will give rise to fullscale military encounters, often with minimal provocation. In some instances, economic conditions will serve
as a convenient pretext for conflicts that stem from cultural and religious differences. Alternatively, nations
may look to divert attention away from domestic problems by channeling frustration and populist
sentiment toward other countries and cultures. Enabled by cheap technology and the waning threat of
American retribution, terrorist groups will likely boost the frequency and scale of their horrifying attacks,
bringing the threat of random violence to a whole new level. Turbulent conditions will encourage aggressive saber
rattling and interdictions by rogue nations running amok. Age-old clashes will also take on a new, more healed sense of urgency. China
will likely assume an increasingly belligerent posture toward Taiwan, while Iran may embark on overt
colonization of its neighbors in the Mideast. Israel, for its part, may look to draw a dwindling list of allies from around the world into
a growing number of conflicts. Some observers, like John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, have even speculated
that an "intense confrontation" between the United States and China is "inevitable" at some point. More than a few disputes will turn out to be
almost wholly ideological. Growing cultural and religious differences will be transformed from wars of words to battles soaked in blood. Long-
simmering resentments could also degenerate quickly, spurring the basest of human instincts and
triggering genocidal acts. Terrorists employing biological or nuclear weapons will vie with conventional
forces using jets, cruise missiles, and bunker-busting bombs to cause widespread destruction. Many will
interpret stepped-up conflicts between Muslims and Western societies as the beginnings of a new world
war.
Turns every impact
Duncan ’12 (Richard Duncan, Former IMF consultant, Financial sector specialist for the World Bank,
Chief Economist Blackhorse Asset Management, The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper
Money Economy, Page 12, Ebooks, 2012)
The political battle over America’s future would be bitter, and quite possibly bloody. It cannot be guaranteed
that the U.S. Constitution would survive. Foreign affairs would also confront the United States with enormous challenges. During the Great
Depression, the United States did not have a global empire. Now it does. The United States maintains hundreds of military bases across dozens
of countries around the world. Added to this is a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers and 18 nuclear-armed submarines. The country spends more than
If the U.S. economy collapses into a New Great Depression, the United States could not
afford to maintain its worldwide military presence or to continue in its role as global peacekeeper. Or, at
$650 billion a year on its military.
least, it could not finance its military in the same way it does at present. Therefore, either the United States would have to find an alternative
funding method for its global military presence or else it would have to radically scale it back. Historically, empires were financed with plunder
and territorial expropriation. The estates of the vanquished ruling classes were given to the conquering generals, while the rest of the
population was forced to pay imperial taxes. The U.S. model of empire has been unique. It has financed its global military presence by issuing
government debt, thereby taxing future generations of Americans to pay for this generation’s global supremacy. That would no longer be
possible if the economy collapsed. Cost–benefit analysis would quickly reveal that much of America’s global presence was simply no longer
affordable. Many—or even most—of the outposts that did not pay for themselves would have to be abandoned. Priority would be given to
those places that were of vital economic interests to the United States. The Middle East oil fields would be at the top of that list. The United
States would have to maintain control over them whatever the price. In
this global depression scenario, the price of oil
could collapse to $3 per barrel. Oil consumption would fall by half and there would be no speculators left to manipulate prices
higher. Oil at that level would impoverish the oil-producing nations, with extremely destabilizing political
consequences. Maintaining control over the Middle East oil fields would become much more difficult for the United States. It would
require a much larger military presence than it does now. On the one hand, it might become necessary for the United States to reinstate the
draft (which would possibly meet with violent resistance from draftees, as it did during the Vietnam War). On the other hand, America’s allvolunteer army might find it had more than enough volunteers with the national unemployment rate in excess of 20 percent. The army might
have to be employed to keep order at home, given that mass unemployment would inevitably lead to a sharp spike in crime. Only after the
Middle East oil was secured would the country know how much more of its global military presence it could afford to maintain. If international
trade had broken down, would there be any reason for the United States to keep a military presence in Asia when there was no obvious way to
finance that presence? In
a global depression, the United States’ allies in Asia would most likely be unwilling or
unable to finance America’s military bases there or to pay for the upkeep of the U.S. Pacific fleet. Nor
would the United States have the strength to force them to pay for U.S. protection. Retreat from Asia might become
unavoidable. And Europe? What would a cost–benefit analysis conclude about the wisdom of the United States maintaining military
bases there? What valued added does Europe provide to the United States? Necessity may mean Europe will have to defend itself.
Should a New Great Depression put an end to the Pax Americana, the world would become a much
more dangerous place. When the Great Depression began, Japan was the rising industrial power in Asia. It invaded Manchuria in 1931
and conquered much of the rest of Asia in the early 1940s. Would China, Asia’s new rising power, behave the same way in the event of a new
global economic collapse? Possibly. China is the only nuclear power in Asia east of India (other than North Korea, which is largely a Chinese
satellite state). However, in
this disaster scenario, it is not certain that China would survive in its current configuration.
Its economy would be in ruins. Most of its factories and banks would be closed. Unemployment could exceed 30 percent. There
would most likely be starvation both in the cities and in the countryside. The Communist Party could lose
its grip on power, in which case the country could break apart, as it has numerous times in the past. It was less than 100
years ago that China’s provinces, ruled by warlords, were at war with one another. United or divided, China’s nuclear arsenal
would make it Asia’s undisputed superpower if the United States were to withdraw from the region. From Korea
and Japan in the North to New Zealand in the South to Burma in the West, all of Asia would be at China’s mercy. And hunger
among China’s population of 1.3 billion people could necessitate territorial expansion into Southeast
Asia. In fact, the central government might not be able to prevent mass migration southward, even if it wanted to. In Europe, severe
economic hardship would revive the centuries-old struggle between the left and the right. During the 1930s, the Fascists
movement arose and imposed a police state on most of Western Europe. In the East, the Soviet Union had become
a communist police state even earlier. The far right and the far left of the political spectrum converge in totalitarianism. It is difficult to
judge whether Europe’s democratic institutions would hold up better this time that they did last time.
England had an empire during the Great Depression. Now it only has banks. In a severe worldwide depression, the country—or, at least
London—could become ungovernable. Frustration over poverty and a lack of jobs would erupt into anti-immigration riots not only in the United
Kingdom but also across most of Europe. The extent to which Russia would menace its European neighbors is unclear. On the one hand,
Russia would be impoverished by the collapse in oil prices and might be too preoccupied with internal
unrest to threaten anyone. On the other hand, it could provoke a war with the goal of maintaining
internal order through emergency wartime powers. Germany is very nearly demilitarized today when compared with the
late 1930s. Lacking a nuclear deterrent of its own, it could be subject to Russian intimidation. While Germany could appeal for protection from
England and France, who do have nuclear capabilities, it is uncertain that would buy Germany enough time to remilitarize before it became a
victim of Eastern aggression. As for the rest of the world, its prospects in this disaster scenario can be summed up in only a couple of sentences.
Global economic output could fall by as much as half, from $60 trillion to $30 trillion. Not
all of the world’s seven billion people
would survive in a $30 trillion global economy. Starvation would be widespread. Food riots would
provoke political upheaval and myriad big and small conflicts around the world. It would be a
humanitarian catastrophe so extreme as to be unimaginable for the current generation, who, at least in the
industrialized world, has known only prosperity. Nor would there be reason to hope that the New Great Depression
would end quickly. The Great Depression was only ended by an even more calamitous global war that
killed approximately 60 million people.
Poverty is worse than growth for humanity and environment
Economist ’13 (The Economist, “The effects of growth The long view”,
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21585100-contrary-popular-belief-economic-growthmay-be-good-biodiversity-long-view, September 14, 2013)
Contrary to popular belief, economic growth may be good for biodiversity COMPARISONS BETWEEN ADJOINING countries
separated by politics or economics can be instructive. North Korea’s forests have been shrinking by around 2% a year for 20 years; South Korea’s are stable. Satellite
pictures of the island of Hispaniola in the Antilles show that the western side (Haiti, with a GDP per person of $771 a year) is barren, whereas the eastern side
(Dominican Republic, GDP per person $5,736) still has plenty of dense forest. Economic growth is widely believed to damage species other than man. But
as
the contrasting fortunes of forests (a fair proxy for biodiversity) on the Korean peninsula and Hispaniola
suggest, it is not so much growth as poverty that reduces biodiversity. Poverty without growth,
combined with lots of people, is disastrous. Poverty combined with growth can be equally calamitous.
But once people enjoy a certain level of prosperity, the benefits of growth to other species outweigh its
disadvantages. There appears to be an environmental version of the Kuznets curve, which describes the relationship between prosperity and inequality in
an inverted U-shape. At the early stages of growth, inequality tends to rise; at the later stages it falls. Similarly, in the early stages of growth, biodiversity tends to
suffer; in the later stages it benefits. The
Living Planet Index (LPI), put together by the Zoological Society of London
and WWF (see chart 4), shows a 61% decline in biodiversity between 1970 and 2008 in tropical areas,
which tend to be poorer, but a 31% improvement over the same period in temperate areas, which tend
to be richer. Similarly, poor countries tend to chop down forests, and rich countries to plant them (see interactive chart 5). Some of the
improvement might be due to rich countries exporting their growth to poorer countries, but that is
clearly not the only factor at work. Nobody exported growth to North Korea and Haiti, and their
environments still got trashed. Meanwhile in countries that were poor until fairly recently—such as
South Korea and Brazil—things are looking up for many species. The evidence suggests that, above a fairly low level of income,
economic growth benefits other species. As the previous article showed, when people get richer, they start
behaving better towards other species. And as countries grow they become cleaner, more urban, more
peaceful, more efficient and better-informed, and their people have fewer children. Other species
benefit from all those effects, and from the scientific and technological progress that comes with
growth. Though all species benefit from fresh water, it is principally for their people’s benefit that societies clean up their rivers. London started building its
sewage system the year after the “Great Stink” in 1858 because many people were dying of cholera and life in the city became unbearable. Parliament temporarily
had to move out of its premises on the bank of the Thames. In the 1960s President Johnson called the Potomac a “national disgrace” not so much because it killed
fish but because it was filthy. Shortly afterwards he signed the Water Quality Act. Forty years ago two-thirds of America’s rivers were unsafe for swimming or
fishing. Now only a third are. A clean-up programme designed primarily to benefit people was good for other species too. Even after sewage treatment had become
widespread, rivers were still being poisoned by industrial effluent and pesticides. Controls on those pollutants have done their bit to help clean up rivers. Britain’s
Environment Agency says that in 1990 the water quality in 55% of rivers was graded good or excellent; now the share is 80%. That not only makes the rivers safe for
recreation, it has also encouraged the return of once-common creatures that became rare in the 20th century. Otters,
for instance, were present
in only 6% of 3,300 sites surveyed by the Environment Agency in 1977-79; in 2009-10, they had spread
to 60%. When countries get richer, farming tends to become more intensive. Output increases, marginal land is left
fallow, the agricultural labour force shrinks and people move to the towns. Abandoned land is used for recreation and turned back
to forest or wilderness. That is the main reason why in 2005-10, according to figures from the United
Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation, forest cover grew in America and was stable or increasing
in every country in Europe except Estonia and Albania. Sharing or sparing? Many greens argue that intensification of agriculture
harms biodiversity. It is true that pesticides and fertiliser tend to reduce the number of species where they are used, but intensive agriculture
employs less land than extensive farming to produce the same amount of food. The question, then, is
whether the net benefits to other species of “land-sharing” (farming extensively on a larger area)
outweigh those of “land-sparing” (farming intensively on a smaller area). A couple of recent papers—a
theoretical one by David Tilman of the University of Minnesota and an empirical study by Ben Phalan of
Cambridge University, looking at data from Ghana and India—suggest that land-sparing wins. Richer
countries tend to be better informed about the value of ecosystems and take a longer view. That is why China,
having destroyed so much of its forest, is now paying its farmers to plant trees. The ecological value of some of the resulting forest is open to doubt—a lot of it is
monoculture of imported varieties that do not always suit the local climate—but the numbers are impressive. Forest cover increased by a third between 1990 and
2010. Better-off
countries also have more effective governments, without which conservation would be
impossible. Elephants are doing better in southern Africa than in East or Central Africa. South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana all have well-administered
parks and reasonably effective police forces; in Congo, Chad and Tanzania, those institutions are shakier. Richer countries are generally more
peaceful, too. That is good for their people, but not always for other species. Biodiversity sometimes benefits from conflict: where it keeps people out, it may
conserve habitats for other creatures. The 1,000-sq-km demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, for instance, has become a de facto nature reserve of
great interest to scientists. On
balance, though, conflict tends to do more harm than good to biodiversity, destroying
habitats and undermining states’ efforts to protect other creatures. That is another reason why elephants are doing better in
southern Africa than in Central and East Africa, where militias have plenty of guns and a financial interest in selling ivory to fund their wars. The impact of prosperity
on human demography also benefits biodiversity, but it takes time. In its early stages economic growth often causes people to multiply faster as death rates come
But when
countries become richer, more women get educated and take jobs, more people move away from farms
and into cities and birth rates start falling. In East Asia fertility has fallen from 5.3 children per woman in
the 1960s to 1.6 now. In some countries—Japan, Russia, much of eastern Europe and some of western
Europe—the population is already declining. But in Africa it is still rising fast, which is the main reason why the UN expects the world’s
population to continue expanding to the end of this century. Lastly, growth brings scientific advance, which makes it easier to
mitigate threats to biodiversity. So far conservation has been dominated by men in shorts with not much more than a pair of binoculars. Now
down but birth rates stay high, as is happening in Africa now. That intensifies competition for resources between humans and other species.
the digital revolution is transforming it. The data are building up and becoming easier to access. Three centuries-worth of information on natural history is sitting in
museums and universities around the world, and is now being digitised. The Global Biological Information Facility, an intergovernmental effort, is working to make
this information available to everybody, everywhere. The IUCN’s Red List, globally recognised as the repository of information about endangered species, was
started as a card-index system in 1954 by Colonel Leofric Boyle, a British army officer who helped to save the Arabian oryx. Now it is online and accessible, but still
not much more than a list. Microsoft Research, through a partnership with the IUCN, is building a platform on which scientists all over the world will be able to map
the threats to the species they are interested in and discover threats posted by other scientists. The display of data is getting better, too. ESRI, a technology firm
that dominates the mapping business, enables users to build up maps with layers of information on them. It provides its software free to conservation organisations
and has moved it onto the cloud. David Yarnold, the boss of America’s Audubon Society, says his organisation had data on land use, hydrology and 114 years of bird
counts from 470 local groups, none of it shared. Now, thanks to ESRI, all of it is accessible. Communications technology can also to help collect information on
wildlife movements. Large animals—elephant, giraffe, lion, hirola—are now often fitted with GPS collars to track them. Miniaturisation is opening up new uses for
such tools. Technology for Nature—a collaboration between Microsoft Research, the Zoological Society of London and University College London—is developing
“Mataki tags”, tiny devices attached to animals that can relay information wirelessly and communicate with each other. The idea is that a tag on, say, an elephant
will download its information to a tag on, say, an oxpecker—a bird that rides on an elephant’s back—and all the information will be downloaded to a base station
near the oxpecker’s nest. The most useful technology for conservation is remote sensing, now widely used for monitoring deforestation and species distribution.
Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey, for instance, has been using remote-sensing data to estimate penguin populations from guano stains. The data can
distinguish between different kinds of penguin because the infrared signature of the guano varies between species. As a result he has doubled his estimate of
emperor-penguin numbers. The tools are improving and getting cheaper. Serge Wich, professor of primate biology at Liverpool’s John Moores University, has been
using drones to calculate orang-utan densities in the Indonesian rainforest. Orang-utans make a nest every day—“quite comfortable ones, with a blanket woven
from branches”, explains Mr Wich—so orang-utan populations can be guessed from nest numbers. “We were slogging through the rainforest thinking how nice it
would be to have a camera fly over it to monitor nest frequency,” he says. But he assumed it would be too expensive—until he found an American website,
diydrones, which enabled him to make one for $700. A bunch of conservation organisations has set up ConservationDrones.org to share information about this
handy tool; Research Drones, a Swiss company, makes drones specifically for environmental and research purposes. “It’s our hope that an unmanned aerial vehicle
will become like a pair of binoculars,” says Mr Wich. Remote sensing, combined with economic progress, has also helped sharply to reduce deforestation in Brazil—
the most important country for biodiversity.
Economic strength vital to economic leadership – solves global problems through
trade and tech and key to smooth transition to multilateralism
Haass ’13 (Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as
Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W.
Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan, “The World
Without America”, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/repairing-the-roots-of-americanpower-by-richard-n--haass, April 30, 2013)
The World Without America NEW YORK – Let me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now
and for the foreseeable future is not a rising China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of
these constitute potential or actual threats, the biggest challenges facing the US are its burgeoning debt,
crumbling infrastructure,
second-rate primary and secondary schools, outdated immigration system, and slow economic growth – in short,
the domestic foundations of American power. Readers in other countries may be tempted to react to this judgment with a dose
of schadenfreude, finding more than a little satisfaction in America’s difficulties. Such a response should not be surprising. The US and those
representing it have been guilty of hubris (the US may often be the indispensable nation, but it would be better if others pointed this out), and
examples of inconsistency between America’s practices and its principles understandably provoke charges of hypocrisy. When America does
not adhere to the principles that it preaches to others, it breeds resentment. But, like most temptations, the urge to gloat at America’s
imperfections and struggles ought to be resisted. People
around the globe should be careful what they wish for.
America’s failure to deal with its internal challenges would come at a steep price. Indeed, the rest of
the world’s stake in American success is nearly as large as that of the US itself. Part of the reason is
economic. The US economy still accounts for about one-quarter of global output. If US growth accelerates, America’s
capacity to consume other countries’ goods and services will increase, thereby boosting growth around the world. At a time when Europe
is drifting and Asia is slowing, only the US (or, more broadly, North America) has the potential to drive global
economic recovery. The US remains a unique source of innovation. Most of the world’s citizens
communicate with mobile devices based on technology developed in Silicon Valley; likewise, the
Internet was made in America. More recently, new technologies developed in the US greatly increase
the ability to extract oil and natural gas from underground formations. This technology is now making its
way around the globe, allowing other societies to increase their energy production and decrease both
their reliance on costly imports and their carbon emissions. The US is also an invaluable source of ideas. Its world-class
universities educate a significant percentage of future world leaders. More fundamentally, the US has long been a leading
example of what market economies and democratic politics can accomplish. People and governments
around the world are far more likely to become more open if the American model is perceived to be
succeeding. Finally, the world faces many serious challenges, ranging from the need to halt the spread of
weapons of mass destruction, fight climate change, and maintain a functioning world economic order
that promotes trade and investment to regulating practices in cyberspace, improving global health, and
preventing armed conflicts. These problems will not simply go away or sort themselves out. While Adam
Smith’s “invisible hand” may ensure the success of free markets, it is powerless in the world of geopolitics. Order
requires the visible hand of leadership to formulate and realize global responses to global challenges.
Don’t get me wrong: None of this is meant to suggest that the US can deal effectively with the world’s problems on its own. Unilateralism rarely
works. It is not just that the US lacks the means; the very nature of contemporary global problems suggests that only collective responses stand
a good chance of succeeding. But
multilateralism is much easier to advocate than to design and implement.
Right now there is only one candidate for this role: the US. No other country has the necessary
combination of capability and outlook. This brings me back to the argument that the US must put its house in order
– economically, physically, socially, and politically – if it is to have the resources needed to promote order in the world.
Everyone should hope that it does: The alternative to a world led by the US is not a world led by China, Europe,
Russia, Japan, India, or any other country, but rather a world that is not led at all. Such a world would
almost certainly be characterized by chronic crisis and conflict. That would be bad not just for
Americans, but for the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants.
That’s key to global stability- us economic order solves war
Gelb ’10 (“GDP Now Matters More Than Force” Leslie H. Gelb is President Emeritus of the Council on
Foreign Relations. He was a senior official in the U.S. Defense Department from 1967 to 1969 and in the
State Department from 1977 to 1979, and he was a Columnist and Editor at The New York Times from
1981 to 1993. Published 2010 by Foreign Affairs in Washington DC, USA . Written in English. Table of
Contents A U.S. Foreign Policy for the Age of Economic Power
Today, the
United States continues to be the world's power balancer of choice. It is the only regional
balancer against China in Asia, Russia in eastern Europe, and Iran in the Middle East. Although Americans rarely think about
this role and foreign leaders often deny it for internal political reasons, the fact is that Americans and non-Americans alike require these
services. Even Russian leaders today look to Washington to check China. And Chinese leaders surely realize that
they need the U.S. Navy and Air Force to guard the world's sea and trading lanes. Washington should not be
embarrassed to remind others of the costs and risks of the United States' security role when it comes to economic transactions. That applies, for example, to Afghan
and Iraqi decisions about contracts for their natural resources, and to Beijing on many counts .
U.S. forces maintain a stable world order
that decidedly benefits China's economic growth, and to date, Beijing has been getting a free ride. A NEW APPROACH In this environment, the first-tier foreign
policy goals of the United States should be a strong economy and the ability to deploy effective counters to threats at the lowest possible cost. Second-tier goals,
which are always more controversial, include retaining the military power to remain the world's power balancer, promoting
freer trade, maintaining
technological advantages (including cyberwarfare capabilities), reducing risks from various environmental and health challenges, developing alternative energy
supplies, and advancing U.S. values such as democracy
and human rights. Wherever possible, second-tier goals should reinforce first-tier
ones: for example, it makes sense to err on the side of freer trade to help boost the economy and to invest in greater energy independence to reduce dependence
on the tumultuous Middle East. But no overall approach should dictate how to pursue these goals in each and every situation. Specific applications depend on,
among other things, the culture and politics of the target countries. An overarching vision helps leaders consider how to use their power to achieve their goals. This
is what gives policy direction, purpose, and thrust--and this is what is often missing from U.S. policy. The organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy should be to use
power to solve common problems. The good old days of being able to command others by making military or economic threats are largely gone. Even the weakest
nations can resist the strongest ones or drive up the costs for submission. Now, U.S. power derives mainly from others' knowing that they cannot solve their
problems without the United States and that they will have to heed U.S. interests to achieve common goals. Power by services rendered has largely replaced power
by command. No matter the decline in U.S. power, most nations do not doubt that the United States is the indispensable leader in solving major international
problems. This problem-solving
capacity creates opportunities for U.S. leadership in everything from trade
talks to military-conflict resolution to international agreements on global warming. Only Washington can help the
nations bordering the South China Sea forge a formula for sharing the region's resources. Only Washington has a chance of pushing the
Israelis and the Palestinians toward peace. Only Washington can bargain to increase the low value of a Chinese currency exchange . rate that disadvantages almost
every nation's trade with China. But it is clear to Americans and non-Americans alike that Washington lacks the power to solve or manage difficult problems alone;
the indispensable leader must work with indispensable partners. To attract the necessary partners, Washington must do the very thing that habitually afflicts U.S.
leaders with political hives: compromise. This does not mean multilateralism for its own sake, nor does it mean abandoning vital national interests. The Obama
administration has been criticized for softening UN economic sanctions against Iran in order to please China and Russia. Had the United States not compromised,
however, it would have faced vetoes and enacted no new sanctions at all. U.S. presidents are often in a strong position to bargain while preserving essential U.S.
interests, but they have to do a better job of selling such unavoidable compromises to the U.S. public. U.S. policymakers must also be patient. The weakest of
nations today can resist and delay. Pressing prematurely for decisions--an unfortunate hallmark of U.S. style--results in failure, the prime enemy of power. Success
breeds power, and failure breeds weakness. Even when various domestic constituencies shout for quick action, Washington's leaders must learn to buy time in
order to allow for U.S. power--and the power of U.S.-led coalitions--to take effect abroad. Patience is especially valuable in the economic arena, where there are far
more players than in the military and diplomatic realms. To corral all these players takes time. Military power can work quickly, like a storm; economic power grabs
slowly, like the tide. It needs time to erode the shoreline, but it surely does nibble away. To be sure, U.S. presidents need to preserve the United States' core role as
the world's military and diplomatic balancer--for its own sake; and because it strengthens U.S. interests in economic transactions. But economics
has to
be the main driver for current policy, as nations calculate power more in terms of GDP than military
might. U.S. GDP will be the lure and the whip in the international affairs of the twenty-first century.
U.S. interests abroad cannot be adequately protected or advanced without an economic reawakening
at home.
The plan solves- Federal legalization key to investor confidence and generates a
cannabis industry of ancillary industries- entirely new mega industries
Keefe ’13 (Patrick Radden Keefe, Patrick Radden Keefe has contributed to The New Yorker since 2006
and joined the magazine as a staff writer in 2012, He has written about an alleged master counterfeiter
of fine wine; a decades-long environmental lawsuit against Chevron over contamination of the Amazon
rain forest; and the flamboyant Syrian arms trafficker Monzer al-Kassar. His book “The Snakehead: An
Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream” grew out of an article in the magazine
and was named one of the best books of 2009 by the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor,
and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is also the author of “Chatter: Uncovering the Echelon Surveillance
Network and the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping” (2005). His articles have appeared in the Times
Magazine, The New York Review of Books, New York, Slate, and other publications, and he has been the
recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and fellowships at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, at
the New York Public Library, and at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, He is
currently a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and lives with his family in Washington, D.C.,
“Washington State discovers that it’s not so easy to create a legal marijuana economy”,
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/11/18/131118fa_fact_keefe?currentPage=all, November
18, 2013)
Investors, prospectors, speculators, and salesmen are scrambling to join the so-called Green Rush. At
investment summits, marijuana entrepreneurs pitch potential angel investors. The continued taboo on
cannabis can give these proceedings a strange vibe. At one summit I attended, in a Manhattan office
tower, people pitching startups wore tags with their full names, whereas potential investors wore tags
that said only “Rick R.,” or “John T.,” as if they were members of an addiction support group. When Kleiman
learned of Shively’s press conference, he wrote a lacerating blog post: “It was inevitable that the legalization of cannabis would attract a certain
number of insensate greedheads to the industry. And I suppose it was also inevitable that some of them would be terminally stupid.” Kleiman
believes that the negative social consequences of legalization may be severe if profiteers can turn cannabis into a largely unregulated
commercial product. He suggested to Washington’s liquor-control board that it limit the volume that any individual grower can produce under
I-502, in order to curb the “power of large producers.” In October, the board announced that the largest producers will be limited to growing
marijuana fields of thirty thousand square feet. Because
marijuana remains illegal under federal law, Kleiman is
highly skeptical of the Green Rush. “Making money by selling marijuana is a very risky proposition,” he
told me. “Making money by fleecing investors is much safer.” (The Financial Industry Regulatory
Authority recently issued a warning to investors about “marijuana stock scams.”) Under I-502, new pot
businesses cannot be vertically integrated: growers and processors must remain separate entities from sellers. This provision is aimed, in part,
at preventing a single business from dominating the industry. But boosters for the new pot economy have taken to citing an adage attributed to
Mark Twain: “When everyone is looking for gold, it’s a good time to be in the pick-and-shovel business.” So-called ancillary
businesses
are not barred by federal law, and the most careful investors are focussing on these markets. Brendan Kennedy
and Michael Blue run a private-equity firm, Privateer, that invests in the “cannabis space.” They met at Yale’s business school, and take pride in
looking painfully square: they are clean-cut and athletic, and most days they wear suits. When I visited them one day, in a borrowed conference
room in Seattle, they were making a pitch to a potential investor who had flown in from Chicago. The investor, concerned that word might get
back to his professional circle in the Midwest, asked that I not divulge his name. The cannabis market, Kennedy
informed the
investor, is already “bigger than corn.” He added, “The objective is to build a vertical conglomerate of
companies in the medical-cannabis industry and, ultimately, the cannabis industry.” As long as selling
pot remains illegal under federal law, any business that is openly connected to the trade will find it
difficult to put its money in a bank, because financial institutions do not want to risk the legal
exposure. According to the National Cannabis Industry Association, fewer than half the medicalmarijuana dispensaries in the U.S. have bank accounts. They struggle to make payroll, and have trouble
paying taxes. One dispensary owner told me about taking seven thousand dollars in cash to the
Washington Department of Revenue, to pay his monthly tax bill. He was turned away, because the teller
refused to deposit his “drug money.” Privateer has had its bank accounts shut down more than once.
But, Kennedy explained to the potential client, the firm does not “touch the plant” when making its investments. Privateer has so far acquired
only one company, Leafly, which
aims at becoming the Yelp of cannabis—a sleek online guide to strains and
dispensaries. Privateer recently closed a seven-million-dollar round of funding, which it intends to invest
in other ancillary businesses, so that when pot becomes legal nationwide it can assume a dominant
position in the market for cannabis itself. In the interim, Kennedy said, he and Blue planned to “professionalize” the industry,
starting with its image. They disdain iconography involving cannabis leaves or Bob Marley. Leafly’s Web site presents pot varieties in a grid that
wittily alludes to the periodic table. Kennedy and Blue have sought advice from the Seattle marketing company Heckler Associates, best known
for inventing the name Starbucks. Scott Lowry, the Heckler executive who handles the Privateer account, told me, “When
we started
working with Starbucks, nobody was drinking upscale coffee. It was pretty much Folgers in a can.” The
cannabis industry represents a similar opportunity, he said.
Independently- Budget shortfalls ensure long-term economic collapse- Federal
government legalization of marijuana critical to economic health
Miron and Waldock ‘10 (Jeffrey A. Miron is a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University and
a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Professor Miron earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and chaired the economics depart- ment at Boston University prior to joining the Harvard
faculty. Katherine Waldock is a doctoral candidate at the Stern School of Business at New York
University, “The Budgetary Impact Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition”, CATO Institute, 2010)
Introduction State
and federal governments in the United States face a daunting fiscal outlook. The national debt
current projections this ratio will rise to
more than 75 percent of GDP by 2020 and continue increasing there- after.1 States are also facing
severe budget shortfalls.2 Both politicians and the public express concern about the debt, but the standard pro- posals for
currently stands at 60 per- cent of GDP, its highest level since World War II, and under
expenditure cuts or tax increases garner little support. Understandably, there- fore, some politicians, commentators, interest groups, and
citizens have embraced uncon- ventional approaches to closing fiscal gaps, such as legalizing drugs. Legalization
would reduce
state and federal deficits by eliminating expenditure on prohibition enforcement— arrests,
prosecutions, and incarceration—and by allowing governments to collect tax rev- enue on legalized
sales. This potential fiscal windfall is of particu- lar interest because California, which is fac- ing a budget
shortfall of $19.9 billion for fis- cal year 2011, will vote in November 2010 on a ballot initiative that would legalize mari- juana
under California law.3 Advocates of the measure have suggested the state could raise “billions” in annual tax
revenue from legal- ized marijuana, in addition to saving crimi- nal justice expenditure or re-allocating
this expenditure to more important priorities.4 And should the California measure pass and generate the forecasted
budgetary savings, other states would likely follow suit. The fact that legalization might generate a fiscal dividend does not, by itself, make it a
better policy than prohibition. Legalization would have many effects, and opinions differ on whether these are desirable on net. Both sides in
this debate, however, should want to know the order of magnitude of the fiscal benefit that might arise from legalization. This report estimates
and discusses the reductions in government expenditure and the increases in tax revenue that would result from legalizing drugs. The report
concludes that drug
legalization would reduce govern- ment expenditure by about $41.3 billion annually.
Roughly $25.7 billion of this savings would accrue to state and local governments, and roughly $15.6
billion would accrue to the federal government. Approximately $8.7 bil- lion of the savings would result from legaliza- tion of
marijuana, $20.0 billion from legaliza- tion of cocaine and heroin, and $12.6 from legalization of all other drugs. Legalization would also
generate tax revenue of roughly $46.7 billion annually if drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately
$8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of mar- ijuana, $32.6 billion from legalization of cocaine and heroin, and $5.5 billion
from legalization of all other drugs. This report will begin with an explanation of our estimation methodology. We will then set forth and explain
our estimates of the expenditures that can be saved by ending drug prohibition, and then explain our esti- mate of the tax revenue that would
accrue by ending drug prohibition. The report will con- clude with a brief discussion of the implica- tions of our research findings. The Analytic
Framework Analyzing the budgetary impact of legal- ization requires a number of assumptions about exactly what policy change is being
examined. The implications of legalization by one state, with prohibition maintained in all other states and by the federal government, are likely
to differ from legalization by a number of states because competition between states would undermine the tax revenue that might accrue to a
single state if it were the only legal source of drugs. Legalization
by the federal government is likely to have
substantially dif- ferent impacts than legalization by states with federal prohibition still in place, since
federal prohibition might hamper state legalization in various ways. 1 Drug legalization would reduce government
expenditure by about $41.3 billion annually. This report therefore considers the follow- ing policy change: simultaneous legalization by all states
and the federal government. This policy change is not currently on the table, nor is it likely to occur in the near future. But this hypothetical
case is analytically tractable because it circumvents the need for assump- tions about cross-border effects or about state versus federal impacts
of legalization. More importantly, this hypothetical provides an upper bound on the expenditure savings and revenue increases that might
occur from legalization. The
policy change considered here—legal- ization—is more substantial than
decriminal- ization, which means repealing criminal penal- ties against simple possession but retaining
them against drug smuggling and selling. The budgetary implications of legalization exceed those of
decriminalization for three reasons.5 First, legalization eliminates arrests for drug trafficking in addition
to arrests for simple possession. Second, legalization saves prosecutorial, judicial, and incarceration
expenses; these savings are minimal in the case of decrim- inalization. Third, legalization allows
taxation of drug production and sale. The estimates provided here should not be taken as precise
estimates of the budgetary implications of a legalized regime for cur- rently illegal drugs. The analysis
employs numerous assumptions, some that plausibly bias the estimates downward and some that
plausibly bias the estimate upward. Thus, the estimates reported here should be considered “ballpark
figures” that indicate what order of magnitude of fiscal benefit policymakers should expect from
legalization.
Collapse of state budgets cause economic collapse
Kroft ’10 (Steve Kroft, Steve Kroft is an award-winning broadcast journalist known for his longtime
stint with the program 60 Minutes, CBS News, “State Budgets: The Day of Reckoning”,
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-budgets-the-day-of-reckoning/4/, December 19, 2010)
By now, just about everyone in the country is aware of the federal deficit problem, but you should know
that there is another financial crisis looming involving state and local governments. It has gotten much less
attention because each state has a slightly different story. But in the two years, since the "great recession" wrecked their
economies and shriveled their income, the states have collectively spent nearly a half a trillion dollars
more than they collected in taxes. There is also a trillion dollar hole iln their public pension funds. The
states have been getting by on billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds, but the day of reckoning is at
hand. The debt crisis is already making Wall Street nervous, and some believe that it could derail the
recovery, cost a million public employees their jobs and require another big bailout package that no one in Washington wants to talk about.
"The most alarming thing about the state issue is the level of complacency," Meredith Whitney, one of the most respected financial analysts on
Wall Street and one of the most influential women in American business, told correspondent Steve Kroft Whitney
made her
reputation by warning that the big banks were in big trouble long before the 2008 collapse. Now, she's
warning about a financial meltdown in state and local governments. "It has tentacles as wide as
anything I've seen. I think next to housing this is the single most important issue in the United States,
and certainly the largest threat to the U.S. economy," she told Kroft.
Contention {X}: Drug Organizations [1/2] (3)
ISIS threat through Mexico highest ever- qualified experts agree- will shut down the
grid - extinction
WND 9/4 (WND, WorldNetDaily News Company, “ISIS THREAT LOOMS OVER U.S. HOMELAND”,
http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/09/isis-threat-looms-over-u-s-homeland/, September 9, 2014)
*edited for language
'Militants expressing increased interest in notion they could infiltrate' ISIS bluster that threatens the U.S.
Long-known al-Qaida links to south-of-the-border drug cartels. A porous U.S-Mexico border. Gunshots
at a California power plant. The individual reports may not cause immediate alarm, but a panel of experts who have
connected the dots on threats against the U.S. is warning that the nation needs to be looking at the big
picture – and preparing its defenses appropriately. Now. The warnings come from a panel set up by the
Secure the Grid Coalition at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy. At a National Press Club
news conference this week were Frank Gaffney, former assistant secretary of defense for international
security affairs and now president of the CSP; threat expert Dr. Peter Vincent Pry; Ambassador Henry
F. Cooper; actress and activist Kelly Carson; and F. Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy
analyst in the office of the secretary of defense and now a senior writer with WND. He’s authored “A
Nation Forsaken” on the dangers to the U.S. from an attack on its power grid, especially from
electromagnetic pulse. There have been multiple reports of ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria making
statements threatening an attack on the U.S. homeland. And it’s well-documented that al-Qaida, the
Muslim terror world’s bad boy before ISIS arrived, is linked closely with drug cartels, many of which
have a presence inside some 1,200 of America’s large cities. Further, the U.S. southern border now
easily can be crossed illegally. And there already may have been a “dry run” attack on the U.S. power
grid, which, in a collapse, would leave America’s defense capabilities severely handicapped. Such
concerns have been underscored in recent days by an interview Judicial Watch had with U.S. intelligence
officials and the Texas Department Safety. It confirmed that ISIS is present across the Texas border in
Juarez, Mexico, where an intelligence unit has picked up increased “chatter” in recent days. While Mexican
authorities have denied ISIS’ presence in Mexico and its ability to illegally enter the U.S., Maloof pointed out that three hardened
Ukrainian criminals walked into the U.S. from Mexico undetected and have yet to be apprehended.
Similarly, there has been evidence uncovered that various nationalities from Pakistan and various Arab
countries have entered the U.S. undetected, taking advantage of the porous southern border. Put it all
together, panel members said at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday, and the threat the
U.S. is facing should be considered immediate and substantial. “It’s all related,” Maloof said. “One thing
leads to another … It’s the domino effect.” He noted a series of incidents at a Metcalf power plant in San Jose, California, that suggest
someone – still unknown – has been exploring what it takes to bring down a major component of the nation’s
grid. Former Rep. Allen West bluntly called the situation a “‘dry run’ for something bigger.” WND reported the utility company, whose operation was disabled in
the attack, has offered a $250,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators. West explained, “On April 16, 2013, snipers waged a 52-minute attack
on a central California electrical substation. According to reports by Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, the sniper attack started when at least one person
entered an underground vault to cut telephone cables, and attackers fired more than 100 shots into Pacific Gas & Electric’s Metcalf transmission substation,
knocking out 17 transformers. Electric officials were able to avert a blackout, but it took 27 days to repair the damage,” he wrote. “My concern is that this may have
been a dry run for something far bigger. We should be demanding an update on the investigation as to the perpetrators of this attack who escaped without
detection,” he said. WB248Pry
pointed out that jihadists already are aware of the vulnerability of a country’s
grid system by having knocked out completely the entire grid of the country of Yemen last June. Read the
book that’s documenting the worry about the EMP threat, “A Nation Forsaken.” The Metcalf attack came one day after the Boston Marathon bombing that killed
three people and wounded 264 others. The Boston Marathon suspects are from the Russian North Caucasus, which prompted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to
get involved in the investigation of the sniper attack on the transformers. There is a large community of Chechen and North Caucasus immigrants in the San Jose
area. Chechen jihadists also have been very prominent in Syria where it is battling to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. There also
were reports only days after the California sniper attack of a shoot-out when a security guard at the TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tennessee, was
confronted by a suspect at 2 a.m. “TVA spokesperson Jim Hopson said the subject traveled up to the plant on a boat and walked onto the property. When the
officer questioned the suspect, the individual fired multiple shots at the officer. The officer shot back, and when he called for backup, the suspect sped away on his
boat,” reports said. And
just a few days ago, the California plant, after spending millions of dollars on
heightened security, again was targeted by a break-in attempt, authorities have reported. Maloof
explained after the news conference that the big picture “underscores the potential for an ISIS threat
on the grid.” He pointed out how al-Qaida, which is known to have drug cartel links and likely sleeper agents in the United States through those
organizations, has been morphing into ISIS, and the belligerent threats made against the U.S. by that group. And he noted that the U.S. grid
remains vulnerable and taking it down in any significant way could cause calamities for the U.S., since
the nation’s food, fuel, energy, banking and communications industries all are dependent on
electricity. “Whenever you start tampering with the grid, you’re affecting the life-sustaining critical
infrastructures,” Maloof said. “Our entire survival is based on technology and electronics that, in turn, are
based on the electrical flow. If that’s interrupted for any period of time, there are catastrophes over a
wide geographic area.” Reports just this week revealed social media chatter shows Islamic State
militants “are keenly aware of the porous U.S.-Mexico border, and are ‘expressing an increased interest’
in crossing over to carry out a terrorist attack.” A law enforcement advisory said, “A review of ISIS social media messaging during the
week ending August 26 shows that militants are expressing an increased interest in the notion that they could clandestinely infiltrate the southwest border of U.S.,
for [a] terror attack.” Maloof explained at the news conference that America’s
enemies know “the vulnerabilities of our grid …
they will at some point try” to attack. “The threat is there,” he said. “ISIS operatives can easily come
through the [southern] border. And because they [ISIS] have proxies in the U.S.,” the potential for a
catastrophe exists. “The president could take his pen and make [the problem] a priority,” he said. “At the federal level they don’t have a plan, so the
state and local level won’t have a plan.”
Specifically a dirty bomb
InterAmerican Security Watch ’13 (InterAmerican Security Watch, Western Hemisphere and Latin
American Political Policy Experts, “Nuclear Terrorist Threat Looms On Our Southern Border”,
http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/nuclear-terrorist-threat-looms-on-our-southern-border/,
December 6, 2013)
National Security: The
theft of a truck carrying dangerous radioactive material combined with terrorist group
activity in the hemisphere shows that the need for a secure border involves more than illegal
immigration. Mexican authorities said Wednesday they found the stolen truck and likely recovered all of
the radioactive cobalt taken by a group of thieves who were probably after the truck, unaware it carried
a deadly cargo. Cobalt-60, which is used in radiation therapy to treat cancer, was being transported from
a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center. But what if the thieves
were terrorists who knew what the truck was carrying and targeted it to gain material for a so-called
“dirty bomb”? At a nuclear security summit in South Korea last year, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), identified cobalt-60 as one of the materials that could be used with conventional explosives to make such a weapon. “A dirty
bomb detonated in a major city could cause mass panic, as well as serious economic and
environmental consequences,” Amano said, according to a copy of his speech. Detonation of such a bomb in a big
city, he warned, “could cause mass panic, as well as serious economic and environmental
consequences.” Bombs made with cobalt-60 “pose a threat mainly because even a fraction of a gram emits a huge number of highenergy gamma rays; such material is harmful whether outside or inside the body,” according to a 2011 report by the Congressional Research
Service. The U.S. government has sensors at border crossings and seaports to prevent radioactive materials from entering the country. But
nuclear terrorists are not likely to check themselves through customs or show up at border checkpoints.
They’d more than likely cross through porous openings in our border with Mexico, or maybe through
one of the sophisticated tunnels that have been dug under the border. We know state sponsors of
terror have nuclear material and that terrorist groups have plans for such material. We know OTMs —
other than Mexicans — have been coming across our border with the flood of illegal immigrants. We
also know that cross-border tunnels capable of smuggling more than drugs, guns and people have
been uncovered. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., recently sent a letter to the Homeland Security Department asking that a task force
investigate growing ties between Hezbollah and the drug cartels as well as growing evidence of a
Hezbollah presence in Mexico. If the cartels can smuggle drugs and people into America, Hezbollah and
al-Qaida have to know they can smuggle in trained terrorists or the makings of a dirty bomb. In 2010, the Los
Zetas paramilitary drug cartel tried to blow up the Falcon Dam near Zapata, Texas. The Zetas’ motive was to destroy a rival cartel’s smuggling
route. Imagine
if it had been Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist proxy, and the objective was an even bigger
target in America. The U.S. Border Patrol in recent years has captured thousands of people classified as Other Than Mexican. These
include individuals from Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan, and countries classified as state
sponsors of terror. Terrorism expert Steve Emerson, author of “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us,” said not long ago that,
compared to al-Qaida, “Hezbollah has got a greater network, much more developed around the world,”
including “throughout the United States,” and that “potentially Hezbollah can wreak a lot more damage
if they chose to attack the United States within the continental borders.” Authorities recently discovered a massive
drug tunnel from Tijuana to San Diego that stretched the length of nearly six football fields and had lighting, ventilation and an electric rail
system used to convey marijuana and cocaine into the U.S. Unless we are
vigilant, someday it could be a dirty bomb.
Terrorism sparks full scale nuclear wars
Hellman ‘8 (Martin E. Hellman* * Martin E. Hellman is a member of the National Academy of
Engineering and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. His current project applies risk analysis to
nuclear deterrence)
Nuclear proliferation and the specter of nuclear terrorism are creating additional possibilities for
triggering a nuclear war. If an American (or Russian) city were devastated by an act of nuclear terrorism, the
public outcry for immediate, decisive action would be even stronger than Kennedy had to deal with
when the Cuban missiles first became known to the American public. While the action would likely not
be directed against Russia, it might be threatening to Russia (e.g., on its borders) or one of its allies and
precipitate a crisis that resulted in a full-scale nuclear war. Terrorists with an apocalyptic mindset might
even attempt to catalyze a full-scale nuclear war by disguising their act to look like an attack by the U.S.
or Russia.
Drug cartels cause Latin American failed states and proliferation
Manwaring ‘5 (Adjunct professor of international politics at Dickinson (Max G., Retired U.S. Army
colonel, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Bolivarian Socialism, and Asymmetric Warfare, October 2005, pg.
PUB628.pdf)
President Chávez also understands that the process leading to state
failure is the most dangerous long-term security
challenge facing the global community today. The argument in general is that failing and failed state status is the
breeding ground for instability, criminality, insurgency, regional conflict, and terrorism. These conditions
breed massive humanitarian disasters and major refugee flows. They can host “evil” networks of all kinds, whether they
involve criminal business enterprise, narco-trafficking, or some form of ideological crusade such as
Bolivarianismo. More specifically, these conditions spawn all kinds of things people in general do not like such as murder, kidnapping,
corruption, intimidation, and destruction of infrastructure. These
means of coercion and persuasion can spawn further
human rights violations, torture, poverty, starvation, disease, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, trafficking in
women and body parts, trafficking
and proliferation of conventional weapons systems and WMD, genocide,
ethnic cleansing, warlordism, and criminal anarchy. At the same time, these actions are usually unconfined
and spill over into regional syndromes of poverty, destabilization, and conflict.62 Peru’s Sendero Luminoso calls
violent and destructive activities that facilitate the processes of state failure “armed propaganda.” Drug cartels operating
throughout the Andean Ridge of South America and elsewhere call these activities “business incentives.”
Chávez considers these actions to be steps that must be taken to bring about the political conditions necessary to establish Latin
American socialism for the 21st century.63 Thus, in addition to helping to provide wider latitude to further their tactical and operational
objectives, state and nonstate actors’ strategic efforts are aimed at progressively lessening a targeted regime’s credibility and capability in
terms of its ability and willingness to govern and develop its national territory and society. Chávez’s intent is to focus his primary attack
politically and psychologically on selected Latin American governments’ ability and right to govern. In that context, he understands that popular
perceptions of corruption, disenfranchisement, poverty, and lack of upward mobility limit the right and the ability of a given regime to conduct
the business of the state. Until a given populace generally perceives that its government is dealing with these and other basic issues of political,
economic, and social injustice fairly and effectively, instability
and the threat of subverting or destroying such a
government are real.64 But failing and failed states simply do not go away. Virtually anyone can take advantage of such an unstable
situation. The tendency is that the best motivated and best armed organization on the scene will control that instability. As a consequence,
failing and failed states become dysfunctional states, rogue states, criminal states, narco-states, or new
people’s democracies. In connection with the creation of new people’s democracies, one can rest assured that Chávez and his Bolivarian
populist allies will be available to provide money, arms, and leadership at any given opportunity. And, of course, the longer dysfunctional,
rogue, criminal, and narco-states and people’s democracies persist, the
more they and their associated problems endanger
global security, peace, and prosperity.65
Ensures multiple scenarios for nuclear war
Fleishmann ‘13 (Luis, Ph.D. in Sociology from the New School for Social Research in New York City, an
M.A. degree from the New School as well and a B.A. in Political Science and Labor Studies from Tel Aviv
University. Dr. Fleischman has worked for more than two decades for the Jewish Federations of Palm
Beach County, Florida and Central New Jersey as executive director for community and political
relations. In that capacity, he has worked intensively on issues related to the Middle East and national
security serving as a liaison between these organizations and members of Congress, foreign consuls, the
media and the local community at large. Dr. Fleischman has also worked as senior advisor for the
Menges Hemispheric Security Project at the Center for Security Policy. The focus of Dr. Fleischman’s
work at the CSP was on monitoring Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his allies, their connections
to radical groups, the expansion of Chavez’s ideas across the continent and the rise of anti-democratic
forces in the region. Dr. Fleischman is also an Adjunct Professor of Sociology and Political Science at
Florida Atlantic University Honors College and FAU Lifelong Learning Society, “Latin America in the PostChavez Era: The Security Threat to the United States,”
http://books.google.com/books?id=N7D6doBly7AC&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s>#SPS, May 31, 2013)
The challenges that Latin America poses today are not all the direct result of the Bolivarian revolution. Indeed, outside pernicious forces—the drug cartels—existed
before the Bolivarian revolution, and they had been a major challenge in the region for two decades before Chavez's rise to power in 1999. But the
Bolivarian revolution has promoted the destruction of democracy and has set afoot an authoritarian
socialist movement throughout Latin America that despises the market economy, liberal democracy,
and U.S. political and cultural hegemony. It has inspired governments to follow its model and has gained admirers among groups and
movements through- out Latin America. Chavez has made alliances with all anti-U.S. elements in the region and now around the globe. Indeed, the
Bolivarian leader has deepened his relationship with the FARC guerrillas in Colombia and has made
alliances with Iran. His financial and material assistance has revitalized a moribund FARC and
incorporated it with the insurgent force of the Bolivarian revolution. He has promoted Iran's presence in
Latin America, including its most ominous aspects—asymmetric warfare and nuclear cooperation. Further,
the Bolivarian leadership expanded its relations with drug cartels and has facilitated their hunt for more territory, giving them an outlet in the midst of the U.S. war
on drugs and enabling them to continue destroying the social fabric Of society and State authority in the region. The leadership expected that such lawlessness
could precipitate the rise to power of other revolutionary leaders. These partners of the Bolivarian revolution, however, still follow their own interests and
objectives. All together, they create chaos
in a region that in the future will see the proliferation of nothing but more
adverse conditions: authoritarianism, further anarchy, insurgency, local and international terrorism,
rogue states' involvement, and Other negative elements such as an arms race and nuclear activity. The
continent's current economic prosperity, about which many Latin American leaders rejoice and brag, is not enough to
counteract the detrimental effects of the Bolivarian revolution in some countries. Further, attempts to counter the
negative repercussions have met with the indifference and impotence Of Other non-Bolivarian countries in the region. Being that the majority of these countries are
left leaning, where the push for social rights and appeals to the poor are stronger than that for liberal democracy, Chavez's actions did not disturb their leaders. In
fact, countries like Brazil rushed to view Chavez as a key to regional integration. More- over, many Of them joined Chavez in his anti-American fervor. They did not
embrace it with the same fury that Chavez and his allies did, but the moderate Left certainly still carries the anti-American baggage of the past. Brazilian president
Lula's foreign policy toward Iran is a case in point. As we have seen, many other countries of the moderate Left also developed warmer relations With Iran.
Argentina is moving toward conciliation with Iran despite the fact that its own courts declared Iran responsible for the most lethal terrorist attacks on Argentinean
soil. Iran therefore became a For those who look at the facts with a technical perspective—for example, a general in the armed forces whose specialty is
conventional warfare—they might not perceive the threat of the Bolivarian revolution and its actions as imminent. For those who seek hard evidence beyond
reasonable doubt, predicting what may happen in the future is impossible; however, the current situation provides enough Signs to require a serious look at the rise
of authoritarian governments in the region and their connections. For one, the breakdown Of democracy in the continent is alarming, but it cannot be reduced to a
crisis of democracy per se. Instead, it is the inevitable result when a state's government fails to consolidate its powers, to include its citizens in policymaking and
represent their interests, and to strengthen the rule of law so that it can prevent external elements from corrupting it. Simply, a weak democracy becomes a weak
state. A weak state is vulnerable to corruption. Corruption leads to colonization Of the State by powerful groups that have enough purchasing power. As noted
throughout the book, the deterioration of democracy to this extent has security implications insofar as external forces can penetrate it. The United States has
remained impotent in the face Of these developments because it took a defensive position. In addition, the war in Iraq hurt its image in Latin America and
exacerbated negative feelings toward the United States. Consequently, the United States could not confront Chavez and his revolution directly, leading to its
position of compliance with Latin American countries. Thus, the United States lost the ability to pursue its agenda actively and ended up accepting a passive role in
the continent. As stated in chapter 9, however, the Bolivarian revolution will not die along with Chavez. It will endure and survive because of the structures and
practices he has left in place, not just in Venezuela but in the region as well. The
United States should not have any illusions about it:
The challenge will continue. The effects Of authoritarianism, the destruction Of the State, and the
proliferation Of non-state actors and rogue States are likely to continue their course if no one moves to
counter them. As time goes by, these circumstances will further aggravate Latin American relationships with the United States. U.S. foreign policy,
therefore, cannot be guided by traumas of the past, appeasement, fear, or guilt. Its security and foreign policy needs to serve the
interests and goals of the region, as well as those of the United States, particularly when a threat to
national security is raised.
Federal legalizing marijuana solves- game changer
Hesson ‘14 (Ted, immigration editor, covers immigration and drug policy from Washington D.C.,
Fusion, "Will Mexican Cartels Survive Marijuana Legalization?", fusion.net/justice/story/mexican-cartelssurvive-marijuana-legalization-450519, 2014)
1. Mexico is the top marijuana exporter to the U.S. A 2008 study by the RAND Corporation estimated that Mexican marijuana accounted for
somewhere between 40 and 67 percent of the drug in the U.S. The cartel grip on the U.S. market may not last for long. Pot can now be grown
for recreational use in Colorado and Washington, and for medical use in 20 states. For the first time, American consumers can choose a legal
product over the black market counterpart. Beau Kilmer,
the co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center,
says that a few states legalizing marijuana won’t eliminate the flow of the drug from down south, but a
change in policy from the federal government would be a game changer. “Our research also suggests
that legalizing commercial marijuana production at the national level could drive out most of the
marijuana imported from Mexico,” he wrote in a 2013 op-ed. 2. Marijuana makes up more than $1
billion of cartel income Pot isn’t the main source of income for cartels. They make most of their cash from drugs like cocaine and
heroin. But marijuana accounts for 15 to 26 percent of the cartel haul, according to RAND’s 2008 data. That translates to an estimated $1.1
billion to $2 billion of gross income. The drop in sales certainly wouldn’t end the existence of drug traffickers — they bring in an estimated $6
billion to $8 billion annually — but losing
a fifth of one’s income would hurt any business. On top of that, Kilmer
says that marijuana likely makes up a higher percentage of the cartel take today than it did back in 2008.
So taking away pot would sting even more. 3. Authorities could focus on other drugs Marijuana made up 94
percent of the drugs seized by Border Patrol in the 2012 fiscal year, judging by weight. If pot becomes legal in the U.S. and
cartels are pushed out of the market, that would allow law-enforcement agencies to dedicate more
resources to combat the trafficking of drugs like heroin and cocaine.
Plan 1
The United States should legalize nearly all marijuana in the United States.
Marijuana criminality is destroying local communities AND a collapse of marijuana
industry coming- federal action key
Rashidian 4/20 (Nushin Rashidian, Alyson Martin, The Guardian, “It's Time To Legalize Marijuana On
The Federal Level”, http://www.businessinsider.com/its-time-to-legalize-marijuana-on-the-federal-level2014-4, April 20, 2014)
"Not tenable". This is how western Washington US Attorney Jenny Durkan assessed the state’s poorly-regulated medical
cannabis program in 2013. Igor Grant, director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San
Diego, used the same words to challenge the Drug Enforcement Administration’s categorization of
marijuana as a Schedule I drug. And after years of reporting across the country for our recently released
book, A New Leaf: The End of Cannabis Prohibition, we'd use the same words to describe the legal status
of medical cannabis in the US today. As a Schedule I substance alongside heroin, the federal government considers marijuana to
have no medical use and high potential for abuse. Under federal law, it's illegal for any person to manufacture, distribute, or possess cannabis
for any purpose. Yet twenty-one states and Washington DC have made the plant available as a medicine to qualifying patients. And legislation is
pending in a dozen other states (including New York and Florida). And
herein lies the great contradiction of US marijuana
policy – if these efforts succeed, a majority of US states will find themselves at odds with the federal
government. In the absence of effective or available cannabis-based pharmaceuticals, an estimated one million Americans have turned to
marijuana. But federal intransigence on the issue has turned otherwise state-legal patients into criminals and left them to negotiate a confusing
patchwork of state laws. For our book, we talked with people all over the country for which this legal abstraction was a daily reality. A patient in
Rhode Island allergic to opiates must sometimes go without her cannabis oil for pain relief when she travels for operations across state lines, or
risk arrest. A mother in Vermont faced felony cultivation charges for growing cannabis plants for her son with renal failure when his condition
had not yet been approved by the state; she knew the plant helped her other son just before he died of leukemia. A veteran in Illinois was told
he would lose access to his pain management program because he tested positive for cannabis, which he preferred to opiates. And parents
from coast-to-coast uproot their lives so that their epileptic children can have access to a medicine that's legal in Colorado. Those who want
medical marijuana also constantly battle skepticism and scrutiny. Patients in Illinois might be subject to background checks. Vermont patients
with questions visit the same criminal information center that oversees the sex offender registry. In some states like Colorado, Alaska and New
Jersey, patients are forced to join a registry for protection from arrest by law enforcement officers, who must verify that their marijuana is, in
fact, legal. Some patients must choose between medical marijuana and hospitals, nursing homes, and public housing because those facilities
rely on federal funding and abide by federal law. Earlier
this year, Attorney General Eric Holder issued guidelines to
the banking industry on how they could work with dispensaries. But they were just that – guidelines,
not legal protection. Everyone from landlords to caregivers to local police departments – those who
have decided to serve or accommodate these patients over the last two decades – have faced raids,
arrests, subpoenas and asset forfeiture. And these clashes are only a fraction of the 8 million marijuanarelated arrests in the past decade that disproportionately affect communities of color. So how can we
resolve this? We could start by rescheduling marijuana (cannabis) at the federal level. This would at
least make the dialogue around the substance more in keeping with science – particularly when it comes
to the abuse potential of cannabis, which is simply not equivalent to heroin. Rescheduling it will not
make cannabis a medicine dispensed at pharmacies – and various marijuana-based concoctions would
still require FDA approval – but it would acknowledge the plant’s therapeutic uses. And barriers to
research would be removed because Schedule I substances are the most difficult to access for study. And
at the state level, patients and their families should stop being treated like criminals. Illinois shouldn’t implement the background check.
Vermont should transfer the administration of their medical medical marijuana program to its Department of Health. In addition, states like
Utah and Georgia should legalize medical marijuana beyond the narrow consideration of CBD-rich cannabis extracts, so that patients who can
benefit have access. There are also simple ways to side-step the current confusion – the Justice Department, for instance, offered to be handsoff in medical- or general-use states, if they prevent access by minors and diversions to states where its still prohibited. Because of these
explicit conditions and the fact that full legalization is gaining momentum in states with existing medical programs, strengthening
medical marijuana laws now is also necessary for the long-term success of general-use laws in a state. If
existing medical programs are not improved, their loopholes and ambiguities might undermine a legalization campaign’s
promise to abide by the DOJ requirements. Medical cannabis laws have multiplied for two decades, and 106 million Americans now
live in states where cannabis is available for medical and general use. Alaska, Oregon, and Rhode Island could join Colorado and Washington in
full legalization this year, followed by California in 2016. None of the medical marijuana laws are perfect. But we
can only devise a
clear and solid marijuana policy if state legislators and the federal government recognize that what we need most
are more uniform – and more humane – laws governing a needlessly controversial substance.
Ending Marijuana is sufficient and necessary to solve the war on drugs- but legislation
key
Gillespie ’13 (Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason.com and the co-author The Declaration of
Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, “The Drug War Is Over (If
Obama Wants It)”, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/30/the-drug-war-is-over-if-obamawants-it.html, October 30, 2013)
And make no mistake: There is no war on drugs without the war on pot, which is the only illegal drug
that anyone uses with any frequency. According to the government’s own stats, 7.2 percent of Americans cop to having smoked
pot in the past 30 days, an imperfect but rough measure of regular use. The 30-day-use figures for other illegal—sorry, illicit—drugs are
almost too small to measure: 0.1 percent for heroin, 0.2 percent for crack, 0.2 percent for
methamphetamine, 0.1 percent for LSD, 0.2 percent for ecstasy. The only other substances that even top
one percent are “nonmedical use of psychotherapeutics,” a category that includes prescription
painkillers such as Oxycontin and Vicodin and anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax. Even when bundled
together, just 2.6 percent of Americans misuse prescription drugs in a given month. Who supports
keeping the drug-war gulag open to punish the 0.1 percent of acid eaters left in America, or even the
2.6 percent of sad-sack pill addicts? Lord knows we are slow to wisdom, but we’ve finally realized that
prohibition exacerbates all the ills it’s supposed to prevent and only makes substance abusers less
likely to seek treatment (who wants to admit to being a criminal on top of a junky?). The only question
left—and it’s not a small one, for sure—is the one Secretary of State John Kerry asked as a Vietnam
protester: Who’s going to be the last man to die for this mistake? As in so many other urgent situations,
Barack Obama’s widely praised ability to whip up sweet-and-sticky word-clouds of rhetorical cotton candy has
abandoned him. In late August, nearly a year after Colorado and Washington state voters overwhelmingly rejected federal marijuana
prohibition and legalize cannabis at the state level, the Obama Justice Department finally issued vague guidelines that
kinda-sorta said that the feds wouldn’t prosecute producers and consumers of medical and recreational pot in states that had
legalized such activities. Unless, that is, the feds felt they should. As Tom Angell, the head of Marijuana Majority, told my
Reason colleague Jacob Sullum, “My optimism is tempered by the fact that despite the Justice Department’s 2009
announcement that it shouldn’t be a priority to bust medical marijuana providers operating in accordance with state law,
this administration went on to close down more state-legal marijuana businesses in one term than the Bush
administration did in two terms.”
2AC
DTO
Reverse causal and solves Mexican instability
First- builds up legal institutional frameworks
O’Rourke and Byrd 11 (Beto, is the U.S. Representative for Texas's 16th congressional district, and
Susie, El Paso City Representative, 2011, “Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S.
and Mexico”///TS)
One of the great ironies of marijuana prohibition is that at its root was¶ a fear of the murderous and
criminal tendencies that its use might incite,¶ especially in Mexicans and those of Mexican descent. It is
now obvious¶ that it was the prohibition of marijuana, not its use, that has led to crime,¶ violence and
the rise of super-criminal syndicates throughout the world.¶ And no country has been more greatly
devastated by the murder and¶ criminality unleashed by prohibition than Mexico.¶ In the most recent
campaign on the war on drugs in Mexico, starting¶ with the Calderón presidency in 2006, more than
40,000 Mexicans have¶ been killed. In Juárez alone, the number is close to 10,000.¶ While marijuana is
not the only drug being transited through¶ Mexico and across the border at Juárez for sale and
consumption in the¶ United States, it is the most central to the Mexican drug trade.¶ First, marijuana
comprises a significant percentage of cartel revenues,¶ anywhere from 30 to 60 percent, depending on
which of the many official ¶ U.S. and Mexican estimates published over the last five years is used.¶
Second, as The Wall Street Journal David Luhnow explains,¶ marijuana is a safe, consistent producer on
the cartels’ balance sheets:¶ If a cocaine shipment is seized, the Mexican gang has¶ to write off the
expected profits from the shipment and the¶ cost of paying Colombian suppliers, meaning they lose
twice.¶ But because gangs here grow their own marijuana, it’s easier¶ to absorb the losses from a
seizure. Cartels also own the land¶ where the marijuana is grown, meaning they can cheaply grow¶
more supply rather than have to fork over more money to the¶ Colombians for the next shipment of
cocaine.¶ Less revenue, by an estimated $8 billion to $10 billion annually means¶ fewer resources to
arm cartels, to hire new recruits, to buy politicians and¶ judges, and to act with impunity throughout
many regions of the country.¶ Also, taking away this cornerstone of cartel finances destabilizes their¶
operations and gives law enforcement a greater chance at success.¶ When alcohol prohibition was
repealed, the mob didn’t go away But¶ its influence in America, its ability to terrorize and control cities
like¶ Chicago, diminished considerably. But the effects of prohibition, whether it is on booze or dope,
are¶ the same. This description of 1920s Chicago could describe Juárez today:¶ The smuggling laws gave
these criminals huge amounts¶ of power, which they used to intimidate and effectively absorb¶ the city
government. Facing a choice between being killed or¶ being enriched, city officials chose the latter. City
government¶ shifted from controlling the criminals to being an arm of¶ criminal power. In the meantime,
various criminal gangs¶ competed with each other for power.7’¶ So while the cartels won’t magically
disappear if their share¶ of the marijuana trade evaporates, just as the mobsters in Chicago¶ didn’t
disappear after their command of the liquor trade ended, they¶ will become a much more manageable
problem for Mexico. This will¶ give the country a fighting chance to develop the social, economic¶ and
judicial infrastructure that will allow it to establish rule of law¶ and civic institutions that demand
respect, instead of contempt, from¶ its citizens.
CP
The RISK of patchwork restrictions and DEA raids kill solvency- state liscensing
backfires
Taylor ’13 (Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Brookings nonresident senior fellow. His most recent book is
Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t
Admit It, coauthored with Richard Sander, “Marijuana Policy and Presidential Leadership: How to Avoid
a Federal-State Train Wreck”, April 2013)
To be sure, it
might be possible for the Administration to shut down the state-taxed, state-licensed, stateregulated, consumer-protection-focused, out-in-the-open, largescale marijuana industries planned by
Colorado and Washington. The Administration could probably do that by unleashing (or just omitting to leash) the Justice
Department’s prosecutorial and asset-forfeiture powers. It could, for example, use threats of conspiracy prosecutions to scare off applicants for
state licenses to grow or sell marijuana, and it could threaten legal action against their landlords. But that would be a Pyrrhic victory. The
Administration could also file a civil suit or suits against Colorado and Washington or both arguing that the CSA broadly preempts state
regulation of marijuana. But even if the courts agreed, which seems doubtful (as argued below), that, too, would be a Pyrrhic victory. The
reasons are twofold. First, the federal government has no legal power to force states to enforce federal law or prevent them from simply
repealing their own marijuana penalties—a point to which I will return in more detail. Second, with only 4,400 federal Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) agents across the nation—about one for every 3,000 regular marijuana users and one for every 170 state and local
cops5—the federal government has nowhere near enough manpower to restrain the metastasis of the grow-your-own-and-share marijuana
market that state legalization without regulation would stimulate.6 An
Obama Administration attack on the Colorado and
Washington laws would bring about such a metastasis immediately in Colorado, whose new law (unlike
Washington’s) has already removed state penalties for adult residents who grow their own marijuana (up to six plants at a time) and who share
it with networks of friends and others (by giving away up to an ounce at a time).
The result would be to let millions of
unregulated, unlicensed, untaxed, state-legalized, easy-to-grow home-grown marijuana plants bloom,
with individual growers and users fairly confident that the feds have too few troops to enforce the harsh penalties provided by federal law for
growing and distributing marijuana. Such
an atomized, free-for-all market, with the small-time criminals and
underworld dealers who would crowd into it, seems far more likely to increase spillover to other
states, sales to minors, and violent crime than would a much smaller number of closely regulated and
watched, state-licensed dispensaries, which Colorado is to begin licensing by January 1, 2014.7 Indeed, part of the
strategy underlying the Colorado initiative, says one key supporter, was to tell the federal government,
in essence: “Do you want regulation, or chaos? You decide. Doesn’t regulation sound better? Isn’t it
more consistent with your public health goals?” An Obama Administration attack on the state-regulated
marijuana sectors would also spur leaders of the legalization movement in Washington State—whose new
law currently bans all marijuana growing and distribution outside the regulated system—and other states to give up on state
regulation. Instead, they might emulate Colorado’s grow-your-own provisions, or simply repeal state penalties for small-scale marijuana
cultivation and distribution as well as possession. That is what Michigan’s 88-word Constitutional Amendment to End Marijuana Prohibition
would do.8 Just such a pattern of simplerepeal laws helped unravel (alcohol) Prohibition starting with a New York law in 1923.9 And, in the view
of four leading experts of diverse views on legalization, “short of massively expanding the DEA payroll, [the feds] could do essentially nothing to
stop a legalize-only action such as the Michigan amendment.”10 While
the simple-repeal approach is fine with the more
libertarian, anti-regulation wing of the legalization movement, it would arguably be the worst of both
worlds for those who worry about the damage that an atomized market could do to kids—whose brain
development could be harmed by marijuana, some contested studies suggest11—and other consumers. A federal crackdown would
probably not achieve its goal of raising prices as a way to reduce consumption.12 But it would definitely
prevent Colorado, Washington, and other states from regulating price, purity, potency (much higher
than in decades past),13 and labeling to protect consumers. The two states seem intent on responsible regulation, in
contradistinction to, say, the chaotic medical marijuana regime in California, where state laws are hopelessly unclear and often unenforced. The
Colorado and Washington ballot initiatives were drafted by experts who took pains to accommodate federal interests. Plus, with the
Washington and Colorado regulatory regimes not due to start operating until December and January, respectively, there is time to work out
state-federal agreements. The
Obama Administration should do so before the two states are much farther
along in shaping regulatory regimes that could benefit from constructive federal input.14 U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder has already been personally urged by John Hickenlooper, Colorado’s veteran Democratic governor, and Jay Inslee,
Washington’s new Democratic governor, to work cooperatively with them. Both opposed legalization last year. But both have said they can
make their states’ new laws work well and protect federal interests from the harms that could come from simple repeal. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi has also called for the Justice Department to stop enforcing federal marijuana laws in Colorado and Washington for conduct allowed by
state law.15 And, as noted within, in Colorado the federal government has for several years largely left alone hundreds of state-regulated
medical marijuana dispensaries, some very large, excepting those that federal prosecutors deemed to be too close to schools.
Key to NATO
Miller ’12 (Paul D. Miller, Paul D. Miller served as director for Afghanistan on the National Security
Council staff under Presidents Bush and Obama. He is an assistant professor of International Security
Affairs at the National Defense University and director for the Afghanistan-Pakistan program at the
College of International Security Affairs, World Affairs Journal, “It’s Not Just Al-Qaeda: Stability in the
Most Dangerous Region”, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/it%E2%80%99s-not-just-al-qaedastability-most-dangerous-region, March/April 2012)
Neither President Barack Obama nor the Republicans competing to run against him are eager to talk about the war in Afghanistan. The electorate certainly doesn’t want to hear about it. Defense analysts are acting like it ended when Iraq did. Even more amazing is that m ost analysts and
policymakers seem to believe that, one way or another, it doesn’t actually matter very much that it didn’t. In fact, the war is only now entering its culminating phase, indicated by the willingness of both US and Taliban officials to talk openly about negotiations, something parties to a
That means the war’s ultimate outcome is likely to be decided by the
decisions, battles, and bargaining of the next year or so. And its outcome will have huge implications for
the future of US national security
Now is the time, more than ten years into the effort, to remind ourselves what is at stake in
Afghanistan and why the United States must secure lasting stability in South Asia.
The war in Afghanistan now affects all of
America’s interests across South Asia: Pakistan’s stability and the security of its nuclear weapons,
NATO’s credibility, relations with Iran and Russia, transnational drug-trafficking networks, and more.
conflict do only when they see more benefit to stopping a war than continuing it.
. In turn, that means the collective decision to ignore the war and its consequences is foolish at best, dangerous at worst. While Americans have lost interest in the war, the war may still have an
interest in America.
It was, of course, al-Qaeda’s attack on the US homeland that
triggered the intervention in Afghanistan, but wars, once started, always involve broader considerations than those present at the firing of the first shot.
America leaves the job in Afghanistan unfinished at its peril. The chorus of voices in the Washington policy establishment calling for withdrawal is growing louder. In response to this pressure, President Obama has pledged to withdraw the surge of thirty thousand US troops by September
2012—faster than US military commanders have recommended—and fully transition leadership for the country’s security to the Afghans in 2013. These decisions mirror the anxieties of the electorate: fifty-six percent of Americans surveyed recently by the Pew Research Center said that
But it is not too late for Obama
to
reformulate US strategy and goals in South Asia and explain to the American people and the world why
an ongoing commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan and the region, however unpopular, is nonetheless
necessary.
the US should remove its troops as soon as possible.
(who, after all, campaigned in 2008 on the importance of Afghanistan, portraying it as “the good war” in comparison to Iraq)
The Afghanistan Study Group, a collection of scholars and former policymakers critical of the current intervention, argued in 2010 that al-Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan and is unlikely to return, even if Afghanistan reverts to chaos or Taliban rule. It argued
that three things would have to happen for al-Qaeda to reestablish a safe haven and threaten the United States: “1) the Taliban must seize control of a substantial portion of the country, 2) Al Qaeda must relocate there in strength, and 3) it must build facilities in this new ‘safe haven’ that
will allow it to plan and train more effectively than it can today.” Because all three are unlikely to happen, the Study Group argued, al-Qaeda almost certainly will not reestablish a presence in Afghanistan in a way that threatens US security. In fact, none of those three steps are necessary
for al-Qaeda to regain its safe haven and threaten America. The group could return to Afghanistan even if the Taliban do not take back control of the country. It could—and probably would—find safe haven there if Afghanistan relapsed into chaos or civil war. Militant groups, including alQaeda offshoots, have gravitated toward other failed states, like Somalia and Yemen, but Afghanistan remains especially tempting, given the network’s familiarity with the terrain and local connections. Nor does al-Qaeda, which was never numerically overwhelming, need to return to
operations,
are typically planned and carried out by very few people. AlQaeda’s resilience
means that stabilizing Afghanistan is, in fact, necessary even for the most basic US
war aims
Setting aside the
possibility of al-Qaeda’s reemergence, the United States has other important interests in the region as
well—notably preventing the Taliban from gaining enough power to destabilize neighboring Pakistan,
which, for all its recent defiance, is officially a longstanding American ally
State failure in Pakistan brokered by the Taliban could mean regional chaos and
a possible loss of control of its nuclear weapons.
Pakistan is edging toward civil war.
According to the Brookings Institution’s Pakistan Index,
insurgents, militants, and terrorists now regularly launch more than one hundred and fifty attacks per
Afghanistan “in strength” to be a threat. Terrorist
including the attacks of 2001,
, therefore,
. The international community should not withdraw until there is an Afghan government and Afghan security forces with the will and capacity to deny safe haven without international help.
. (It signed two mutual defense treaties with the United States in the 1950s, and
President Bush designated it a major non-NATO ally in 2004.)
Preventing such a catastrophe is clearly a vital national interest of the United States and cannot be accomplished with a few drones. Alarmingly,
A collection of militant Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda, Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and Tehrik-e Nafaz-e Shariat-e Mohammadi (TNSM), among others, are fighting an insurgency
that has escalated dramatically since 2007 across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Baluchista n.
month on Pakistani government, military, and infrastructure targets.
Pakistan has
deployed nearly one hundred thousand regular army soldiers to its western provinces. At least three
thousand soldiers have been killed in combat since 2007
The two insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan are
linked. Defeating the Afghan Taliban would give the United States and Pakistan momentum in the
fight against the Pakistani Taliban A Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, on the other hand, will give new
strength to the Pakistani insurgency, which would gain an ally in Kabul, safe haven to train and arm and
from which to launch attacks into Pakistan, and a huge morale boost in seeing their compatriots win
power in a neighboring country.
increasing
chaos and instability in Pakistan could give cover for terrorists to increase the intensity and scope of
their operations, perhaps even to achieve the cherished goal of stealing a nuclear weapon.
Afghanistan itself occupies crucial geography Situated between Iran and Pakistan, bordering
China, and within reach of Russia and India, it sits on a crossroads of Asia’s great powers. This is why it
has, since the nineteenth century, been home to the so-called Great Game—in which the US should
continue to be a player. Two other players, Russia and Iran, are aggressive powers seeking to establish
hegemony over their neighbors. Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons
Russia under Vladimir Putin is seeking to reestablish its sphere
of influence over its near abroad
Building a
stable government in Kabul will be a small step in the larger campaign to limit Tehran’s influence.
Russia remains heavily involved in the Central Asian republics
It remains
interested in the huge energy reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Russia may be wary of
significant involvement in Afghanistan proper
But a US withdrawal from
Afghanistan followed by Kabul’s collapse would likely embolden Russia to assert its influence more
aggressively elsewhere in Central Asia or Eastern Europe, especially in the Ukraine. A US departure
from Afghanistan will also continue to resonate for years to come in the strength and purpose of NATO.
In a so far feckless and ineffectual response,
, as militants have been able to seize control of whole towns and districts. Tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and militants—the
distinction between them in these areas is not always clear—have been killed in daily terror and counterterror operations.
.
Pakistan’s collapse or fall to the Taliban is (at present) unlikely, but the implications of that scenario are so dire that they cannot be ignored. Even short of a collapse,
Although our war there has at
times seemed remote,
.
, has an elite military organization (the Quds Force) seeking to export its Islamic
Revolution, and uses the terror group Hezbollah as a proxy to bully neighboring countries and threaten Israel.
, in pursuit of which it (probably) cyber-attacked Estonia in 2007, invaded Georgia in 2008, and has continued efforts to subvert Ukraine. Iran owned much of Afghan territory centuries ago, and
continues to share a similar language, culture, and religion with much of the country. It maintains extensive ties with the Taliban, Afghan warlords, and opposition politicians who might replace the corrupt but Western-oriented Karzai government.
. It has worked to oust the United States from the air base at Manas, Kyrgyzstan.
, unwilling to repeat the Soviet Union’s epic blunder there.
Every American president since Harry Truman has affirmed the centrality of the Atlantic Alliance to US national security. The war in Afghanistan under the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the Alliance’s first out-of-area operation in its sixty-year history, was going
poorly until the US troop surge. Even with the limited success that followed, allies have complained that the burden in Afgha nistan has been distributed unevenly. Some, like the British, Canadians, and Poles, are fighting a shooting war in Kandahar and Helmand, while others, like the
Lithuanians and Germans, are doing peacekeeping in Ghor and Kunduz. The poor command and control—split between four regional centers—left decisionmaking slow and poorly coordinated for much of the war. ISAF’s strategy was only clarified in 2008 and 2009, when Generals David
A bad end in Afghanistan could have dire
consequences for the Atlantic Alliance leaving the organization’s future, and especially its credibility as
a deterrent to Russia, in question would not be irrational for a Russian observer of the war in
Afghanistan to conclude that if NATO cannot make tough decisions, field effective fighting forces, or
distribute burdens evenly, it cannot defend Europe. The United States and Europe must prevent that
outcome by salvaging a credible result to its operations in Afghanistan—one that both persuades Russia
that NATO is still a fighting alliance and preserves the organization as a pillar of US national security.
McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal finally developed a more coherent campaign plan with counterinsurgency-appropriate rules of engagement.
,
. It
For some
critics, organizing US grand strategy around the possible appearance of Russian tanks across the Fulda Gap is the perfect example of generals continuing to fight the last war. For them, the primary threat to US national security comes from terrorists, insurgency, state failure, ecological
disaster, infectious pandemic disease, cyber attacks, transnational crime, piracy, and gangs. But if that view of the world is right, it is all the more reason to remain engaged in Afghanistan, because it is the epicenter of the new, asymmetric, transnational threats to the US and allied
national security. Even those who deny al-Qaeda could regain safe haven in Afghanistan cannot deny how much power, and capacity for damage, the drug lords have acquired there. In some years they have controlled wealth equivalent to fifty percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and produced
Today, their products feed Europe’s endemic heroin problem, and the wealth this
trade generates has done much to undermine nine years of work building a new and legitimate
government in Kabul. In their quest for market share, the drug lords will expand wherever there is
demand for their product or potential to grow a secure supply, almost certainly starting in Pakistan,
where the trade was centered in the 1980s. Where the drug lords go, state failure, along with its
accompanying chaos and asymmetric threats, will follow, as the violence and anarchy currently wracking
parts of Mexico suggest.
South Asia’s narcoticssmuggling cartels are dangerously close to seizing control of an entire state and using it to undermine
law, order, and stability across an entire region. The poppy and heroin kingpins are fabulously wealthy
in excess of ninety percent of the world’s heroin.
Imagine the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as a failed narco-state with the profits funding the revival of al-Qaeda or its many terror offshoots.
and powerful; they oppose US interests, weaken US allies, and are headquartered in Afghanistan.
Defeating them is a vital interest of the United States.
NATO solves nuclear war
Brzezinski ‘9 (Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. National Security Adviser from 1977 to 1981. His most recent book is Second Chance: Three
Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, September 2009 - October 2009, (Foreign Affairs, SECTION: Pg. 2 Vol. 88 No. 5, HEADLINE:
An Agenda for NATO Subtitle: Toward a Global Security Web, p. Lexis, 2009)
ADJUSTING TO A TRANSFORMED WORLD And yet, it is fair to ask: Is NATO living up to its extraordinary potential? NATO today is without a doubt the most powerful
military and political alliance in the world. Its 28 members come from the globe's two most productive, technologically advanced, socially modern, economically
prosperous, and politically democratic regions. Its member states' 900 million people account for only 13 percent of the world's population but 45 percent of global
GDP. NATO's potential is not primarily military. Although NATO is a collective-security alliance, its actual military power comes predominantly from the United
States, and that reality is not likely to change anytime soon. NATO's real power derives from the fact that it combines
the United States' military
capabilities and economic power with
Europe's collective political and economic weight (and occasionally some limited European military forces).
Together, that combination makes NATO globally significant . It must therefore remain sensitive to the importance of safeguarding the
geopolitical bond between the United States and Europe as it addresses new tasks. The basic challenge that NATO now confronts is that there are
historically unprecedented risks to global security. Today's world is threatened neither by the militant fanaticism of a territorially
rapacious nationalist state nor by the coercive aspiration of a globally pretentious ideology embraced by an expansive imperial power. The paradox of our time is
that the world, increasingly connected and economically interdependent for the first time in its entire history, is experiencing intensifying popular unrest made all
the more menacing by the growing accessibility of weapons of mass destruction -- not just to states but also, potentially, to extremist religious and political
movements. Yet there
is no effective global security mechanism for coping with the growing threat of violent
political chaos stemming from humanity's recent political awakening. The three great political contests of the twentieth century (the two world wars and
the Cold War) accelerated the political awakening of mankind, which was initially unleashed in Europe by the French Revolution. Within a century of that revolution,
spontaneous populist political activism had spread from Europe to East Asia. On their return home after World Wars I and II, the South Asians and the North
Africans who had been conscripted by the British and French imperial armies propagated a new awareness of anticolonial nationalist and religious political identity
among hitherto passive and pliant populations. The spread of literacy during the twentieth century and the wide-ranging impact of radio, television, and the
Internet accelerated and intensified this mass global political awakening. In its early stages, such new political awareness tends to be expressed as a fanatical
embrace of the most extreme ethnic or fundamentalist religious passions, with beliefs and resentments universalized in Manichaean categories. Unfortunately, in
significant parts of the developing world, bitter memories of European colonialism and of more recent U.S. intrusion have given such newly aroused passions a
distinctively anti-Western cast. Today, the most acute example of this phenomenon is found in an area that stretches from Egypt to India. This area, inhabited by
more than 500 million politically and religiously aroused peoples, is where NATO is becoming more deeply embroiled. Additionally complicating is the fact that the
dramatic rise of China
and India and the quick recovery of Japan within the last 50 years have signaled that the global center of political
and economic gravity is shifting away from the North Atlantic toward Asia and the Pacific. And of the currently leading global
powers -- the United States, the EU, China, Japan, Russia, and India -- at least two, or perhaps even three, are revisionist in their orientation. Whether they are
"rising peacefully" (a self-confident China), truculently (an imperially nostalgic Russia) or boastfully (an assertive India, despite its internal multiethnic and religious
vulnerabilities), they all desire a change in the global pecking order. The
future conduct of and relationship among these three still relatively
cautious revisionist powers will further intensify the strategic uncertainty. Visible on the horizon but not as powerful are the
emerging regional rebels, with some of them defiantly reaching for nuclear weapons. North Korea has openly flouted the international community by producing
(apparently successfully) its own nuclear weapons -- and also by profiting from their dissemination. At some point, its unpredictability could
precipitate
the first use of nuclear weapons in anger since 1945. Iran, in contrast, has proclaimed that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes
but so far has been unwilling to consider consensual arrangements with the international community that would provide credible assurances rega rding these
intentions. In nuclear-armed Pakistan, an extremist anti-Western religious movement is threatening the country's political stability. These changes together reflect
the waning of the post-World War II global hierarchy and the simultaneous dispersal of global power. Unfortunately, U.S. leadership in recent years unintentionally,
but most unwisely, contributed to the currently threatening state of affairs. The combination of Washington's arrogant unilateralism in Iraq and its demagogic
Islamophobic sloganeering weakened the unity of NATO and focused aroused Muslim resentments on the United States and the West more generally
K
Our discussions are critical- complexity of legalization necessitates political detail
Rauch ’14 (Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Marijuana Policy Project, “It’s All
in the Implementation”,
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/features/its_all_in_the_imple
mentation049294.php?page=all, March/ April/ May 2014)
Is marijuana legalization on the gay marriage track toward decisive and irrevocable public acceptance? The liberals and libertarians who support
it—call them liberaltarians, to borrow a term from the Cato Institute’s Brink Lindsey—certainly hope so, and the similarities are not hard to see.
Public approval trends for legal marijuana and gay marriage look remarkably similar. (See chart below.) Both have crossed the magic 50 percent
line defining majority support, and both, as a result, have seen recent political breakthroughs. In 2012, Colorado and Washington legalized the
production, sale, and use of marijuana; since 2009, meanwhile, eight states have legalized medical marijuana, bringing the total to twenty-one
(including Washington, D.C.). Gay marriage has similarly picked up momentum, winning adoption in three state initiatives in 2012 and
subsequently legalized in an additional eight states. Here is one thing we can say for sure: whatever happens next, there will be no going back
to the status quo ante. Drug warriors and marriage traditionalists will need to come to terms with that fact. But, having noticed the obvious
similarities between legal marijuana and legal gay marriage, marijuana reform advocates—especially liberals who care about government’s
effectiveness and reputation—need to pay at least as much attention to the less obvious differences. Otherwise they may encounter some of
the same sickening surprises they have run into with an issue that may seem not at all like marijuana, but that in fact has much in common with
it: Obamacare. At
first glance, this might seem like a stretch. What can a top-down federal reform of the
health care system tell us about a state-led reform of drug laws? Quite a lot, actually. Marijuana
legalization, unlike gay marriage but very much like Obamacare, requires the government to execute a
complicated new program well. Indeed, one might argue that legalizing marijuana is to the states that are doing it much as
Obamacare is to the federal government: a test of modern government’s ability to innovate at a time when it is under siege. Consider,
then, four lessons Obamacare holds for marijuana reformers. Change in public opinion over same-sex marriage and
marijuana legalization by year 1. Pragmatism trumps moralism. Gay marriage is a moral values issue. Proponents see it as a core
civil right; opponents see it as a violation of God’s or nature’s laws. Moral attitudes are slow and difficult to change—not a lot of people will be
convinced one way or another by looking at statistics. But once moral opinions do change, they tend to change decisively and durably, which is
why the change in attitudes toward homosexuality has become a cascade in the last decade. And gay marriage, to its proponents, is not
something merely to be grudgingly allowed; it is something to celebrate, the exercise of the virtues of commitment and love. To some extent,
marijuana legalization fits the moral template: the stigma that used to attach to toking has diminished since the Reefer Madness days. Public
morality no longer supports a zero-tolerance attitude toward pot use. But that is where the similarity ends. Last
year, my colleagues
E. J. Dionne and William Galston conducted a comprehensive analysis of the public opinion data
available on marijuana. Their conclusion: though some people do see marijuana liberalization as a moral
value—a freedom issue—mainstream opinion sees no virtue in smoking weed. Opinion has moved
toward legalization because the public—including sizable majorities of conservative Republicans as well
as liberal Democrats—has come to believe that prohibition is a failed policy and legalization might work
better. As such, support for legalization is pragmatic, conditional, and precarious. That is not true of support for
gay marriage, but it is similar to support for Obamacare. True-blue liberals and hard-boiled conservatives may believe that Obamacare is a
moral issue (a test of the country’s compassion; a threat to the country’s values), but most
of the public cares mainly about
whether it works. If it creates chaos, fails to contain costs, or leaves many people feeling worse off, it
will be—in fact, already is—on very thin ice with the public. Likewise, if marijuana legalization creates
chaos, fails to contain crime, or leaves many people feeling worse off, a backlash and subsequent
rejection and retrenchment are quite possible, leaving policy stranded between failed prohibition and
stalled liberalization. 2. It’s the implementation, stupid. So marijuana legalization needs to work—or at
least it needs not to fail. Moreover, it needs to be perceived to work. Unfortunately for it, it is not selfimplementing. Gay marriage requires little more than a few legal changes and the issuance of marriage licenses. There are assuredly
complexities, such as what to do about incompatible state and federal policies and how to handle disputes over religious objections, but they
are secondary issues that do not call into question the legitimacy of same-sex marriage itself. Marijuana
legalization, by contrast,
is like Obamacare in being anything but binary. Changing the law is merely the first step down a long
and tortuous road. Colorado, Washington, and any other states that may eventually legalize need to
create administrative and bureaucratic structures to regulate the growth, distribution, and sale of
marijuana; they also need to coordinate those efforts with continuing law enforcement against illegal
sellers. They need to set tax levels high enough to deter heavy use but not so high as to sustain a black
market. They need to make all kinds of regulatory determinations, from how marijuana can be marketed
to what level of use constitutes impairment; they must defend those rules in court and regroup when
they lose. They need to work out a modus operandi with a hostile federal legal regime and a skeptical
law enforcement establishment. They need to track outcomes, identify problems, and make
adjustments. And not least, as the president so painfully forgot during the fight for Obamacare, they
need to make their case effectively to the public all along the way. All of that sounds almost unmanageable when
listed on paper. But in fact, early indications are that Colorado and Washington are faring reasonably well. If they pass the implementation test,
marijuana legalization could prove that obituaries for effective, adaptive government—some of them written by me—are premature. But if
they yield chaos or crisis, they would discredit the policy they seek to promote. As of now, I’m cautiously optimistic that the states’ experiments
will be made to work, not perfectly but well enough. But liberaltarians
and drug reformers need to get it through their
heads that just passing legalization initiatives is not enough. They need to stick around once the vote is
over and commit to the hard slog of making the policy succeed. 3. Overpromising is perilous. This, of course, is
something Obamacare supporters are learning the hard way. (“Keep your current insurance, if you like it”? And we’ll see about near-universal
coverage, cost-curve bending, and budgetary savings.) Of course, to overcome public resistance to any reform, you must make promises,
usually optimistic ones. But there is a price to pay for overdoing it. Here again, marijuana legalization faces some of the same challenges as
Obamacare. Voters in Colorado and Washington were told that legalization would produce new gushers of revenue for education and public
safety; many experts at the time warned that the revenue claims were unrealistic. Similarly, legalization was touted as a public safety measure,
redirecting policy resources toward more serious forms of crime, but experts say that suppressing the black market as it fights for market share
may initially require more law enforcement resources, not fewer. The public safety and revenue arguments for legalization are entirely
legitimate and, over the long run, likely to prove valid. In the short run, however, the best way to avoid an Obamacare-style collision with
reality is to tailor expectations by making clear to the public that legalization is a journey, not a destination, and that magical results won’t
come overnight. 4.
Avert zero-sum politics. Obamacare would have been a lot easier to launch and fix if the Republican half of the
politics—which scores any Obamacare success as a win for
Democrats and a loss for Republicans, rather than as a win for the country—has proved toxic to the
environment for reform. The same has not quite happened for marijuana legalization, but it could. Drug warriors vigorously object to
country did not feel invested in its failure. Zero-sum
legalization; many expect legalization to fail and hope to nip it, excuse the pun, in the bud. But many are also cognizant that the old approach
was unsustainable and unsuccessful. Partly because marijuana legalization has usurped the limelight, the Obama administration’s drug czar, Gil
Kerlikowske, has received too little notice and credit for steering federal antidrug policy away from criminalization and toward prevention and
treatment; even drug warriors increasingly speak of addiction as a disease and accept that we will never incarcerate or zero-tolerate our way
out of the problem. To these drug warriors of good faith, responsible proponents of marijuana legalization need to address a message. What
Colorado and Washington are doing is conditional legalization, wrapping marijuana within a regime of regulation that uses both carrots
(legitimate profits for those who follow the rules) and sticks (punishments for those who don’t) to better control the marijuana market and
more effectively deploy public resources. The
alternative, should regulated legalization fail, might be chaotic
legalization or policy drift, which would be worse, even from a drug war point of view. So drug warriors
have a stake in helping Colorado and Washington and other states find new paths toward an effective
drug-control framework—just as liberalizers have a stake in keeping a regulatory handle on marijuana
markets. To avoid the zero-sum mind-set and all the counterproductive friction that goes with it, that
message is politically essential. It has the additional advantage of being true.
Even if we don’t view them as an enemy- they view us as one
Harris ‘4 (Essayist for Policy Review, Lee, Civilization and its Enemies, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fnews/1260214/posts)
This is how mankind always thought of the enemy- as the one who, if you do not kill him first, will sooner or later kill you. And
those who see the world this way see it very differently from those who do not. This is the major fact of our time. We are
caught in dthe midst of a conflict between those for whom the category of the enemy is essential to
their way of organizing all human experience and those who have banished even the idea of the
enemy from both public discourse and even their innermost thoughts. But those who abhor thinking of the world
through the category of the enemy must still be prepared to think about the category of the enemy. That is, even if you refuse
to think of anyone else as an enemy, you must acknowledge that there are people who do in fact think
this way. Yet even this minimal step is a step that many of our leading intellectuals refuse to take,
despite the revelation that occurred on 9/11. they want to see 9/11 as a means to an end and not an end in itself. But
9/11 was an end in itself, and that is where we must begin. Why do they hate us? They hate us because we are
their enemy…It is the enemy who defines us as his enemy, and in making this definition he changes
us, and changes us whether we like it or not. We cannot be the same after we have been defined as an enemy
as we were before. That is why those who uphold the values of the Enlightenment so often refuse to recognize that those who
are trying to kill us are their enemy. They hope that by pretending that the enemy is simply misguided,
or misunderstood, or politically immature, he will cease to be an enemy. This is an illusion. To see
the enemy as someone who is merely an awkward negotiator of sadly lacking in savoir faire and diplomatic
aplomb is perverse. It shows contempt for the depth and sincerity of his convictions, a terrible mistake to
make when you are dealing with someone who wants you dead. We are the enemy of those who
murdered us on 9/11. And if you are an enemy, then you have an enemy. When you recognize
it, this fact must change everything about the way you see the world.
The only political solution to terrorism is viewing them as an objective threat
entity – any alternative risk paralysis
Ganor ‘2 (Boax Ganor, The International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, “Defining
Terrorism: Is One Man’s Terrorist Another Man’s Freedom Fighter?”
http://www.maeganandjoe.info/temp/School/A-PSMG%204347%20%20GLOBAL%20PERSPECTIVES%20ON%20TERRORISM/Unit%201/one%20mans%20terro
rist.pdf, 2002, LEQ)
Most researchers
tend to believe that an objective and internationally accepted definition of terrorism can never be agreed
upon; after all, they say, ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’ The question of who is a terrorist,
according to this school of thought, depends entirely on the subjective outlook of the definer. This article argues that an
objective definition of terrorism is not only possible; it is also indispensable to any serious
attempt to combat terrorism. A correct and objective definition of terrorism can be based upon accepted international
laws and principles regarding what behaviors are permitted in conventional wars between nations. This normative principle relating
to a state of war between two countries can be extended without difficulty to a conflict between a nongovernmental organization and
a state. This extended version would thus differentiate between guerrilla warfare and terrorism. The aims of terrorism and guerrilla
warfare may well be identical; but they are distinguished from each other by the targets of their operations. The guerrilla fighter’s
targets are military ones, while the terrorist deliberately targets civilians. By this definition, a terrorist organization can no longer
claim to be ‘freedom fighters’ because they are fighting for national liberation. Even if its declared ultimate goals are legitimate, an
organization that deliberately targets civilians is a terrorist organization. The terror attacks in the
US on September 11th, and the subsequent efforts by the United States to build a broad-based antiterrorism coalition, have thrown
into sharp relief the question of what constitutes terrorism. Most researchers tend to believe that an objective and internationally
accepted definition of terrorism can never be agreed upon; after all, they say, ‘‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’’
(Laqueur, 1987: 7, 302). The
question of who is a terrorist, according to this school of thought, depends entirely
on the subjective outlook of the definer; and in any case, such a definition is unnecessary for the international fight against
terrorism. In their view, it is sufficient to say that what looks like a terrorist, sounds like a terrorist, and behaves like a terrorist is a
terrorist. This position, naturally, contributes nothing to the understanding of an already difficult
issue. Nor does the attempt to divide terrorism into categories such as ‘bad and worse terrorism,’ ‘internal terrorism and
international terrorism,’ or ‘tolerable terrorism and intolerable terrorism.’ All these categories reflect the subjective outlook of
whoever is doing the categorizing – and purely subjective categories will not help us to determine who
are
the real terrorists. At the same time, there are others who say that a definition of terrorism is necessary, but that such a
definition must serve their own political ends (Martha, 1995). States that sponsor terrorism are trying to persuade the international
community to define terrorism in such a way that the particular terror groups they sponsor would be outside the definition – and
thus to absolve them from all responsibility for supporting terrorism. Countries such as Syria, Libya, and Iran have lobbied for such
a definition, according to which ‘freedom fighters’ would be given carte blanche permission to carry out any kind of attacks they
wanted, because a just goal can be pursued by all available means. Both these schools of thought are wrong; and both attitudes will
make it impossible to fight terrorism effectively. An objective definition of terrorism is not only possible; it is also indispensable to
any serious attempt to combat terrorism. Lacking such a
definition, no coordinated fight against international
terrorism can ever really get anywhere. A correct and objective definition of terrorism can be based
upon accepted international laws and principles regarding what behaviors are permitted in conventional wars
between nations. These laws are set out in the Geneva and Hague Conventions, which in turn are based upon the
basic principle that the deliberate harming of soldiers during wartime is a necessary evil, and thus permissible, whereas the
deliberate targeting of civilians is absolutely forbidden. These Conventions thus differentiate between soldiers
who attack a military adversary, and war criminals who deliberately attack civilians. This normative principle relating to a state of
war between two countries can be extended without difficulty to a conflict between a nongovernmental organization and a state. This
extended version would thus differentiate between guerrilla warfare and terrorism. Exactly in parallel with the distinction between
military and civilian targets in war, the extended version would designate as ‘Guerilla Warfare’ the ‘deliberate use of violence against
military and security personnel in order to attain political, ideological and religious goals.’ ‘Terrorism,’ on the other hand,
would be defined as ‘the deliberate use or the threat to use violence against civilians in order to
attain political, ideological and religious aims’ (an attack aimed against government personnel should therefore be
defined as terrorism if the target was not in a decision making position of the state’s Counter-Terrorism policy). What is important
in these definitions is the differentiation between the goals and the means used to achieve these goals. The aims of terrorism and
guerrilla warfare may well be identical; but they are distinguished from each other by the means used – or more precisely, by the
targets of their operations. The guerrilla fighter’s targets are military ones, while the terrorist deliberately targets civilians. By this
definition, a
terrorist organization can no longer claim to be ‘freedom fighters’ because they are fighting for
if its declared ultimate goals are legitimate, an
organization that deliberately targets civilians is a terrorist organization. There is no merit or exoneration
national liberation or some other worthy goal. Even
in fighting for the freedom of one population if in doing so you destroy the rights of another population. If all the world’s civilian
populations are not to become pawns in one struggle or another, terrorism – the deliberate targeting of civilians – must
be
absolutely forbidden, regardless of the legitimacy or justice of its goals. The ends do not justify the means. By carrying out
terrorist attacks, the perpetrators make themselves the enemies of all mankind. Only on the basis of an international agreement on
the definition of terrorism will it be possible to demand that all nations withhold all support from terrorist organizations. Only on
this basis can countries be required to act against terrorists, even when they agree with and support the
terrorists’ goals. The worldwide acceptance of the above definition of terrorism – and the adoption of international legislation
against terrorism and support for terrorism based upon this definition – could bring about a change in the cost-benefit calculations
of terrorist organizations and their sponsors. At present, terrorist organizations may carry out either terrorist or guerrilla attacks
according to their preferences and local conditions only, with no external reason to choose one type of attack over the other. After all,
as far as the rest of the world is concerned, the two types of attack are morally equivalent; punishment is identical in both cases.
However, should these organizations and their sponsors be made aware that the use of terror will bring them more harm than good,
they may opt to focus on guerrilla warfare rather than on terrorism. This would be a great achievement for Counter-Terrorism. Does
this definition of terrorism legitimize guerrilla warfare? The definition does make a moral distinction between terrorism and
guerrilla warfare. Countries forced to deal with ongoing attacks on their military personnel will obviously perceive these attacks as
acts of war, which must be thwarted. These countries cannot expect to enlist the world in a struggle against ‘legitimate’ guerrilla
warfare, but they could justifiably demand that the international community assist them were they fighting against terrorism. […]
The question is whether it is at all possible to arrive at an exhaustive and objective
definition of terrorism, which could
constitute an accepted and agreed-upon foundation for academic research, as well as facilitating operations
on an international scale against the perpetrators of terrorist activities. The definition proposed here states that
terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use, violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political
aims. This definition is based on three important elements: 1. The essence of the activity – the use of, or threat to use, violence.
According to this definition, an activity that does not involve violence or a threat of violence will not be defined as terrorism
(including nonviolent protest – strikes, peaceful demonstrations, tax revolts, etc.). 2. The aim of the activity is always political –
namely, the goal is to attain political objectives; changing the regime, changing the people in power, changing social or economic
policies, etc. In the absence of a political aim, the activity in question will not be defined as terrorism. A violent activity against
civilians that has no political aim is, at most, an act of criminal delinquency, a felony, or simply an act of insanity unrelated to
terrorism. Some scholars tend to add ideological or religious aims to the list of political aims. The advantage of this definition,
however, is that it is as short and exhaustive as possible. The concept of ‘political aim’ is sufficiently broad to include these goals as
well. The motivation – whether ideological, religious, or something else – behind the political objective is irrelevant for the purpose
of defining terrorism. In this context, the following statement by Duvall and Stohl deserves mention: The targets of terrorism are
civilians. Terrorism is thus distinguished from other types of political violence (guerrilla warfare, civil insurrection, etc.). Terrorism
exploits the relative vulnerability of the civilian ‘underbelly’ – the tremendous anxiety, and the intense media reaction evoked by
attacks against civilian targets. The proposed definition emphasizes that terrorism is not the result of an accidental injury inflicted
on a civilian or a group of civilians who stumbled into an area of violent political activity, but stresses that this is an act purposely
directed against civilians. Hence, the term ‘terrorism’ should not be ascribed to collateral damage to civilians used as human shields
or to cover military activity or installations, if such damage is incurred in an attack originally aimed against a military target. In this
case, the responsibility for civilian casualties is incumbent upon whoever used them as shields. The proposed definition of terrorism
also addresses a lacuna in present international legislation and international conventions, in order to develop a fundamental tool for
international cooperation against terrorism. In order to achieve as wide an accord as possible, this definition must be founded on a
system of principles and laws of war, legislated and ratified in many countries. In other words, in order to reach an accepted
definition of terrorism, we must extrapolate from the existing principles of conventional warfare (between countries) to arrive at
similar principles for nonconventional warfare (for our purposes, a violent struggle between an organization and a state). Many
countries in the world support the view – and have enshrined this in international conventions – that we must differentiate between
two types of military personnel who make use of force to attain their aims. On the one hand there are ‘soldiers’ – members of the
military who intentionally target members of rival armies, and on the other, there are ‘war criminals’ – members of the military who
intentionally harm civilians (see Fig. 1). This normative and accepted attitude toward military personnel operating in a situation of
conventional warfare enables us to extrapolate to situations of nonconventional warfare (between an organization and a state), thus
allowing us to distinguish terrorism from guerrilla warfare. As noted, terrorism is ‘a violent struggle intentionally using, or
threatening to use, violence against civilians, in order to attain political aims,’ whereas guerrilla warfare is ‘a violent struggle using
(or threatening to use) violence against military targets, security forces, and the political leadership, in order to attain political aims.’
Terrorism is thus different from guerrilla warfare in its mode of activity and in the targets chosen by the perpetrators. The only
question to be resolved is whether perpetrators choose to attain their aims by targeting civilian or military targets? […] As noted,
defining terrorism is not merely a theoretical issue but an operative concern of the first order. Terrorism
is no longer a local problem of specific countries but an issue involving a number of international aspects. Terrorist organizations
may perpetrate attacks in a variety of countries; the victims of attacks can be of different nationalities; the offices, headquarters, and
training camps of terrorist organizations function in various countries; terrorist organizations receive direct and indirect assistance
from different states, enlist support from different ethnic communities, and secure financial help throughout the world. Since
terrorism is an international phenomenon, responses to terrorism must also be on an international scale. Developing an
effective international strategy requires agreement on what it is we are dealing with, in other words, we
need a definition of terrorism. International mobilization against terrorism, such as that which began in the mid-nineties
and culminated in the international conventions in the G-7 countries, the Sharem el-Sheik Conference, etc., cannot lead to
operational results as long as the participants cannot agree on a definition. Without answering the question of ‘what is terrorism,’ no
responsibility can be imposed on countries supporting terrorism, nor can steps be taken to combat terrorist organizations and their
allies. Without a definition of terrorism, it is impossible to formulate or enforce
international agreements against terrorism. A conspicuous example of the need to define terrorism concerns the
extradition of terrorists. Although many countries have signed bilateral and multilateral agreements concerning a variety of crimes,
extradition for political offenses is often explicitly excluded, and the background of terrorism is always political. This loophole allows
countries to shirk their obligation to extradite individuals wanted for terrorist activities. In fact, the need for a definition of terrorism
can be seen at almost every phase of contending with terrorism (see Fig. 3). Such phases include: 1. Legislation and punishment –
the laws and regulations enacted to provide security forces with an instrument for combating terrorism. A definition of terrorism is
necessary when legislating laws designed to ban terrorism and assistance to terrorism, as well as when setting minimum sentences
for terrorists or confiscating their financial resources and supplies. Barring an accepted definition, this legislation has no value.
Legislation and punishment must distinguish terrorism from ordinary crime, even when they might actually be identical in practice.
The need for a separate legislation and punishment for terrorism stems from the enormous danger that terrorism, due to its political
dimension, as opposed to crime, poses to society and its values, to the government in power, and to the public at large. 2.
International cooperation – Internationally accepted definition of terrorism is required to strengthen cooperation between countries
in the struggle against terrorism, and to ensure its effectiveness. This need is particularly obvious in all that concerns the
formulation and ratification of international conventions against terrorism – conventions forbidding the perpetration of terrorist
acts, assistance to terrorism, transfer of funds to terrorist organizations, state support for terrorist organizations, commercial ties
with states sponsoring terrorism – and conventions compelling the extradition of terrorists. 3. States sponsoring terrorism –
modern terrorism is increasingly dependent on the support of nations. States sponsoring terrorism use terrorist organizations as a
means to their own ends, while these organizations depend on the assistance they receive from such countries at the economic,
military, and operational levels. Some organizations are so closely dependent on the assistance of states that they become ‘puppets’
functioning at the initiative, direction, and with the complete support of these states. It is impossible to contend effectively with
terrorism without severing the close tie between the terrorist organizations and the sponsoring states. This tie, however, cannot be
severed without agreeing on a broad definition of terrorism, and thus of the states that sponsor it and of the steps to be taken against
them. 4. Offensive action – the state struggling against terrorism must retain the initiative. At the same time, attempts must be made
to limit, as far as possible, the operative capacity of the terrorist organization. To attain these aims, a continued offensive must be
conducted against terrorist organizations. While countries on the defensive naturally enjoy the sympathy of others, countries on the
offensive are usually censored and criticized by others. To ensure international support for states struggling against terrorism, and
perhaps even for a joint offensive, an internationally accepted definition of terrorism is required that will distinguish freedom
fighting (which enjoys a measure of legitimacy among nations) from terrorist activity. 5. Attitudes toward the population supporting
terrorism – terrorist organizations often rely on the assistance of a sympathetic civilian population. An effective instrument in the
limitation of terrorist activity is to undermine the ability of the organization to obtain support, assistance, and aid from this
population. A definition of terrorism could be helpful here too by determining new rules of the game in both the local and the
international sphere. Any organization contemplating the use of terrorism to attain its political aims will have to risk losing its
legitimacy, even with the population that supports its aims. 6. Normative Scale – a definition that separates terrorism out from other
violent actions will enable the initiation of an international campaign designed to undermine the legitimacy of terrorist
organizations, curtail support for them, and galvanize a united international front against them. In order to undermine the
legitimacy of terrorist activity (usually stemming from the tendency of various countries to identify with some of the aims of terrorist
organizations), terrorist activity must be distinguished from guerrilla activity, as two forms of violent struggle reflecting different
levels of illegitimacy.
Turn- glossing over terrorist as a threat causes the public to support themhardline stances solve
Ganor ‘1 (Boaz, Director of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, “Defining
Terrorism”, http://www.ict.org.il/articles/define.htm)
The prevalent definitions of terrorism entail difficulties, both conceptual and syntactical. It is thus not surprising that alternative
concepts with more positive connotations—guerrilla movements, underground movements, national liberation movements,
commandos, etc.—are often used to describe and characterize the activities of terrorist organizations. Generally these concepts are
used without undue attention to the implications, but at times the use of these definitions is tendentious, grounded in a particular
political viewpoint. By resorting to such tendentious definitions of terrorism, terrorist organizations and their
supporters seek to gloss over the realities of terrorism, thus establishing their activities on more positive and
legitimate foundations. Naturally, terms not opposed to the basic values of liberal democracies, such as “revolutionary violence,”
“national liberation,” etc., carry fewer negative connotations than the term, “terrorism.” Terrorism or Revolutionary Violence? Salah
Khalef (Abu Iyad) was Yasser Arafat’s deputy and one of the leaders of Fatah and Black September. He was responsible for a number
of lethal attacks, including the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In order to rationalize such actions, he used
the tactic of confounding “terrorism” with “political violence,” stating, “By nature, and even on ideological grounds, I am firmly
opposed to political murder and, more generally, to terrorism. Nevertheless, unlike many others, I do not confuse revolutionary
violence with terrorism, or operations that constitute political acts with others that do not.”[4] Abu Iyad tries to present
terrorism and political violence as two different and unconnected phenomena. The implication of this statement is
that a political motive makes the activity respectable, and the end justifies the means. I will examine this point below.
Terrorism or National Liberation? A rather widespread attempt to make all definitions of terrorism meaningless is to lump together
terrorist activities and the struggle to achieve national liberation. Thus, for instance, the recurrently stated Syrian official position is
that Syria does not assist terrorist organizations; rather, it supports national liberation movements. President Hafez el-Assad, in a
November 1986 speech to the participants in the 21st Convention of Workers Unions in Syria, said the following: We have always
opposed terrorism. But terrorism is one thing and a national struggle against occupation is another. We are against terrorism…
Nevertheless, we support the struggle against occupation waged by national liberation movements.[5] The attempt to confound the
concepts of “terrorism” and “national liberation” comes to the fore in various official pronouncements from the Arab world. For
instance, the fifth Islamic summit meeting in Kuwait, at the beginning of 1987, stated in its resolutions that: The conference
reiterates its absolute faith in the need to distinguish the brutal and unlawful terrorist activities perpetrated by individuals, by
groups, or by states, from the legitimate struggle of oppressed and subjugated nations against foreign occupation of any kind. This
struggle is sanctioned by heavenly law, by human values, and by international conventions.[6] The foreign and interior ministers of
the Arab League reiterated this position at their April 1998 meeting in Cairo. In a document entitled “Arab Strategy in the Struggle
against Terrorism,” they emphasized that belligerent activities aimed at “liberation and self determination” are not in the category of
terrorism, whereas hostile activities against regimes or families of rulers will not be considered political attacks but rather criminal
assaults.[7] Here again we notice an attempt to justify the “means” (terrorism) in terms of the “end” (national liberation). Regardless
of the nature of the operation, when we speak of “liberation from the yoke of a foreign occupation” this will not be terrorism but a
legitimate and justified activity. This is the source of the cliché, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” which
stresses that all depends on the perspective and the worldview of the one doing the defining. The former President of the Soviet
Union, Leonid Brezhnev, made the following statement in April 1981, during the visit of the Libyan ruler, Muamar Qadhafi:
“Imperialists have no regard either for the will of the people or the laws of history. Liberation struggles cause their indignation. They
describe them as ‘terrorism’.”[8] Surprisingly, many in the Western world have accepted the mistaken assumption that terrorism
and national liberation are two extremes in the scale of legitimate use of violence. The struggle for “national liberation” would
appear to be the positive and justified end of this sequence, whereas terrorism is the negative and odious one. It is impossible,
according to this approach, for any organization to be both a terrorist group and a movement for national liberation at the same
time. In failing to understand the difference between these two concepts, many have, in effect, been caught in a semantic trap
laid by the terrorist organizations and their allies. They have attempted to contend with the clichés of national liberation by
resorting to odd arguments, instead of stating that when a group or organization chooses terrorism as a means, the aim of their
struggle cannot be used to justify their actions (see below). Thus, for instance, Senator Jackson was quoted in Benyamin
Netanyahu’s book Terrorism: How the West Can Win as saying, The idea that one person’s ‘terrorist’ is another’s ‘freedom
fighter’ cannot be sanctioned. Freedom fighters or revolutionaries don’t blow up buses containing noncombatants; terrorist murderers do. Freedom fighters don’t set out to capture and slaughter schoolchildren; terrorist
murderers do . . . It is a disgrace that democracies would allow the treasured word ‘freedom’ to be associated with acts of
terrorists.[9] Professor Benzion Netanyahu also assumed, a priori, that freedom fighters are incapable of perpetrating terrorist acts:
For in contrast to the terrorist, no freedom fighter has ever deliberately attacked innocents. He has never deliberately killed small
children, or passersby in the street, or foreign visitors, or other civilians who happen to reside in the area of conflict or are merely
associated ethnically or religiously with the people of that area… The conclusion we must draw from all this is evident. Far from
being a bearer of freedom, the terrorist is the carrier of oppression and enslavement . . .[10] This approach strengthens the attempt
by terrorist organizations to present terrorism and the struggle for liberation as two contradictory concepts. It thus plays into the
terrorists’ hands by supporting their claim that, since they are struggling to remove someone they consider a foreign occupier, they
cannot be considered terrorists. The claim that a freedom fighter cannot be involved in terrorism, murder and indiscriminate killing
is, of course, groundless. A terrorist organization can also be a movement of national liberation, and the concepts of “terrorist” and
“freedom fighter” are not mutually contradictory. Targeting “the innocent”? Not only terrorists and their allies use the definition of
terrorism to promote their own goals and needs. Politicians in countries affected by terrorism at times make political use of the
definition of terrorism by attempting to emphasize its brutality. One of the prevalent ways of illustrating the cruelty and inhumanity
of terrorists is to present them as harming “the innocent.” Thus, in Terrorism: How the West Can Win, Binyamin Netanyahu states
that terrorism is “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming, and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political
ends.”[11] This definition was changed in Netanyahu’s third book, Fighting Terrorism, when the phrase “the innocent” was replaced
by the term “civilians”: “Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic assault on civilians to inspire fear for political ends.”[12]
“Innocent” (as opposed to “civilian”) is a subjective concept, influenced by the definer’s viewpoint, and therefore must not be the
basis for a definition of terrorism. The use of the concept “innocent” in defining terrorism makes the definition meaningless and
turns it into a tool in the political game. The dilemma entailed by the use of the term “innocent” is amply illustrated in the following
statement by Abu Iyad: As much as we repudiate any activity that endangers innocent lives, that is, against civilians in countries that
are not directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we feel no remorse concerning attacks against Israeli military and political
elements who wage war against the Palestinian people . . . Israeli acts of vengeance usually result in high casualties among
Palestinian civilians—particularly when the Israeli Air Force blindly and savagely bombs refugee camps—and it is only natural that
we should respond in appropriate ways to deter the enemy from continuing its slaughter of innocent victims.”[13] Abu Iyad here
clarifies that innocent victims are civilians in countries that are not directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict (implying that
civilians in Israel, even children and old people, are not innocent), while he describes Palestinian civilians as innocent victims.
Proposing a Definition of Terrorism The question is whether it is at all possible to arrive at an exhaustive and objective definition of
terrorism, which could constitute an accepted and agreed-upon foundation for academic research, as well as facilitating operations
on an international scale against the perpetrators of terrorist activities. The definition proposed here states that terrorism is
the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political
aims. Continues… This distinction between the target of the attack and its aims shows that the discrepancy
between “terrorism” and “freedom fighting” is not a subjective difference reflecting the personal viewpoint of the
definer. Rather it constitutes an essential difference, involving a clear distinction between the perpetrators’ aims
and their mode of operation. As noted, an organization is defined as “terrorist” because of its mode of operation and its target of
attack, whereas calling something a “struggle for liberation” has to do with the aim that the organization seeks to attain. Diagram 2
illustrates that non-conventional war (between a state and an organization), may include both terrorism and guerrilla activities on
the background of different and unrelated aims. Hiding behind the guise of national liberation does not release terrorists from
responsibility for their actions. Not only is it untrue that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” but it is also untrue
that “the end justifies the means.” The end of national liberation may, in some cases, justify recourse to violence, in an attempt to
solve the problem that led to the emergence of a particular organization in the first place. Nevertheless, the organization must still
act according to the rules of war, directing its activities toward the conquest of military and security targets; in short, it must confine
itself to guerrilla activities. When the organization breaks these rules and intentionally targets civilians, it becomes a terrorist
organization, according to objective measures, and not according to the subjective perception of the definer. It may be difficult at
times to determine whether the victim of an attack was indeed a civilian, or whether the attack was intentional. These cases could be
placed under the rubric of a “gray area,” to be decided in line with the evidence and through the exercise of judicial discretion. The
proposed definition may therefore be useful in the legal realm as a criterion for defining and categorizing the perpetrators’ activities.
In any event, adopting the proposed definition of terrorism will considerably reduce the “gray area” to a few marginal cases. Defining
States’ Involvement in Terrorism Continues… supporting terrorism – terrorist organizations often rely on the
assistance of a sympathetic civilian population. An effective instrument in the limitation of terrorist activity is to
undermine the ability of the organization to obtain support, assistance, and aid from this population . A definition of
terrorism could be helpful here too by determining new rules of the game in both the local and the international sphere. Any
organization contemplating the use of terrorism to attain its political aims will have to risk losing its legitimacy,
even with the population that supports its aims. Public relations – a definition that separates terrorism out from
other violent actions will enable the initiation of an international campaign designed to undermine the legitimacy
of terrorist organizations, curtail support for them, and galvanize a united international front against them. In order
to undermine the legitimacy of terrorist activity (usually stemming from the tendency of various countries to identify with some of
the aims of terrorist organizations), terrorist activity must be distinguished from guerrilla activity, as two forms of violent struggle
reflecting different levels of illegitimacy. The Attitude of Terrorist Organizations Toward the Definition The definition of terrorism
does not require that the terrorist organizations themselves accept it as such. Nevertheless, reaching international agreement will be
easier the more objective the definition, and the more the definition takes into account the demands and viewpoints of terrorist
organizations and their supporters. The proposed definition, as noted, draws a distinction between terrorism and guerrilla warfare at
both the conceptual and moral levels. If properly applied, it could challenge organizations that are presently involved in terrorism to
abandon it so as to engage exclusively in guerrilla warfare. As noted, most organizations active today in the national and
international arena engage in both terrorist activities and guerrilla warfare; after all, international convention makes no distinction
between the two. Hence, there are no rules defining what is forbidden and what is allowed in non-conventional war, and equal
punishments are imposed on both terrorists and guerrilla fighters. People perpetrating terrorist attacks or engaging in guerrilla
warfare know they can expect the same punishment, whether they attack a military installation or take over a kindergarten. The
terrorist attack may be more heavily censored because it involves children, but the legitimacy of these actions will be inferred from
their political aims. In these circumstances, why not prefer a terrorist attack that will have far more impact, and will be easier to
accomplish, with much less risk? The international adoption of the proposed definition, with its distinction between terrorism and
guerrilla warfare—and its concomitant separation from political aims—could motivate the perpetrators to reconsider their
intentions, choosing military targets over civilian targets—guerrilla warfare over terrorism–both because of moral considerations
and because of “cost-benefit” considerations. The moral consideration – many terrorist organizations are troubled by the moral
question bearing on their right to harm civilians, and this concern is reflected in their literature and in interviews with terrorists.
Thus, for instance, an activist of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Walid Salam, argued in December 1996 that
“among activists of the Popular Front, more and more are opposed to military activities against civilians, as the one near Ramallah
on Wednesday. They do not say so publicly because of internal discipline and to preserve unity.”[27] We can also see something of
this moral dilemma in Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the leader of Hamas: “According to our religion it is forbidden to kill a woman, a baby,
or an old man, but when you kill my sister, and my daughter, and my son, it is my right to defend them.”[28] This concern might
explain why, after attacks on civilian targets, organizations such as Hamas often make public statements proclaiming that they have
attacked military targets. The moral dilemma does exist, and the opponents of terrorism must intensify it. When countries
acknowledge the principle of relying on guerrilla warfare to attain legitimate political aims, and unite in their moral condemnation of
terrorism, they increase the moral dilemma that is already prevalent in terrorist organizations. The utilitarian consideration – If the
perpetrators know that attacking a kindergarten or other civilian target will never be acceptable; that these attacks will turn them
into wanted and extraditable terrorists and will undermine the legitimacy of their political goals—and that, when apprehended, they
will be punished much more harshly than would guerrilla fighters—they may think twice before choosing terrorism as their modus
operandi. Adopting the proposed definition of terrorism, formulating rules of behavior, and setting appropriate punishments in line
with the proposed definition will sharpen the “cost-benefit” considerations of terrorist organizations. One way of encouraging this
trend among terrorist organizations is, as noted, to agree on different punishments for those convicted of terrorism and those
convicted of guerrilla warfare. Thus, for instance, the possibility should be considered of bringing to criminal trial, under specific
charges of terrorism, individuals involved in terrorist activities, while allotting prisoner of war status to those accused of
involvement in guerrilla activities. The proposed definition of terrorism may indeed help in the struggle against terrorism at many
and varied operative levels. An accepted definition, capable of serving as a basis for international counter-terrorist activity, could
above all, bring terrorist organizations to reconsider their actions. They must face the question of whether they will persist in
terrorist attacks and risk all that such persistence entails—loosing legitimacy, incurring harsh and specific punishments, facing a
coordinated international opposition (including military activity), and suffering harm to sources of support and revenue. The
international community must encourage the moral and utilitarian dilemmas of terrorist organizations, and establish a clear policy
accompanied by adequate means of punishment on the basis of an accepted definition. Summary We face an essential need to reach
a definition of terrorism that will enjoy wide international agreement, thus enabling international operations against terrorist
organizations. A definition of this type must rely on the same principles already agreed upon regarding conventional wars (between
states), and extrapolate from them regarding non-conventional wars (betweean organization and a state). The definition of terrorism
will be the basis and the operational tool for expanding the international community’s ability to combat terrorism. It will enable
legislation and specific punishments against those perpetrating, involved in, or supporting terrorism, and will allow the formulation
of a codex of laws and international conventions against terrorism, terrorist organizations, states sponsoring terrorism, and
economic firms trading with them. At the same time, the definition of terrorism will hamper the attempts of terrorist organizations
to obtain public legitimacy, and will erode support among those segments of the population willing to assist them (as opposed to
guerrilla activities). Finally, the operative use of the definition of terrorism could motivate terrorist organizations, due
to moral or utilitarian considerations, to shift from terrorist activities to alternative courses (such as guerrilla
warfare) in order to attain their aims, thus reducing the scope of international terrorism. The struggle to define
terrorism is sometimes as hard as the struggle against terrorism itself. The present view, claiming it is unnecessary and well-nigh
impossible to agree on an objective definition of terrorism, has long established itself as the “politically correct” one. It is the aim of
this paper, however, to demonstrate that an objective, internationally accepted definition of terrorism is a feasible goal, and that an
effective struggle against terrorism requires such a definition. The sooner the nations of the world come to this realization, the
better.
Tobacoo DA
Industrial marijuana exist in the squo- it is just operated by Drug Cartels- regulations
create the best environment
Gilbert G. Garcia Law Firm ’14 (The Gilbert G. Garcia Law Firm, Texas Criminal Law Blog,
“Marijuana Business Set to be America's Next Great Industry and a Far Cry from Big Tobacco”,
http://www.texaspossessionofmarijuanalawyer.com/2014/05/marijuana-business-set-to-be-americasnext-great-industry-and-a-far-cry-from-big-tobacco.html, May 29, 2014)
There is no question that the major tobacco industries for a time were grossly irresponsible in their promotions and commercial sales of
tobacco products. Tobacco industries misled the public on the harmful effects of tobacco use, marketed the product to adolescents, and even
persuaded physicians into endorsing cigarettes as medicine. A
concern of many individuals regarding the legalization of
marijuana is that the marijuana industry will become another incarnation of the tobacco industry,
bringing with it more corporate greed rather than public good. As major investors, such as a former Microsoft manager,
plan to pour millions of dollars into the legal marijuana market, and as investor groups predict marijuana to become America's next great
industry, the
concern of the possible emergence of "Big Marijuana" akin to "Big Tobacco" seems well
warranted. "Big Marijuana" already exists in the form of drug cartels. Well-drafted regulations could
prevent gross irresponsibility in the legal marijuana industry. Mexico's biggest agricultural import is marijuana, annually
creating billions of dollars of revenue for drug cartels. Estimates from Mexico's Attorney General's office reveals that the profits from the
marijuana exported in the US make up about half of drug cartels' overall revenues. Not only are drug cartels producing illicit marijuana in
Mexico, they are growing marijuana in national parks inside the U.S., through sophisticated networks designed to avoid the difficulty of
smuggling drugs across the border. Notorious for their brutality and criminal infestations of all elements of Mexican society, as well as rampant
encroachments into the U.S., the state of the marijuana market as it exits under marijuana prohibition only fuels organized crime to grow to
powerful sizes. As a result of marijuana legalization victories in Colorado and Washington state, estimates reveal that drug cartel profits could
be substantially reduced. Even
if marijuana legalization nationwide somehow creates greedy profit-seeking corporations,
such corporate-control will nonetheless be a much better alternative to our current system of cartelrun markets. Marijuana legalization could create a tobacco-type industry for cannabis conglomerates,
however stringent regulations imposed on emerging marijuana markets may control this problem. For
instance, Washington State mandates that only 334 marijuana stores can operate across the state. An individual can only own up to three retail
marijuana licenses. When an individual does hold multiple licenses, he cannot have more than 33% of the licenses in a county. Retail license
holders cannot be licensed to produce marijuana. Regarding advertising and labeling, ads or product labels cannot be misleading, encourage
over-consumption, claim that there are therapeutic benefits, or show children, toys, child-like cartoons, or any such imagery which is meant to
encourage child marijuana use. Marijuana
stores are not able to advertise within 1,000 feet of schools, on buses,
or on public property, and all advertising shall have health and safety warnings. Such strong restrictions
on the marijuana industry should prevent the dangerous concentration of corporate power of the kind
once wielded by the tobacco industry.
The affirmative uses Holocaust imagery to justify a non-related social problem. This is
the logic of Holocaust denial and is insensitive to anyone affected by the Holocaust
within the debate community. Imparting the lessons of the Holocaust must be a prior
consideration for academic communities like debate.
Foxman 98 (Abraham, Holocaust survivor and director of the anti-defamation league, NY Times, 10-31-98)
There was a time when memory was sacred, that the words “Hitler”, “Nazi” and “Gestapo” were
reserved to describe one of the most horrific events in the history of humankind. The uniqueness of
the Holocaust endowed its language with singular shock value, and its words stirred outrage at the
systemic slaughter of six million Jews and millions of others. There was no way that the words and
images of the Nazi period could be misunderstood or taken lightly. But ytimes have changed. Today
there is far too much trivialization of Holocaust imagery. A rude shopkeeper is called the Soup Nazi;
someone who cuts off another driver is called a traffic Nazi. Legitimate political differences are
descrbied in terms of Nazism; a party in a business dispute is called a Hitler. Legal adversaries accuse
each other of Gestapo tactics. Fashion designers create “Nazi” collections; a rap group called
Concentration Camp II releases an albumm titled “Da Halocaust.” As the years distance us from the Nazi
horror, and as the number of survivors and witnesses dwindles, we are faced with the challenge of how
to impart the lessons of the Holocaust to new generations. For young people, studying World War II
may seem as relevant as studying the Peloponnesian War. They are bombarded by as much
disinformation as information. Holocaust deniers would have them believe that there were no
concentration camps, no death camps; that Hitler’s Nazis didn’t have a Final Solution; that it is all just a
Jewish conspiracy.
The alternative is to reject the affirmatives false linkage to Nazis and the Holocaust.
Their arguments are anti-Semitic logical fallacies and should be discarded. Since the
1AC endorses a particular starting point we can endorse the rest of the affirmative.
Curtis 4 (Gary,. Fallacy Files “Ad Nazium” http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnazium.html)
In almost every heated debate, one side or the other—often both—plays the "Hitler card", that is,
criticizes their opponent's position by associating it in some way with Adolf Hitler or the Nazis in general.
This move is so common that it led Mike Godwin to develop the well-known "Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies": "As
an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." No
one wants to be associated with Nazism because it has been so thoroughly discredited in both theory
and practise, and Hitler of course was its most famous exponent. So, linking an idea with Hitler or
Nazism has become a common form of argument ascribing guilt by association. Some instances of the
Hitler card are factually incorrect, or even ludicrous, in ascribing ideas to Hitler or other Nazis that they did
not hold. However, from a logical point of view, even if Hitler or other Nazis did accept an idea, this historical
fact alone is insufficient to discredit it. The Hitler Card is often combined with other fallacies, for instance, a
weak analogy between an opponent and Hitler, or between the opposition political group and the Nazis. A related
form of fallacious analogy is that which compares an opposition's actions with the Holocaust. This is a
form of the ad Nazium fallacy because it casts the opposition in the role of Nazi. Not only do such arguments
assign guilt by association, but the analogy used to link the opposition's actions with the Holocaust may
be superficial or question-begging. Other arguments ad Nazium combine guilt by association with a
slippery slope. For instance, it is sometimes argued that the Nazis practised euthanasia, and therefore even
voluntary forms of it are a first step onto a slippery slope leading to extermination camps. Like many slippery
slope arguments, this is a way of avoiding arguing directly against voluntary euthanasia, instead claiming
that it may indirectly lead to something admittedly bad. Playing the Hitler Card demonizes opponents in
debate by associating them with evil, and almost always derails the discussion. People naturally resent
being associated with Nazism, and are usually angered. In this way, playing the Hitler Card can be an effective
distraction in a debate, causing the opponent to lose track of the argument. However, when people
become convinced by guilt by association arguments that their political opponents are not just
mistaken, but are as evil as Nazis, reasoned debate can give way to violence. So, playing the Hitler Card
is more than just a dirty trick in debate, it is often "fighting words".
Econ DA
Dollar won’t decline – Chinese won’t allow it and there’s no alternative
Hugh 10 -Macroeconomist who specializes in growth and productivity theory (“Interview with Edward Hugh:
The Dollar’s Demise is Vastly
Overstated,” Blog Invest, 4/30/10, http://trick-bloggerinvest.blogspot.com/2010/04/interview-with-edward-hugh-dollars.html)
Forex Blog: You wrote a recent post outlining the US Dollar carry trade, and how you believe that the Dollar’s decline is cyclical/temporary
rather than structural/permanent. Can you elaborate on this idea? Do you think it’s possible that the fervor with which investors have sold
off the Dollar suggests that it could be a little of both? Well, first of all, there is more than one thing happening here, so I would definitely
agree from the outset, there are both cyclical and structural elements in play. Structurally, the
architecture of Bretton
Woods II is creaking round the edges, and in the longer run we are looking at a relative decline in the dollar, but as
Keynes reminded us, in the long run we are all dead, while as I noted in the Afoe post, news of the early demise of the dollar
is surely vastly overstated. Put another way, while Bretton Woods II has surely seen its best days, till we have some idea
what can replace it it is hard to see a major structural adjustment in the dollar. Europe’s economies
are not strong enough for the Euro to simply step into the hole left by the dollar, the Chinese, as we know,
are reluctant to see the dollar slide too far due to the losses they would take on dollar denominated
instruments, while the Russians seem to constantly talk the USD down, while at the same time borrowing
in that very same currency – so read this as you will. Personally, I cannot envisage a long term and durable alternative to the
current set-up that doesn’t involve the Rupee and the Real, but these currencies are surely not ready for this kind of role at this point. So
we will stagger on.
Dollar heg isn’t key to the economy
Palley 2- US based economist, Director of Globalization Reform Project Open Society Institute (Thomas Palley, “THE OVER-VALUED DOLLAR
AND THE U.S. SLUMP,” October 2002, http://www.thomaspalley.com/docs/articles/macro_policy/overvalued_dollar.pdf)
The arguments against an over-valued dollar are compelling, yet some continue to argue that a “strong” dollar is desirable. One argument
is that
the strong dollar helps keep down inflation by lowering import prices and keeping the lid on prices of domestic
manufacturers. This argument had some support in the late 1990s when the U.S. was in the midst of a huge creditdriven boom,
but that is no longer the case. Inflation is not an imminent economic danger, and there are reasons to believe
that deflation is actually the greater danger given the highly indebted state of the U.S. economy. In these circumstances,
slightly higher inflation could be a benefit to the extent that it reduces debt burdens. A second argument is that a strong
dollar is needed to finance the trade deficit. This argument has the reasoning backward. There is a need
to finance the trade deficit because the dollar is hugely over-valued. Absent this over-valuation, exports would
be higher and imports lower, which would diminish the trade deficit and the amount needed to
finance it. The above financing argument also links with claims that the U.S. trade deficit is the product of inadequate domestic saving
rather than the over-valued dollar. However, these undersaving claims misunderstand the nature of the national income identity from
which they derive.
Now is critical for new infrastructure funding- bond markets key
Dunn ’14 (Catherine Dunn, Forbes, “How marijuana munis could save the states”,
http://fortune.com/2014/01/30/how-marijuana-munis-could-save-the-states/, January 30, 2014)
Bonds backed by billions of dollars in pot sales taxes could shore up hard-hit state budgets — that is, if
the feds would get out of the way. FORTUNE — Thomas Doe, an analyst in the municipal bond market, was in Denver to give a
speech last September when an unmistakable scent caught his attention. He’d been walking down the 16th Street Mall, the city’s main retail
drag, “and I’m smelling it in the air,” says Doe, who goes by Tom. Then, completing the tableau, Doe popped into a hotel lobby and spotted
three dudes wearing tie-dye and snacking on chips — this just a few months before marijuana for recreational use went on sale in Colorado.
That’s when things really started to click for the 55-year-old founder and CEO of Municipal Market Advisors, a research firm with subscribers
including some 300 institutional investors, along with government regulators. Earlier last year Doe and his colleagues had joked about whether
a market for medical marijuana tourism could revive the flagging finances of a place like Puerto Rico, whose bond rating has dropped in recent
years. After
Doe’s trip to Denver, though, his thoughts on the matter of cannabis and credit ratings turned
serious, particularly in light of certain revenue projections. The Colorado Legislative Council Staff
estimated additional revenues from legalization, for example, at $100 million over two years (PDF). In
Washington State, where recreational sales will begin later this year, a fiscal impact study said tax
revenue could reach up to $1.9 billion over five years, averaging nearly $400 million annually. Indeed,
legalizing marijuana nationwide, to believe a 2010 report by the Cato Institute, would generate some
$8.7 billion in tax revenue, in addition to billions in cost savings related to law enforcement. Doe
believes that’s enough money to help cash-strapped municipalities meet pension obligations,
undertake construction projects, and lower their borrowing costs in the bond market — and,
therefore, enough to inspire other states to legalize marijuana, too. “It would be a real positive for
states that are struggling right now,” he tells Fortune. “They’ve got such an infrastructure funding gap
— and they have challenges with funding their pensions — that this is significant revenue.” Gregory
Whiteley, portfolio manager for government securities at Jeffrey Gundlach’s DoubleLine Capital, agrees about the potential upside. “By all
accounts the legal recreational marijuana market is potentially quite large, so the impact on state and
local finances could be significant,” he says. MORE: Inequality – America’s great destroyer It’s not a totally new idea. Back in
2010, hundreds of attendees surveyed at a Bond Buyer conference in California agreed that bonds
backed by marijuana taxes would materialize were the state to legalize the recreational use. (That
measure, Proposition 19, failed the same year.) A state estimate, from 2009, had put revenue potential
at $1.4 billion a year (PDF). Though solid data is still lacking, Whiteley says that for now the subject is “definitely on my radar.” Doe,
meanwhile, has been busy putting the issue on the radar of analysts and investors. He began to speak publicly last fall about the future of
marijuana and public finances — first to attendees at a bond market industry conference in Chicago in October, then to institutional investors
at the Massachusetts Investor Conference in December. This month he told clients in a research note that “a successful experience in Colorado”
could result in a domino effect of legalization across the country. “Colorado’s legalization of marijuana on Jan. 1 will provide hard data as to
the potential revenue source from the cannabis product directly as well as ancillary products and services,” according to the note provided to
Fortune. “Should tax revenue match projections then other states and cities are apt to follow the lead of Colorado.” MORE: Harvard B-school
dean offers unusual apology State budget planners aren’t convinced by marijuana’s potential just yet. “Budget office folks are going to be very
cautious until they see money coming in,” says Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. NASBO’s
membership would also want to see whether any revenue gains are offset by expenditures resulting from legalization — say, additional costs
related to law enforcement or public health. In other words, Pattison notes, “Are there extra expenses, or do we spend less in certain areas?”
Budget officers would certainly “take notice,” however, of revenue figures that exceed 2% of a state’s budget. “Then I think they’ll start to say,
Yeah, wow,” Pattison says. By Doe’s reckoning, $400 million is enough to fund, hypothetically, 10 social service programs that cost $40 million
each, or to finance major construction. “$400 million of new tax revenue would be material,” he says, adding, “I’ve seen states borrow $400
million to help fund infrastructure projects.” MORE: Shadow banking – China’s wobbly house of cards That said, skeptics list a host of reasons
why marijuana sales won’t ultimately make a dent in state finances, or the bond market for that matter. Craig Mauermann is managing director
and senior portfolio manager at BMO Global Asset Management U.S. He does think that other states will be enticed to follow the lead of
Colorado and Washington — but that doing so will only dilute the revenue stream in the end. “The so-called boon is pretty much going to be
spread out,” he says. Mauermann questions, too, whether marijuana sales will end up eating into consumers’ “disposable vice income” for
products like cigarettes and alcohol, which also generate sales tax revenue for states. Then there’s the illegal competition. Mark Tenenhaus,
director of municipal research at RSW Investments, doubts that high-priced legal pot could steal substantial market share from the
underground economy. In Colorado, retailers have been peddling marijuana at around $400 an ounce, according to media reports. “I don’t
think you’re ever going to get rid of the black market,” says Tenenhaus. Like
their lawbreaker competitors, legal purveyors
of recreational and medical marijuana (permitted in 20 states and in Washington, D.C.) have another
challenge to confront: the feds. Marijuana remains an illegal substance under federal law. If a
municipality wanted to back a bond offering, in part, with revenue from marijuana sales, bondholders
would have to be advised of the risk that sales could be shut down. “In this environment, it’s a pretty
strong risk,” says attorney Robert Christmas, a partner at Nixon Peabody who specializes in bankruptcy
and government insolvencies. MORE: Why low inflation hurts the 99% Tom Doe agrees that federal prohibitions,
particularly banking restrictions, pose a big impediment to the growth of a legal marketplace. Right
now banks won’t touch the transactions or proceeds from sales, forcing merchants to deal in cash,
including when they pay taxes. “The banking laws will have to be adjusted,” Doe says. But Doe also believes the
political sentiment is already shifting. Polls by Pew Research Center and Gallup have found that a majority of Americans favor legalizing
marijuana. Just this month, states including New York, New Hampshire, and Florida have made moves in favor of some form of legalization.
Even President Obama appeared to have softened his tone on pot, when he told The New Yorker that he thinks the drug is less dangerous than
alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.” His administration is working on guidance so that marijuana businesses can make
better use of the banking system and not have to deal solely in cash, Attorney General Eric Holder said at an event at the University of Virginia
last week. “If the electorate is supportive then I think the politicians go with it,” Doe says. Similarly,
long-time advocates of
marijuana reform say interest in “cannabis commerce” is having an effect on the political climate, too.
Allen St. Pierre has worked at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
since 1991. Two decades later, St. Pierre, now executive director, is suddenly hearing from people like
Doe, along with reps from “hedge funds, angel investors … and big, big law firms that are wondering
whether or not to put a toe in the water.” “Those folks have the ear and the sway of those politicians far more than we do,”
he says. Aging Baby Boomers may prove another pressure point on pols. “They want health care options,” says Doe. He envisions a future in
which Boomers become strong advocates for medical marijuana because it “may be a less expensive and a more desired therapy for diseases”
that are impacting them. But the money may talk soon enough. Colorado’s new pot businesses will report their first round of sales tax revenue
on Feb. 20, and the state’s Department of Revenue will post the numbers. “Bottom line,” says Doe, “you’ve got a state that’s going to provide
real data, and we’ll see where all of this ends up.”
1AR
Marijuana is the heart of the trafficking networks- specifically devastates Columbia
and Mexican cocaine trade
Hyland ‘11 (Steven Hyland Jr. is an Assistant Professor teaching Latin American and World History in
the Department of History and Political Science at Wingate University, “The Shifting Terrain of Latin
American Drug Trafficking”, http://origins.osu.edu/article/shifting-terrain-latin-american-drugtrafficking, vol. 4, issue 12 - september 2011)
Colombia had a long history at the heart of regional contraband trade and smuggling. This, and a tradition of
tremendous political instability, contributed to its ascension to the global apex of the trafficking of illicit drugs. Fabulous inequality of the national wealth coupled with the success of the Cuban
Revolution to inspire entrenched guerilla warfare. There were an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 guerilla combatants in Colombia by late 1980s. Left-wing violence produced right-wing responses,
The
marijuana trafficking complex proved critically important for the local economy in Colombia. Between
30,000 and 50,000 small farmers along Colombia's Atlantic coast relied on marijuana cultivation. The
system also included as many as 50,000 additional seasonal workers, traffickers, security, financiers,
and others. New moneyed drug elites married into local prominent families, attempted to bribe officials at all levels, and bought up legitimate businesses to launder cash.
Unfortunately, as production and profits surged, so did the violence as police and judicial institutions waned. Cocaine distribution followed the networks
established for the marijuana trade. Here, political events in Chile also pushed the drug trade to Colombia. Chile became an important smuggling corridor after
with a great expansion in the 1980s, with some 138 organizations, some of which contained retired and active military personnel. Violence became part and parcel of political life.
cocaine production in Peru was criminalized and Bolivia emerged as a center of coca production in the 1950s. Trade grew until the army, led by Augusto Pinochet, overthrew Salvador Allende
in September 1973. Entrepreneurs from Medellín, Colombia seized on the opportunity presented by the collapse of democracy in Chile and the elimination of Chilean smugglers. And they took
drug transportation to new levels. In the mid-1970s, Carlos Lehder and Jorge Luis Ochoa transformed the trafficking of cocaine into huge airlift operations. After consolidating control of the
South American market, the traffickers in Medellín looked to control wholesale distribution in the highly profitable United States. As a result, Miami—the principal port of entry—became a
virtual war zone, with a homicide rate of seventy per 100,000 in 1980. (By comparison, the 2010 homicide rate for Miami was fifteen per 100,000 and about six per 100,000 in the U.S. as a
whole in 2007.) By 1981, seventy percent of all marijuana and cocaine coming into the United States passed through South Florida. In 1976, between 14 and 19 metric tons of cocaine were
smuggled into the U.S. That number jumped to nearly 45 metric tons annually by 1982. Colombian traffickers generated roughly $1.5 billion in revenue from the marijuana and cocaine trade in
1980 and almost $3 billion in 1985. Time Magazine's famous November 1981 lament, entitled "Miami: a paradise lost," reported on the problems of trafficking, violence, and money laundering
in South Florida, while the television show Miami Vice seared the images of Latin American drug runners, bosses, and heroic law enforcement officers into U.S. popular culture. The 1981
kidnapping of the sister of Jorge Luis Ochoa, a prominent trafficker based in Medellín, by leftist M-19 guerrillas proved a critical moment in the evolution of Latin American drugs trafficking.
The guerillas demanded a $1 million ransom. In response, Ochoa called together the leading traffickers to meet at his family restaurant. There, all agreed that their wealth made them targets
of the guerillas and paramilitaries. Each trafficker offered up $7.5 million to form MAS, a Spanish acronym translating to "Death to the Kidnappers." This agreement started the Medellín cartel
and effectively ended the cocaine wars that bloodied the streets of Miami. In addition, each trafficker donated money to build a massive cocaine lab on the Yarí River in southern Colombia. A
division of labor soon emerged. Jorge Luis Ochoa and his two brothers oversaw the distribution networks in Florida and California. Carlos Lehder organized the air transport into the United
States, using a Caribbean island as a stopover. The most infamous member of this cartel, Pablo Escobar, served as the muscle. It is believed that he employed 200 gunmen and established two
assassin training schools. Medellín traffickers attempted to expand their social and political sway in an attempt to normalize their business in Colombian society. Traffickers contributed to
political campaigns. Several, such as Lehder, bought radio stations and newspapers. Escobar created a welfare program, gave alms to the poor, built low-income housing in the slums, and won
election as an alternate congressman on a Liberal Party ballot. At the same time, the trafficking in drugs supported many legal businesses throughout Latin America. For instance, Argentina
experienced a surge in hydrochloric acid exports to Bolivia in the 1980s, an additive in the production of cocaine. (In the earlier part of this century, Argentina witnessed a similar surge in
ephedrine exports to Mexico, a critical ingredient in the production of methamphetamines.) Other events in the early 1980s transformed the landscape of Colombian drug production and
distribution. The extradition treaty between Colombia and the United States, which was signed in 1979 and enacted in 1982, provoked a spike in violent crime by the cartel. In addition, a joint
Colombian police-DEA raid on the Yarí River facility in March 1984 netted a seizure of fourteen tons of cocaine (with an estimated street value of $1.2 billion), seven airplanes, and some
weapons and production materials. The cartel responded by assassinating the Colombian minister of justice. Colombia unleashed a crackdown on the Medellín cartel following the
assassination, which forced Escobar and the Ochoa brothers to hide in Panama in May 1984. While there, these traffickers attempted to negotiate a settlement with the Colombia government.
The men, who controlled three-quarters of the South American cocaine trade, offered to turn over landing strips and labs, promised to invest their capital into national industries, and
proposed to pay $15 billion in cash, the equivalent of Colombia's foreign debt. The deal was refused due to pressure from the Reagan administration and Colombian popular resentment to
As a result of the Colombian government's refusal of their offer, the cartel began to
make new connections with Central American traffickers who introduced the cartel to Mexican heroin
and marijuana smugglers and Mexican authorities willing to be bribed. These ties opened Colombian
cocaine to smuggling routes in the American southwest and set the stage for the rise of violent
Mexican trafficking organizations. Following 1984, the Medellín cartel began to self-destruct, even as its power and attending violence grew. The Ochoa brothers
negotiating with the cartel.
turned themselves into Colombian officials in 1990 for lenient prison sentences and were released in 1996. Pablo Escobar was shot and killed with the help of U.S. material aid in 1993. Carlos
Lehder is serving a life sentence in a U.S. federal prison. Yet, the connections made by the Medellín cartel with Mexican traffickers while in Panama in 1984 proved to be a turning point, with
Mexican groups increasingly ascendant in the movement of drugs into the U.S. By 1986, traffickers had diverted forty percent of cocaine flowing into the United States from the historical
Caribbean routes to transit networks along the U.S.-Mexican border. Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, a former bodyguard of the Sinaloan governor, was the first Mexican trafficker to move
Colombian cocaine into the United States across the southwestern border.
Today, ninety percent of cocaine smuggled into the United
States passes through Mexico. A Return to Mexico: 1984 to the present With the demise of the Colombian cartels, which controlled distribution into North America,
Mexican drug trafficking organizations now dominate the wholesale drug trade in the United States. The
business is extremely lucrative with wholesale illicit drug trade earnings now estimated between $13.6 and $48.4 billion annually. Mexican and Colombian trafficking organizations annually
smuggle an estimated $8.3 to $24.9 billion in drug proceeds into Mexico for laundering. There are four major Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs)—the Gulf, Sinaloa, Juárez, and
Tijuana—who have sometimes formed alliances. The Tijuana and Gulf organizations joined forces after their respective leaders struck an agreement in prison. The so-called Federation
emerged after agreements by leaders from the Sinaloa, Juarez and Valencia cartels. Evidence suggests Mexican DTOs are working in conjunction with American gangs to distribute products
The emergence of enforcer
gangs is a direct consequence of internal fighting among the Mexican DTOs. The most notorious of these
gangs are the Zetas, originally employed by the Gulf Cartel as assassins on their behalf (as well as its
rivals). The Zetas were almost certainly formed by a group of 30 officers who deserted from the Mexican military's Special Air Mobile Force Group (GAFES) to the Gulf cartel in the late
1990s. This background allows the Zetas, who number between 31 and 200 men, to carry out more complex operations and use more sophisticated weaponry. Officials believe
this organization controls trafficking routes along the eastern half of the U.S.-Mexico border and have
set up airfields in northern Guatemala to assist in logistical support and transportation of cocaine
from Colombia. Mexican and U.S. drug officials now say that the Mexican cartels have closed ranks, including the apparently short-lived "New Federation" that included the Gulf,
such as methamphetamines. Mexican operations are mainly interested in the wholesale trade and leave the retail to American gangs.
Federation and La Familia organizations. This new conglomerate has begun to fight the Zetas, who are now viewed as having become too powerful and determined to take over the trade
Latin America and the Future of
Narco-trafficking The many legal prohibitions and international efforts to eradicate illicit drugs,
especially since the "war on drugs" began, have done little to end narco-trafficking. Instead, they have tended only to
themselves. The violence long associated with Colombian drugs trade now characterizes the Mexican trafficking complex.
influence the location of production and methods of distribution. Demand for these drugs and their attendant profitability continue to drive the cycles of manufacture and circulation of these
products.