SPEECH DOCS NEG V.
GEORGETOWN
REGS (ADV 1)
CYBER DEFENSE
It’s a laughable part of overall laundering
Stadbrooke ‘13
Steven, EXPERTS: ONLINE POKER “BY NO MEANS RELEVANT FOR MONEY
LAUNDERING”, Calvin Ayre, a nonprofit gaming news website,
http://calvinayre.com/2013/04/06/business/experts-online-poker-by-no-means-relevant-formoney-laundering/
Such hyperbolic
views are easy to dismiss when they come from nutters like Kindt, but it’s less of a
joke when politicians holding the reins of power start accepting Kindt’s kind of blarney as gospel truth. Last year, European Union politicians
were told that online gambling was the “perfect tool” for money laundering. This February, the European
Commission proposed putting further restrictions on online gambling to monitor transactions for suspicious activities, with penalties of up to €5m for
companies that failed to comply with these directives.
With all due respect to the EU and the Financial Action Task Force, this
is a solution in search of a problem. Members
economist at
the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria, presented evidence that all gambling – land-based
and online – accounted for a mere 0.5% of total money laundering activity. Schneider singled out online poker as a
particularly ineffective method of laundering money, in no small part due to the high transaction costs. Schneider quoted
a study of the German gambling market by consultancy Goldmedia that concluded that even if the entire online
poker market was utilized solely for money laundering purposes, the total
amount processed would represent just 3.2% of the estimated total sum generated by all
criminal activity in Germany. Schneider said his research had led him to conclude that online poker was “by no
means relevant for money laundering.” At the same meeting, Sven Stiel, Director Northern Europe for PokerStars’ parent
of the European Parliament (MEP) attended a workshop in Brussels last month at which Professor Friedrich Georg Schneider, an
company Rational Group, stated that the relatively small sums involved in online poker transactions “have no relevance with regard to money
laundering.” Stiel also noted that since
online gambling is a non-cash business, most of the money that flows
has already been handled (and presumably vetted) by the banking system. When MEP Jürgen
Creutzmann tried to throw Stiel by asking him about anonymous payment methods, Stiel noted that prepaid cards can only be
loaded with minimal sums, usually a maximum of €100 to €150, and the use of these cards requires players to
log in via their individual accounts, making them easily identifiable.
into the site
Their authors are hacks—1ac Paget is the McAfee white paper identified by this card
Stutz, 14 (“Report’s author says both sides misrepresent study on Web gambling, money
laundering,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, 4/28/14,
http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/report-s-author-says-both-sidesmisrepresent-study-web-gambling-money //Red)
The author of a new report on the use of Internet gaming for money laundering activities said
Monday the findings of the study have been misrepresented by both anti-online wagering
activists and pro-Web gaming backers. The white paper — “Jackpot! Money Laundering
Through Online Gambling” — was released last week by cyber security firm McAfee, which
supplies Internet safety software for businesses and home computers. The paper immediately fueled heated
rhetoric over its conclusions. “I feel like I kicked a hornets’ nest,” Raj Samani, chief technology officer of McAfee and lead author of
the report, said in a phone interview from his offices in London. “Unfortunately, there has been some angry debate over the report.
The reality is the most of (the discussions) are irrelevant to the findings.” Samani and his co-authors said online gaming was
“the
most prominent method” used by cybercriminals to launder money. McAfee highlighted six
different efforts jurisdictions could take to halt the activity. “Greater collaboration between law
enforcement agencies to target unlicensed gambling sites is required, particularly with those that operate outside the visible
Internet,” the report stated. In an interview, Samani said cybercriminals will attempt to launder money through several
means, with online gaming being a popular source. However, Samani said the small U.S.-based
regulated Internet gaming operations “are just a drop of water in the ocean” when looking at the
realm of the online wagering universe. Cybercriminals in the U.S., he said, look to unregulated
websites in foreign jurisdictions, to launder money. “In any jurisdiction criminals can
circumvent any obstacle used to block their access,” Samani said. “You put in regulations, the
criminals will find another vehicle.” Samani said the report was written as a follow-up to a McAfee study on cyber
crime that was produced a year ago. The findings were seized upon by both opponents and proponents of
legalized Internet gaming in U.S. Three states — Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware — have laws that legalize forms of
Internet wagering. Some 10 states are exploring the idea. Meanwhile, in Congress there two competing bills that would legalize and
regulate Internet gaming and an opposing bill that would outlaw the activity. In a statement Monday, the Coalition to Stop Internet
Gaming, which is funded by Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson, said the McAfee report backed up previous warnings
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Internet gambling will lead to money laundering by terrorists and other criminal groups.
“In the world that proponents of Internet gambling want to impose on the rest of us, there will be 50 different laws regulating
Internet gambling sites, and innocent Americans could find themselves gambling with dangerous criminals or terrorists and
unknowingly help them move money,” the coalition said in a statement. Alison Harden, a spokeswoman for the Coalition for
Consumer and Online Protection, which is funded by MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment Corp, and the American
Gaming Association, said the McAfee study showed banning Internet wagering would lead to additional unregulated websites.
“(The authors) repeatedly argue that licensed sites provide more protection for Americans, and
that unlicensed black market sites present the biggest concern for criminal activity,” Harden said in
an emailed statement. “In fact, they say that, ‘requiring licenses for gambling operators is an important approach,’ in dealing with
the problem.” Samani said he spoke with representatives of both sides of the issue after the report was released, but he refused to
debate publicly with either party. “You can’t make an argument in 140 characters,” Samani said in reference to several
Twitter feuds that were fueled by the report. “We didn’t have any skin in the game, so to speak.
To be fair, we saw both sides of the story.” While Samani said regulated Internet gaming can
help stem some of the illegal activity, the report said, “For every licensed online gambling
site, there could be up to nine unlicensed online gambling sites.” Gaming Control Board
Chairman A.G. Burnett read the report and said Monday he disagreed with one finding concerning money launderers using Bitcoin
and other online currencies. “Nevada does not allow the use of crypto currencies when it comes to gaming,” Burnett said. He said
Nevada addressed money laundering issues when the state drafted its online gaming regulations. “The standards created are as
tough or tougher than the standards for land-based operators,” Burnett said. “We have minimized the risk by very rigorous auditing,
accounting and enforcement standards.” Samani said money launderers are more likely to avoid
American sites because of the small number of Internet locations.
Funding isn’t key—obstacles are target-specific and empirically insurmountable
Peter W. Singer 12, PhD in government from Harvard, is the director of the Center for 21st
Century Security and Intelligence and a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at
Brookings, November 2012, "The Cyber Terror Bogeyman," The Brookings Institute,
http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2012/11/cyber-terror-singer
Zero. That is the number of people that who been hurt or killed by cyber terrorism at the time this went to
press.¶ In many ways, cyber terrorism is like the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week,” when we obsess about shark
attacks despite the fact that you are roughly 15,000 times more likely to be hurt or killed in an accident
involving a toilet. But by looking at how terror groups actually use the Internet, rather than fixating
on nightmare scenarios, we can properly prioritize and focus our efforts.¶ Part of the problem is the way we talk
about the issue. The FBI defines cyber terrorism as a “premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer
systems, computer programs and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine
agents.” A key word there is “violence,” yet many discussions sweep all sorts of nonviolent online mischief into the “terror” bin.
Various reports lump together everything from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent statements that a terror group might launch
a “digital Pearl Harbor” to Stuxnet-like sabotage (ahem, committed by state forces) to hacktivism, WikiLeaks and credit card fraud.
As one congressional staffer put it, the way we use a term like cyber terrorism “has as much clarity as cybersecurity — that is, none at
all.”¶ ¶ Another part of the problem is that we often mix up our fears with the actual state of affairs. Last year, Deputy Defense
Secretary William Lynn, the Pentagon’s lead official for cybersecurity, spoke to the top experts in the field at the RSA Conference in
San Francisco. “It is possible for a terrorist group to develop cyber-attack tools on their own or to buy them on the black market,”
Lynn warned. “A couple dozen talented programmers wearing flip-flops and drinking Red Bull can do a lot of damage.”¶ ¶ The
deputy defense secretary was conflating fear and reality, not just about what stimulant-drinking programmers are actually hired to
do, but also what is needed to pull off an attack that causes meaningful violence. The requirements go
well beyond finding top cyber experts. Taking down hydroelectric generators, or designing malware like
Stuxnet that causes nuclear centrifuges to spin out of sequence doesn’t just require the skills and means to get
into a computer system. It’s also knowing what to do once you are in. To cause true damage
requires an understanding of the devices themselves and how they run, the engineering and
physics behind the target.¶ ¶ The Stuxnet case, for example, involved not just cyber experts well beyond a few
wearing flip-flops, but also experts in areas that ranged from intelligence and surveillance to nuclear
physics to the engineering of a specific kind of Siemens-brand industrial equipment. It also
required expensive tests, not only of the software, but on working versions of the target hardware as
well.¶ ¶ As George R. Lucas Jr., a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, put it, conducting a truly mass-scale action
using cyber means “simply outstrips the intellectual, organizational and personnel
capacities of even the most well-funded and well-organized terrorist organization,
as well as those of even the most sophisticated international criminal enterprises.Ӧ Lucas said the
threat of cyber terrorism has been vastly overblown.¶ “To be blunt, neither the 14-year-old hacker in
your next-door neighbor’s upstairs bedroom, nor the two- or three-person al-Qaida cell holed up in some apartment in Hamburg are
going to bring down the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams,” he said.
BANKS—1NC
Banks aren’t bothered by the UIGEA in the squo
Edelman January 6, 2015 (Marc [professor of Law at the City University of New York’s Baruch
College, Zicklin School of Business, where he published “A Short Treatise on Fantasy Sports and
the Law.” He also is an attorney and consultant for numerous companies in the sports, online
gaming, and social media industries]; Why Are Credit Card Companies Such As Visa And
MasterCard No Longer Afraid Of U.S. Gambling Laws?;
www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2015/01/06/why-are-credit-card-companies-such-asvisa-and-mastercard-no-longer-afraid-of-u-s-gambling-laws/2/; kdf)
When the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (“UIGEA”) was signed into law in October 2006, legal experts
predicted the act would scare away credit card companies from funding businesses that could
arguably be construed as illegal sports gambling. The prevailing theory, at the time, was that even if U.S. laws
could not deter entrepreneurs from entering into risky online gaming markets, U.S. laws could
certainly deter prudent and stodgy credit card companies such as Visa V +1.31% and MasterCard MA +1.32%
from funding these gaming ventures. At first, the UIGEA seemed to work. But over time, the UIGEA’s impact
has been far more limited than what Congress may have expected. Today, few, if any, payment
processing companies seem to be truly afraid of the UIGEA. Only eBay EBAY +2.57%, which operates the
payment processing company PayPal, takes the threat of government action at all seriously. Indeed, most
U.S. credit card companies today are willing to finance just about any form of online gaming so
long as the company providing the contests obtains an opinion letter from a lawyer stipulating to the game’s legality. Today, both
Visa and MasterCard fund the online contest TradeSports even though the contest pays winnings based on participants’ ability to
predict game-events that are based on just a single real-world sporting event. Similarly, all four major credit card companies — Visa,
MasterCard, American Express AXP +1.24%, and Diner’s Club — provide payment processing to HotRoster: an online contest that
allows participants to bet on the results against the house in one-on-one player match-ups. Visa logo from 2015 Visa is one of
the several large credit card companies that is processing payments for innovative but ‘gray area’
online sports contests. It is not surprising that companies such as TradeSports and HotRoster seem to have been able to
obtain legal opinion letters favorable to their games. Based on the pure quantity of lawyers in the United States (over 1.2 million to
be exact), entrepreneurs in the online gaming space can cherry pick their lawyers, hiring whoever is willing to write a favorable letter
for them — irrespective of whether the chosen draftsman is even the day-to-day lawyer advising these businesses. Far more
surprising, however, is how easily credit card companies seem to have accepted opinion letters from some
of the riskier online games. Of course, the longer that credit card companies such as Visa and MasterCard go without
facing a legal challenge for funding questionably legal online games, the more confident these credit card companies will become
that their current business practices are legally safe.
Banks are fine now
AP 14 (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/07/05/5-reasons-why-us-economy-is-recovering/)
STRONGER BANKS The
United States moved faster than Europe to restore its banks'
health after the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The U.S. government bailed out the financial
system and subjected big banks to stress tests in 2009 to reveal their financial strength. By
showing the banks to be surprisingly healthy, the stress tests helped restore confidence in
the U.S. financial system. Banks gradually started lending again. European banks are only now undergoing stress
tests, and the results won't be out until fall. In the meantime, Europe's banks lack confidence. They fear that other banks are holding
too many bad loans and that Europe is vulnerable to another crisis. So they aren't lending much. In the United States, overall
bank lending is up nearly 4 percent in the past year. Lending to business has jumped 10
percent. In the eurozone, lending has dropped 3.7 percent overall, according to figures from
the Institute of International Finance. Lending to business is off 2.5 percent. (The U.S. figures are for the year ending in mid-June;
the European figures are from May.)
They make it worse—repealing regs just means banks are caught sleeping when
onerous ones inevitably come
Kramer 2015 (Edward [Executive Vice President of Regulatory Affairs, Wolters Kluwer
Financial Services]; 2015 Banking Regulatory Outlook]; Jan 7;
www.banktech.com/compliance/2015-banking-regulatory-outlook/d/did/1318508?page_number=3; kdf)
We will continue to see heightened regulatory focus on a number of fronts in 2015, ranging
from increased scrutiny around mortgage-servicing rules and bank examinations, to the
introduction of new HMDA data-collection requirements, to efforts to tamp down on discriminatory
pricing in the indirect lending market, to the use of proxy methodology in adjudicating banks’ lending practices. Disparate impact is
under review and being challenged in the courts. Cyber security will continue to be a contentious issue as banks contend that
ultimate responsibility should rest with those companies where breaches occurred, rather than banks bearing the burden. The public
comment period around the CFPB’s new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection requirements ended in late October 2014.
Although 2015 will bring promulgation of the new rules, we don’t yet know the details or the amount of
time banks have to prepare before requirements go into effect. What we do know is that the extent and
breadth of additional data collection fields required will be significant, imposing added challenges on banks. Regarding bank
examinations, we anticipate heightened regulatory scrutiny with increased attention on the role a bank’s board of directors plays in
overseeing compliance. Increasingly, examiners are monitoring to ensure that boards are fully involved, not only in the
establishment, but also in the oversight of an organization’s compliance programs. For many the answer lies in automated
compliance-management systems that deliver consistency, centralization, and visibility to compliance efforts, benefits that are as
fully realized at the board level as they are by bank compliance officers. Heightened emphasis on mortgage servicing and subservicing rules will continue -- the CFPB has been very demonstrative about its intent in this area. During 2015 we can expect
continued changes in mortgage-servicing rules that will include new protections for surviving family members and other
homeowners. Regulation in this area is an evolutionary process. Non-bank mortgage servicers are bracing for an onslaught of new
capital recommendations from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors that could go beyond servicing to impact originations.
From the challenges of implementing the new TILA-RESPA disclosure rules to capturing new HMDA data
requirements, growing compliance burdens will put new, additional pressures on banks’
operations and systems. The reality is that financial institutions today cannot adequately
monitor, track, and report to regulators on their lending activities without sophisticated technological
systems. Only a few years ago, the compliance officer was on the hot seat when examination findings found
gaps or other problems with a bank’s activities. Today, the chief information officer is every bit as accountable to and
involved in ensuring the integrity and comprehensiveness of a bank’s array of lending programs. Either you must build the
technology competency in-house to meet today’s regulatory requirements, or hire vendors or consultants to do it on behalf of your
organization. Given the Aug. 1, 2015, deadline for TILA-RESPA compliance, not only should you have a game plan at this point, but
you should be well down the track in working with your in-house teams and vendors/consultants to implement the changes
necessary to ensure readiness. We recommend that banks test their systems no later than May 1 to ensure readiness for the August
deadline. Finally, we encourage banks to build a thoughtful and comprehensive compliance strategy for 2015. The old mantra “an
ounce of prevention …” will be fully relevant, as non-compliance increasingly is leading to severe monetary consequences that range
from fines and penalties to harsh reputational and regulatory consequences.
BANKS—2NC
This advantage is false
Kelly 9 (Joseph, Ph.D., J.D., co-editor-in-chief of Gaming Law Review and Economics, is a
professor of business law at SUNY College Buffalo in New York and an associate of Catania Consulting in Halcedon, N.J, Financial Transaction Providers Needn’t Worry Too Much about
Complying with UIGEA Rules, GAMING LAW REVIEW AND ECONOMICS Volume 13, Number
3)
Concerning an established commercial customer, the
burden on the financial transaction provider is very
light—“a simple notice” sent to the customer that “restricted transactions are prohibited from
being processed through the account or relationship.” Should the financial transaction provider
have actual knowledge that the existing customer is engaged in an Internet gambling business, it
should conduct due diligence procedures similar to that of a new customer.54 If the transaction is
cross-border, the agencies considered but rejected a “requirement that the foreign
counterparty have reasonably designed policies and procedures in place to ensure that the
commercial relationship would not be used to process restricted transactions.”55 There is also no
requirement “to conduct due diligence on its foreign respondent’s commercial customers.”56
Should the U.S. participant be informed by the U.S. government that the foreign customer has
processed illegal gambling transactions, then it should send a notice to the foreign customer
pursuant to Appendix A to the regulations.57
Financial transaction providers must also establish a compliance program to monitor commercial transactions. Remedial
action is required only if the financial transaction provider has “actual knowledge” of a restricted
transaction “that is known or brought to the attention of compliance personnel of the participant responsible for that
transaction or customer (which may be below officer level) or any officer of the participant.”58 This actual knowledge
requirement is less of a burden than the “should have known” or “reason to know” requirements
to establish mere negligence.
The regulations do not mandate specific remedial action, and defer to the “business
judgment” of the financial transaction provider.59 One alternative might be to “block” a
prohibited transaction. The rules define blocking as rejecting but not “freezing or otherwise
prohibiting subsequent transfers ... ”60 Another alternative might be to utilize business judgment either to
deny a commercial customer access to a payment system or close the account for processing a restricted transaction.61 The rules
provide the financial transaction provider protection from liability, as long as the termination or response is
based on a reasonable belief that the transaction is restricted.62 There is no liability if the financial transaction provider chooses for
business reasons to refuse all online gambling transactions.63
The regulations also exempt many of the designated payment systems, such as automated
clearing houses, check collection systems, and wire transfer systems, unless they have a
“customer relationship with the Internet gambling business,”64 which is extremely unlikely,
or in certain other limited circumstances. Money transmitting businesses are exempt unless they permit transmission of funds
“remotely other than a physical office of the money transmitting business.”65 Thus, money transmitting businesses,
such as check cashiers and currency ex- changes, could be included only if they transmit funds
by remote means.66 Credit card companies probably block all gambling pursuant to utilization of the Merchant Code 7995.
They might now create a new code for legal online gambling.67
The regulations stress that policies to prevent restricted transactions
are with respect to commercial
customers only.68 The American Bankers Association summarized the responsibility to the
individual customer: “In other words, if your customer is the gambler, you do not have to block
gambling transactions except for debit and credit card transactions. In those cases, you may rely
on the network policies and procedures and merchant codes.”69
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR LAWYERS AND FINANCIAL TRANSACTION PROVIDERS?
The impact of UIGEA and the final rule, except for recordkeeping, should be minimal.
The agencies note “that most Internet gambling businesses that use card systems for funding do so
through non-U.S. merchant acquirers that are not subject to the Act or the Final Rule . . . .”70
Gaming lawyers, however, may rejoice at the prospect of drafting numerous “reasoned legal opinions” on what Internet gam- bling is
either lawful or unlawful. The agencies also estimate that the recordkeeping burden for regulated entities should be approximately
one million hours.71 Should the DOJ initiate prosecution of a financial transaction provider, it may
utilize UIGEA as the last count in a laundry list in a criminal proceeding.
Framing issue—all of this is industry chicanery
Admati 2013 (Anat R [George G.C. Parker Professor of Finance and Economics, Graduate
School of Business, Stanford University]; TRANSCRIPT: FINANCIAL REGULATION REFORM:
POLITICS, IMPLEMENTATION AND ALTERNATIVES; 18 N.C. Banking Inst. 71; kdf)
In most countries, and certainly in the U.S., particularly after the [*80] Dodd-Frank Act, regulators have sufficient authority to keep
the system safe. Yet they are failing. For example, for the third year, the Federal Reserve has allowed most large U.S. banks to pay
dividends to shareholders. The policy chooses the banks' interests over those of the public. There is no justification for allowing
these payouts by the banks. The payouts benefit primarily the bankers them-selves, or those whose holdings are concentrated in the
banks. Diversified shareholders and the public are exposed to unnecessary risk and the system is made more fragile. The stress tests
are very flawed and unconvincing. Why are policymakers failing? If you listen to them, they will have their narratives
and their "analyses." A favorable narrative holds that everything in banking is "just a
liquidity problem." Think of it as the "plumbing narrative." The narrative is convenient, because it starts
with runs and breakdowns that appear as if they are a natural disaster, thus avoiding the question of why regulators and
supervisors allowed these risks to build up. The banks lobby using very flawed claims, and they are
successful because they are rarely challenged either be-cause those involved do not know how to
challenge the claims (they might in fact agree with them), or because they do not want to challenge the
claims. The public gets scared by the threats made by the lobbyists about all the
terrible things that would happen if regulators try to make banks safer.
Ensuring compliance is key—data breaches will cause harsh new rules on
emerging tech
Larson 2015 (Kate [Regulatory Counsel, Consumer Bankers Assosciation]; 2015 Baning
Regulatory Outlook; www.banktech.com/compliance/2015-banking-regulatory-outlook/d/did/1318508?_mc=RSS_BST_EDT&page_number=1; kdf)
2015 will solidify what the leading banks already know: Compliance is key. With the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau paving the way, banking regulators are expected continue to seek out the CFPB-designated Four Ds: deceptive
marketing, debt traps, dead ends, and discrimination. Given this focus, banks must ensure they (and their vendors)
comply with regulations. Also, given the ever-present retailer data breaches, lawmakers
will likely explore how to strengthen protections in the payment system, which may include a
focus on mobile banking and emerging technologies. Since Dodd-Frank, there is never a dull moment in the
office. The CFPB is very much still in its adolescence and, as with any teenager, it is figuring out its role. Much of our time is spent
trying to anticipate what product or service the CFPB will concentrate on next. Over the past couple months, we have been focused
specifically on their complaint database proposal, Home Mortgage Database (HMDA) proposed rule, overdraft studies, and prepaid
proposal. We expect the CFPB to tackle overdraft, debt collection, payday lending, and arbitration in the first half of next year, and
finalize the HMDA rule during the summer. In 2015, vendor management is going to be the name of the game. From data breaches
to system implementation, to fair lending, all eyes are going to be on the vendors. TILA/RESPA integrated disclosure
implementation is going to be a headache in 2015. Despite their diligent efforts, many of our members are concerned their systems
will not be ready by the August 2015 deadline because of the limited number of vendors in the market. We have voiced these
concerns to CFPB Director Cordray, who said he is looking into the issue. Once TILA/RESPA systems are installed, work will almost
immediately need to begin on HMDA implementation. The magnitude of these changes is yet to be seen, but the addition of
commercial loans and/or HELOCs will create an immense strain on the industry. This is not even mentioning the Dodd-Frankmandated small business data collection process that is slated to begin the end of 2015. Last year, we sent the CFPB a whitepaper
explaining the impact on the industry, and are actively engaging with the Bureau as they begin the rulemaking process. Banks
should try to stay one step ahead of deadlines and plan for regulatory changes before they occur.
Although the August 2015 deadline seemed far off when the final TILA/ RESPA rule was released, implementation takes
longer than expected and complications are bound to arise. This is why strong compliance
departments are critical -- only then can banks stay ahead of the game and avoid last-minute
stress.
FARMS—2NC
Wrong on everything – small rural banks that loan to farmers aren’t involved in OG, they’re resilient,
Dodd-Frank and commodity prices are an alt cause, and farmers can always get loans from
somewhere because they have amazing fucking credit
Paul Ellinger 4-22-2011 Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics University of Illinois The Financial Health of Banks Lending to
Agriculture http://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2011/04/the-financial-health-of-banks.html
Most commercial banks lending to agriculture have weathered the financial tsunami of the past 36 months. Many
of the agricultural-related banks did not participate aggressively in the high-risk housing or commercial real estate
markets. As a result, agricultural banks did not sustain the substantial liquidity and capital problems
faced by many global financial institutions. In general, credit remained available for farmers and ranchers
throughout the financial crisis. The profitability of production agriculture through the crisis certainly played
a critical role in credit quality and quantity at agricultural banks. Agricultural lending increased $13 billion
from 2007 through 2010. At the end of 2010, delinquency rates on agricultural loans (2.55%) are lower
than the other loan types and far below agricultural delinquency rates exhibited during the agricultural financial crisis
in the late 1980s. 220411_fig1.jpg Banks lending to agriculture are often characterized by small-rural banks.
However, the distribution of banks lending to agriculture can be viewed as a barbell. A few large banks hold a large portion of the total portfolio
and thousands of smaller, community-oriented banks lending to agriculture hold a large segment as well. At year end 2010, there were 5,703
banks in the U.S. that provided loans to agriculture. Illinois ranks second (459 banks) to Texas (548 banks) in the number of banks that provide
loans for agricultural production or secured by farm real estate. The five largest U.S. institutions lending to agriculture hold 15% of the portfolio
of bank loans to agriculture. The five largest agricultural lenders are Wells Fargo ($9.2B), Bank of the West ($3.0B), Rabobank ($2.6B), Bank of
America ($2.5B) and U.S. Bank ($1.7B). Collectively, these banks hold more agricultural loans than the 2,468 banks with less than $100M in
assets. Figure 2 shows the distribution of agricultural loans by bank size. 220411_fig2.jpg Based on data from FDIC, the profitability of banks
with concentrations in agriculture improved in 2010. The average rate of return on assets (ROA) for banks with concentrations in agriculture
was 0.88% in the 4th Qtr 2010 exceeding the average for all commercial banks (0.64%). The ROA in 2010 was also 63% higher than the same
period in 2009. The average charge-off rate for banks with concentrations in agricultural also improved substantially in 2010 and was the lowest
across all FDIC concentration groups. Although credit conditions have improved across the banking sector, a substantial number of bank
failures have occurred. Over the first four months of 2011, 34 banks closed while over 150 banks failed in 2010. However, only
two of these banks had more than $100 million of agricultural loans. Collectively, these banks held about $1.2 billion of
agricultural loans. There have not been substantial credit delivery disruptions to farmers and ranchers
because of bank failures. While the financial health of agricultural banks has improved, these institutions
face new and significant challenges. New regulations from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act will add regulatory compliance costs. Typically, as a share of total operating costs,
these compliance costs are greater for smaller banks. There will likely be continued pressure to merge institutions and
gain potential cost economies and synergies. Moreover, volatile commodity and farm input cost markets increase the
cash flow risks faced by farmers and agricultural lenders. Agricultural banks will have to continue to manage
and monitor risks and explore opportunities to maintain competitiveness and profitability. In summary, prudent risk
management and a strong agricultural economy have resulted in a banking industry that is wellpositioned to meet the continued financial needs of farmers. Stay tuned for a future farmdocdaily column that summarizes
the strong financial health of the Farm Credit System.
AT: VALASEK—1NC
No international regulation
La Vigne, 14 - Associate Editor of the Michigan Journal of International Law (“All In: The Importance of International
Consensus to the Regulation of Internet Gambling,” Michigan Journal of International Law, 3/31/14, http://mjilonline.org/?p=889
//Red)
One issue making international consensus much harder to achieve is the wide
variance in responses to gambling among jurisdictions. In the United States, the individual
states are primarily responsible for regulation, and each state has views ranging from prohibition
to allowing only specific activities.[7] Responses to online gambling amongst states in the European Union follow a similar
pattern, ranging from relatively no restriction to near complete restriction.[8] Variation in the level of restriction may stem from the
lack of consensus on the risks online gambling entails, with “divergence in opinion [centering] on the issues of criminality and
increased potential for addiction.”[9] This focus on deeply held moral beliefs stresses the need for mutual recognition and the
allowance of slight tweaks to the system of international regulation.[10] Further, there is a lack of research on the psychological effects
of online gambling or its potential effect on criminality, leading to uncertainty surrounding the extent of online gambling’s effect on
society.[11] Researching the financial characteristics involved in online gambling is also very problematic. This stems from the fact
that “online gambling is still a largely invisible industry” with a “questionable legal status and [an] absence of regulatory bodies to
which commercial online gaming operators must report.”[12]
Lastly, the variance in tax rate is perhaps the most substantial barrier to international consensus.
In Australia alone, tax rates on online gambling in the various territories range from eight percent
to 50 percent.[13] Similar variation exists among the European Union Member States .[14] Such
variation allows for “tax jurisdiction shopping,” where providers locate themselves in the most favorable jurisdiction, resulting in a
loss of tax revenue for other jurisdictions.[15] To avoid this, “some degree of tax harmonization” is necessary to reach an international
consensus on regulation.[16] This creates a very compelling need to reach an international consensus among as many jurisdictions as
possible to avoid the problem of a nonparty undercutting the agreement with more favorable tax rates and a lower level of regulation.
In conclusion, a number of substantial barriers stand in the way of reaching an expansive
international consensus on the regulation of Internet gambling. Jurisdictions may need some
leeway to tweak regulations to best suit their individual situations, but close attention must be paid to ensure they are not subverting
the regulatory system. Seeing that strong moral viewpoints are in play, convincing a large number of
jurisdictions to join in also poses a big challenge to international consensus. Finally, harmonizing taxation
among the jurisdictions may prove to be the most daunting barrier. Without some level of tax harmonization, a system
of international regulation will likely fall victim to tax jurisdiction shopping, which would undermine the system’s effectiveness. Should
providers choose to locate in a jurisdiction that is not party to the consensus as a result of jurisdiction shopping, the system is likely to
be ineffective. Reaching the necessary consensus entails substantial transaction costs. The decision of whether regulation efforts are
truly worth it may come down to weighing these costs against the tax revenue that each jurisdiction could derive from regulation,
versus letting these tax benefits go unrealized under systems of prohibition.
AT: VALASEK—2NC
Valasek says if an international scheme emerges – doesn’t say it’s likely
Valasek 07 Katherine A. Valasek, B.A., Political Science, Drew University; J.D. Candidate, Michigan State University College
of Law, 2008, Fall 2007, Mich. St. L. Rev., “WINNING THE JACKPOT: A FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESSFUL INTERNATIONAL
REGULATION OF ONLINE GAMBLING AND THE VALUE OF THE SELF-REGULATING ENTITIES”, 753
The unwillingness of the United States to regulate Internet gambling will cause additional problems if,
and when, an international scheme is devised.211 As the current system develops, countries
will continue to develop independent and unique methods of regulating online gambling.212 Creating a
unified regulatory standard will be far more difficult to achieve after these individual methods have been
established than if the international community works together early in the evolution of Internet gambling
regulation to develop a uniform scheme. An incremental system initiated in the United States that addresses domestic concerns and
lays the groundwork for international cooperation would be most feasible.
Valasek concludes that’s unlikely and super hard to cooperate
Valasek 07 Katherine A. Valasek, B.A., Political Science, Drew University; J.D. Candidate, Michigan State University College
of Law, 2008, Fall 2007, Mich. St. L. Rev., “WINNING THE JACKPOT: A FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESSFUL INTERNATIONAL
REGULATION OF ONLINE GAMBLING AND THE VALUE OF THE SELF-REGULATING ENTITIES”, 753
The exact method of international regulation that could be chosen is purely speculative at this point;
however, there are several options that could be used to achieve international regulatoiy continuity. For litigation
purposes, an independent tribunal of judges could be created to handle conflicts. Alternatively, agreement could be reached through
a choice of forum clause, linking the dispute resolution process to an already existing international organization, or creating a new
international organization since the advent of International gambling has created relationships between countries that have not
interacted closely in the past. The new international organization would be specifically mandated to settle Internet gambling
disputes.
A problem with creating an independent tribunal is the time and logistical work
necessary. The creators of the tribunal would have to address basic issues of the tribunals formation such as whether every
country would appoint a representative judge, whether judges would sit for life or for an elected period of time, whether judges
would operate on a rotating schedule or hear every case, and whether the position as head judge would be a permanent or rotating
one. However, addressing these issues would merely be time consuming, not impossible.
Other approaches are complicated as well. Choice of forum clauses would be problematic
in their enforcement since each country involved in the dispute would likely believe that its laws
are best at resolving the dispute. The United States and Europe, for example, have “different versions of
conflicts law.”2® Enforcing another country’s laws is difficult because there is no “shared
legal culture,” which gives rise to fundamental substantive differences with no
“common constitutional umbrella ensuring even a minimum of mutual respect.”210
Seeking regulatory continuity through existing international organizations is equally problematic.
Membership in these organizations is limited. The organizations’ jurisdiction over non-member countries is
questionable, and it is unclear whether the organizations should admit a new member each time a country implements a
regulated system for Internet gambling. Alternatively, how will countries that do not have a regulated form of Internet gambling, like
the United States, get involved in the decision-making process? Creating a new international organization is the best
avenue. Alt-hough a new international organization would further complicate the international
arena and require time, energy, and money, it is the only feasible way to link countries like Antigua, Australia, and
Liechtenstein that have very little else in common.
CHINA (ADV 2)
DEFENSE—1NC
Their author says China balks
Zimmerman 2013 (James [specializes in macroeconomic research, country risk analysis, and
emerging markets, with over a decade of China experience. He is a recent graduate of the
Georgetown Master of Science in Foreign Service program]; Evaluating US government
initiatives on Chinese Censorship; Feb 6; journal.georgetown.edu/evaluating-us-governmentinitiatives-on-chinese-censorship-james-zimmerman/; kdf)
A second conclusion is that there are limits to the effectiveness of US policies that attempt to
alter Chinese domestic policies. In the case of potential WTO action, it is unlikely that China
would change its censorship regime even if it were found to be in violation of its WTO
commitments. The concern for domestic political stability overrides any potential
costs due to noncompliance with a panel ruling. Such attempts by the US to alter Chinese
censorship policies will likely be met with strong resistance, as China balks at any actions that
attempt to challenge its sovereignty.
Growth despite censorship
The Economist 2013 (Ours, all ours; Apr 6; www.economist.com/news/specialreport/21574638-wealth-internet-businesses-chinese-characteristics-ours-all-ours; kdf)
SINCE THE EARLY days of China’s web, internet cafés have been seen as modern-day opium dens where the addicted users, mostly
young males, play online games. This generally remains true today. Walk into an internet café outside one of the Chinese factory
complexes of Foxconn, an Apple supplier and the country’s largest private employer, and you will see hordes of assemblers of iPads
and iPhones on their breaks, playing multiplayer online games. The one thing that has changed is the games they are playing. Less
than a decade ago foreign games, such as South Korea’s “The Legend of Mir II”, accounted for 70% of China’s online gaming market;
now they make up just one-third. Instead, players are choosing home-produced fare, such as “Fantasy Westward
Journey” or “Dream of Three Ancient Kingdoms”. At the same time the
market has surged from below $160m in 2003 to an
estimated $9 billion in 2012, more than a third of the global total. By 2016 it is expected to be worth $20 billion.
The online gaming industry illustrates two striking things about the Chinese internet as a place to do business. The first is that the
number of consumers and their spending have grown extraordinarily fast (see chart 4). Far more people are online to
shop, play games, search, watch videos and use social media in China than in any other country.
Astonishingly, the number of online shopping transactions is expected to surpass America’s this
year. Economics has played a big role in creating this walled-off Chinese ecosystem. Many
early founders cloned Western services with the enthusiastic support of foreign (mostly American) investors who understood that
the market would be large enough to support distinctly Chinese companies. So instead of visiting Western internet
portals, users go to Sina, Sohu and NetEase. Instead of eBay, they shop at Taobao and pay not with PayPal but with AliPay, an
affiliate of Taobao within the Alibaba Group, China’s dominant online shopping business. Instead of Google, users search on Baidu.
Wang Xing, a talented engineer trained at Tsinghua University, China’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology, created four
successive clones in China: of Friendster, Facebook, Twitter and Groupon. Mr Wang’s Twitter clone, Fanfou, stumbled when he
failed to censor it strictly enough. But he sold the Facebook clone (which became Renren) for several million dollars, and his
Groupon clone, Meituan, is now one of the market leaders. Groupon itself failed in China, and its joint venture was swallowed up last
year by a clone owned by its own Chinese business partner, Tencent. Many of the victors are now among China’s wealthiest
entrepreneurs, business heroes if not heroes of innovation. The creator of Taobao, Jack Ma, a former English teacher, first shot to
fortune with Alibaba.com, an online platform for importers and exporters. Robin Li, co-founder and chief executive of Baidu,
proudly displays his patent for a search algorithm at his headquarters in Beijing—which predates, his employees note, the one
awarded to Larry Page, Google’s CEO (though Mr Li’s business was closely modelled on Google). In 1999 Ma Huateng used a precise
copy of AOL’s ICQ instant-messaging service to launch Tencent, but had to rename it QQ after AOL complained. The spoils have
been substantial. In 2012 China had more than 200m online shoppers who spent going on $200 billion (not counting food and
travel), ten times as much as in 2008. This market is dominated by Taobao, which is responsible for almost 60% of the parcels
delivered by courier in China. More than 370m people watch online video, a medium that has special appeal, even with censorship,
because the rules are looser than for traditional TV and cinema. Youku Tudou, which may turn profitable next year, has a market
capitalisation of $2.8 billion. Baidu owns more than 70% of search in China and has a market capitalisation of $30 billion
(compared with Google’s $267 billion). Tencent, the leader in online games, is the most profitable internet
business in China, earning more than $2 billion in 2012 (see chart 5). The company has excelled at converting
its hundreds of millions of social-media users into paying customers, mainly for virtual items in games. From being an AOL clone, it
has evolved dramatically. Its elegantly designed WeChat social application, which has more than 300m registered users, is one of
China’s best examples of product innovation and may help the company gain business overseas. In February Tencent said it would
expand its presence in America. Each of the foreign companies that failed in China tells a different tale.
Sometimes it is merely one of incompetence or a nimbler competitor. Quite a few foreigners lost out to the hordes of Chinese
entrepreneurs who copied fast and understood their customers better. But the playing field has not been level.
Western companies have been blocked by the Great Firewall (as happened to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube)
or slowed down unacceptably (as is still happening to Google), examples of political protectionism translating into the economic
sort.
Soft power too
Berman 1/22/15 (Ilan [Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council]; China's newest
sphere of influence; www.wsj.com/articles/ilan-berman-chinas-newest-sphere-of-influence1421949459; kdf)
You have to feel a bit sorry for the Obama administration. The White House in December announced plans to
normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba, including establishing a U.S. Embassy in Havana and formally revisiting
Cuba’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism. The move was a clear effort by Washington to distinguish itself in a new international
theater. But that gambit was soon eclipsed by another: In a meeting that could herald a
significant shift in the Western Hemisphere’s balance of power, China hosted a high-profile
summit earlier this month with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or Celac.
DEFENSE—2NC
No chance to convince China
Paul Carsten 11-19-2014; Reuters “China: We Need To Censor The Internet To Maintain Stability” http://www.businessinsider.com/r-chinasays-controls-on-internet-needed-to-maintain-stability-2014-11#ixzz3PqrtkseN
Chinese officials called on Wednesday for controls on the Internet to preserve stability, saying its model
for cyberspace regulation can be the framework for spawning commercial successes like Alibaba Group
Holding Ltd. The comments, made at the start of the World Internet Conference (WIC), show China is unlikely to
loosen its tight grip on the medium even as it has begun a transformation of its economic model. "This
place is crowded with tourists, who are perfectly orderly, and cyberspace should also be free and open, with rules to
follow and always following the rule of law," Lu Wei, China's Internet chief and director of the State Internet Information
Office, said at the conference. Lu was referring to China's eastern tourist town of Wuzhen, roughly 75 miles from Shanghai,
which is hosting the three-day conference. Among those attending the conference were executives from Apple Inc, Facebook Inc,
LinkedIn Corp, IBM Corp , Microsoft Corp, Qualcomm Inc, SoftBank Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Nokia, Intel Corp
and Thomson Reuters Corp. They already got a taste of China's intent when on Tuesday the Chinese government blocked access to a
swathe of websites in what an Internet monitoring group said was a blunt censorship campaign. With a population of 1.4 billion and
632 million people online, China is a market no one wants to miss out on. But it also has the world's
most sophisticated
online censorship system, known outside the country as the Great Firewall.
Litany of reasons China has soft power
Sukhopraova 2014 (Irina; Charm offensive: The way China influences the world; rt.com/opedge/growing-chinese-soft-power-638/; kdf)
Once a “sleeping giant,” nowadays China is the world’s fastest growing economy with a
significant impact on other nations’ development. Though debates mainly revolve around
economic and military aspects of China’s increasing power, its “soft power” components are
considered to be an integral part of its influence. In fact, Chinese interpretation of “soft power”
covers not only cultural instruments but economic and diplomatic ones as well, which in turn
provides better opportunities to exercise its impact. The specter of soft power instruments is
rather large; it includes culture, language, public diplomacy, education systems, various festivals
and big events. Indeed, the Olympic Games held in 2008 and the Shanghai World Expo of 2010
were important events, which assisted in enhancing public diplomacy and promoting China’s
brand.
CENSORSHIP GOOD—1NC
Chinese censorship is key to political stability and leaks aren’t inevitable
George Yeo and Eric X. Li 2012 George Yeo is a former foreign minister of Singapore, and Eric X. Li is a venture capitalist in
Shanghai. “Rise of the dragon: China isn't censoring the Internet. It's making it work.” Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2012/0123/Rise-of-the-dragon-China-isn-t-censoring-the-Internet.-Its-making-it-work
Beijing — The Chinese government recently issued new rules to strengthen Internet regulations. Most
notable is the real-name requirement for Weibo (microblog) accounts – China’s equivalent of Twitter. Some Weibo users have
attested to an increase in government monitoring and self-censorship by hosting companies. Many are decrying this as
China’s further violation of freedom of expression. The reality is far more complicated. More than a
decade ago, when China’s Internet was in its infancy with a few million users, the government made it clear that it
would exercise political oversight on the nascent cyberspace while allowing it to grow. Many experts then
predicted that such efforts were doomed to fail. The Internet, they said, was to be a brave new world that could not
be controlled. There were only two possible outcomes: a freely expanding Internet beyond the reach of political authority, or an
Internet stifled by government control and unable to realize its potential social and economic benefits. Rupert Murdoch famously
proclaimed that advances in communications technology posed an “unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.”
Confounding these experts, neither has happened in China. By any standard, the Chinese
Internet is one of the most vibrant economic and social cyberspaces in the world. Some 450 million
users communicate, transact, and entertain in it. Entrepreneurial companies have created tens of billions of dollars in economic
value. China’s search engine, e-commerce, and online video businesses are among the world’s leading companies. On Taobao,
China’s eBay, millions of mom-and-pop shops are conducting billions of dollars of transactions per month. On QQ and Sina, the two
largest Weibo services, 200 million users are active – expressing their views on anything and everything from sex to official
corruption. Concurrently, a massive government-directed monitoring system combined with self-
regulation by hosting companies makes China’s Internet highly controlled by political authority.
Facebook and Twitter are banned while their domestic versions flourish. In a well-publicized spat with the government, Google’s
search presence was curtailed while its other businesses have continued. When social crises occur, keyword barriers
are erected to prevent amplifications that threaten stability. China’s size and its centralized
governance have enabled the creation of a parallel Internet universe connected to and separate
from the one outside. There are leaks, and many virtual private networks are available. Minor leaks are ignored.
When leaks become important, they are plugged, and sometimes bluntly. When the Jasmine Revolution became
an issue, search engines simply blanked out the word “jasmine.” However, it is a mistake to think that all the regulators do is censor.
Internet control allows the CCP to regulate dissent – disagreement is strategically
allowed, but surveillance allows them to quell large-scale rebellion
Kentaro Toyama 10-2-2013; How Internet Censorship Actually Works in China
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/how-internet-censorship-actually-works-in-china/280188/
It’s no secret that the Chinese government dislikes mass protests. But a fascinating pair of studies led by
political scientist Gary King uses rigorously observed patterns of censorship on Chinese social media to show just how systematically
the Communist Party works to avoid grassroots gatherings of any kind. King believes Internet censorship in China is
the “most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented.” The
government’s Internet police force employs an estimated 50,000 people who collaborate with an
additional 300,000 Communist Party members—and that’s not counting the employees that private firms must
hire to review the content on their own sites. Over the phone, King told me that the effort is so large that “it’s like an elephant
walking through a room.” Together with colleagues Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts, King was able to track and measure its
footprints, gaining new insights into the Chinese Leviathan. The Democracy Report In the first study, the team built a network of
computers that closely watched 1,382 Chinese websites, tracking new posts about a variety of topics over periodic intervals to see if
and when they were censored. 11 million posts covering 85 topic areas, ranging in political sensitivity from popular video games to
the dissident artist Ai Weiwei, were chosen for investigation alongside online chatter resulting from real-world events. In the second
study, King and his team went undercover. They created fake accounts on over 100 social media sites, submitted posts to see which
ones were censored, and even set up their own social media site in China. Two points stand out among their findings. First,
China’s censorship infrastructure is incredibly efficient: Objectionable posts are removed
with a near-perfect elimination rate and typically within 24 hours of their posting. The authors write,
“This is a remarkable organizational accomplishment, requiring large scale military-like
precision.” Second, King and his team found that Chinese censors focus on posts that refer to, instigate, or
are otherwise linked to grassroots collective action such as protests, demonstrations, and even apolitical mass activities,
and that the regime seems comparatively more comfortable with criticism of the government. For example, this passage was not
censored: The Chinese Communist Party made a promise of democratic, constitutional government at the beginning of the war of
resistance against Japan. But after 60 years that promise has yet to be honored. China today lacks integrity, and accountability
should be traced to Mao. [...] intra-party democracy espoused today is just an excuse to perpetuate one-party rule. Meanwhile this
sentence, which refers to a suicide bomber whose homes were demolished, was nixed: Even if we can verify what Qian Mingqi said
on Weibo that the building demolition caused a great deal of personal damage, we should still condemn his extreme act of
retribution....The government has continually put forth measures and laws to protect the interests of citizens in building demolition.
This isn’t to say that the Communist Party is happy with criticism. Chinese people can still be punished for
publishing dissent, especially if it gains traction: For example, a man in Shaanxi Province was recently detained for being retweeted
500 times on Sina Weibo. But to the extent that criticism is expressed in small ways, it is secondary to
writing that might incite collective action. King suggests at least two reasons for this. First, allowing some
criticism might mollify citizens who want to blow off some steam, thereby keeping them from
expressing these feelings more violently. Second, this relative leniency is a useful way for the
central government to learn about problems that require attention. King cites the political scientist Martin
Dimitrov, who argues that “regimes collapse when its people stop bringing grievances to the state”—
because they no longer see the state as legitimate. Calls to collective action, however, are regarded as dangerous
and are not tolerated at all—even when they have little to do with politics.
CCP instability causes nuclear war
Yee 2002—Professor, Department of Government and International Studies, Course Director of China Studies—AND—Zhu Feng,
Professor of International Studies, Deputy Director for International & Strategic Studies @ Peking University (Herbert, © 2002,
RoutledgeCurzon, The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality, p. 5)
political and economic collapse in the PRC, resulting
in territorial fragmentation, civil war and waves of refugees pouring into neighbouring countries.
Naturally, any or all of these scenarios would have a profoundly negative impact on regional
stability. Today the Chinese leadership faces a raft of internal problems, including the increasing political
demands of its citizens, a growing population, a shortage of natural resources and a deterioration in the natural environment caused
by rapid industrialisation and pollution. These problems are putting a strain on the central
government’s ability to govern effectively. Political disintegration or a Chinese civil war might
result in millions of Chinese refugees seeking asylum in neighbounng countries. Such an unprecedented
exodus of refugees from a collapsed PRC would no doubt put a severe strain on the limited resources of China’s
neighbours. A fragmented china could also result in another nightmare scenario — nuclear
weapons falling into the hands of irresponsible local provincial leaders or warlords.12 From this
perspective, a disintegrating China would also pose a threat to its neighbours and the world.
The fourth factor contributing to the perception of a china threat is the fear of
CENSORSHIP GOOD—2NC
Internet control allows moderated, effective responses to crises – prevents crackdowns
George Yeo and Eric X. Li 2012 George Yeo is a former foreign minister of Singapore, and Eric X. Li is a venture capitalist in Shanghai. “Rise
of the dragon: China isn't censoring the Internet. It's making it work.” Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Global-Viewpoint/2012/0123/Rise-of-the-dragon-China-isn-t-censoring-the-Internet.-It-s-making-itwork
The current health of China’s cyber universe is not bad. Economically and socially, the Internet is
flourishing. Politically, it is being used to help maintain social stability despite rapid change. Never before
in history have such a large number of people undergone such rapid change. Old values have been undermined
before new values develop, leading to crass materialism. Regulations have not kept up with the new realities, causing frequent problems of
public safety. Social and economic divisions have widened considerably. Social media
provides a safety valve, alerting the
government to problems that can get out of control. Both the over-amplification and over-suppression
of these problems can make them explode and destabilize the country, which is the last thing China
needs after finally leaving behind two centuries of war and revolution.
CHARMING BETSY (ADV 3)
LINK TURN—1NC
“Gotcha” application of Charming Betsy causes backlash and turns case
Kuhner, 3 (Timothy, 13 Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L. 419, “HUMAN RIGHTS TREATIES IN U.S.
LAW: THE STATUS QUO, ITS UNDERLYING BASES, AND PATHWAYS FOR CHANGE”,
Spring, lexis)
Advocates of the "gotcha" approach must bear in mind the unintended consequences of
enforcing upon a state obligations to which it did not consent, or could not reasonably be
construed as having consented. For example, the United States might cease to advocate for
human rights treaties and fail to join future treaties. This latter implication, however,
seems increasingly irrelevant as U.S. "exceptionalism" grows. 238 Nevertheless, even strong
human rights proponents, such as Professor Louis Henkin, maintain that in a multilateral
treaty, a reservation or understanding embodies the intent of the party and this intent is used to
interpret what obligations that party undertook. 239 The "gotcha" approach seeks to steamroll
over the disjuncture between the Senate power as understood by the Senate and, presumably,
the Supreme Court, and the official interpretation of applicable rights and duties under
international law. The approach is only useful, insofar as its execution constitutes judicial notice of a problem in need of
resolution and reminds the political branches that the Constitution [*468] makes international law "our law." 240
DEFENSE—1NC
1ac Muller is neg
Muller 2K
(Dr. Harold Muller is the Director of the Peace Research Institute-Frankfurt and Professor of
International Relations at Goethe University Compliance Politics: A Critical Analysis of
Multilateral Arms Control Treaty Enforcement http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/72muell.pdf
//um-ef)
Treaties are rarely if ever self-implementing. They rely on the active participation of the parties.
Compliance policy, in its first and most important meaning, relates to the acts faithful parties conduct in
order to discharge their agreed obligations. Part of this involves providing adequate information and engaging in
sufficient com- munication about these acts to enhance the level of mu- tual confidence and thereby add to the motivation to
continue with compliant behavior. There are, however, two more problematic situations where
compliance policy assumes a more crucial and “other-related” mean- ing. First, there are situations in
which a party’s behavior is ambiguous and there is the possibility or suspicion that it violates some
treaty stipulations. In these situa- tions, clarification and eventually remedial action are called for. Then there are
clear and evident breaches of treaty undertakings, which require even more
urgent and decisive corrections to avoid harm to the established norm and the interests of
other parties. Compliance policy as exerted by a collective of states parties, and each
treaty member individually, is more problematic, difficult, and risky in these latter
two situ- ations. Several conditions must be fulfilled for success to be likely. The three conditions are: • treaty community
coherence, • leadership, and • great power cooperation. Unless these conditions are met, compliance policy
will have to travel down a very bumpy road.
International action fails
Hale, 11 - PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University and a Visiting Fellow at LSE Global Governance,
London School of Economics (Thomas, “A Climate Coalition of the Willing,” Washington Quarterly,
Winter,http://www.twq.com/11winter/docs/11winter_Hale.pdf
One might think that, with the Democrats in control of both Congress and the White House for
the last two years, political conditions in the United States have been optimal for climate
legislation. But that is wishful thinking, for two reasons. First, climate is not just a partisan issue. Although
Republicans are almost unanimous in their opposition to firm caps on carbon reductions,
Democrats face dissent within their ranks from members representing conservative, energy-intensive,
or agricultural states. This imbalance is rooted in the Constitution of the United States. Although Senate action is
required to ratify any international treaty, Senate votes are awarded equally to the 50 states, not weighted by
population, meaning that less populated, carbon-dependent rural interests tend to disproportionately dominate.
2 And even in the House, climate legislation passed by only seven votes, with 43 Democrats joining the Republican opposition.
Second, on top of this structural bias, the U.S. political system has recently showed little capacity for far-
reaching change. A culture of partisan obstructionism has brought public business to a standstill.
Because the Obama administration needs to spend vast amounts of political capital to get anything through Congress, it has
prioritized health care and job creation over climate change. The locus of this dysfunction is, again, the Senate, where a de
facto super-majoritarian rule and a 59 —41 partisan divide have made it impossible to pass
ambitious legislation. With Republicans taking control of the House, climate legislation is unlikely to surface for at least two
years.
Warming treaties irrelevant
Pearce 9/29 – environment writer and author of The Last Generation: How nature will take
her revenge for climate change
Fred, The Guardian, Beyond climate change treaties: 'a deal in Paris is not essential', 9/29/14,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/beyond-climate-change-treaties-adeal-in-paris-is-not-essential
But behind the scenes, some are asking what happens if there isn’t a deal in Paris. Or even how
much it matters whether there is such a deal. Failure is possible, after all. The political winds are
even less propitious today than they were five years ago. ¶ Economic stasis continues in Europe,
previously the most vocal advocate of action on climate change. Earlier this month, the
European Union decided to do away with a stand-alone climate commissioner in Brussels,
merging the post with the energy portfolio. The new post-holder, Miguel Arias Cañete, holds
shares in an oil company and, when he was agriculture minister at home in Spain, sat in a
government that cut spending on renewables, in defiance of EU policy. ¶ Meanwhile, Germany,
once Europe’s climate tub-thumpers-in-chief, is in a messy transition on climate policy as it
burns ever more coal, while shutting down its fleet of low-carbon nuclear power stations.
Japan’s emissions are rising post-Fukushima. And Russia, the world’s second largest oil
producer, is not about to cozy up to anyone on climate policy.¶ It sounds bleak. Yet, strangely, all
may not be lost. The answer may lie in Plan B — reframing the entire climate issue as one of
national decision-making and self interest, rather than global treaty-writing. A close
reading of national policies shows that many countries are taking action on climate not because
they have made legally binding international commitments, but because they want to. ¶ Plan B
began to emerge in the aftermath of Copenhagen. By the following year’s UN climate conference
in Cancun, Mexico, many nations with no previous formal emissions targets — including Brazil,
Mexico, South Africa, and China — had made their own domestic commitments. Most were
about cutting the carbon intensity of their economies rather than actually cutting emissions. But
it was a start. ¶ Some of the targets were aspirational. But Britain passed a Climate Change Act
requiring future governments to cut emissions decade by decade to deliver an 80% reduction in
emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels. ¶ Sceptics would point out that, without international
treaties to hold their feet to the fire, future governments can always repeal laws they find
inconvenient. But that may be to misread what is going on. The commitments are not about
burden sharing internationally, but about self-interested domestic energy policy.
DEFENSE—2NC
Charming Betsy is inev
Bradley, ’12 senior associate dean for faculty and research at the duke law school (Curtis A.,
June 2012, 61 Am. U.L. Rev. 1253)//CC
Marty asked more generally, how do we think about international law in interpreting materials beyond this
enactment? There is a canon of construction, which has been around since the Marshall Court in the early
1800s, that is named after the boat in a case that's called the Charming Betsy case. n30 And even the modern
Supreme Court has endorsed this canon in a number of cases, and it applies when
interpreting a statute, if the statute is found to be ambiguous - and I need to emphasize that requirement of
ambiguity. If the statute is found to be ambiguous, courts should try to interpret it in a way that avoids putting
the U.S. in breach of international law.
Treaty spillover empirically denied
Koplow, 13 [Indisputable Violations: What Happens When the United States Unambiguously
Breaches a Treaty?, David A. Koplow is Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Applied
Legal Studies at Georgetown University Law Center. He was Special Counsel for Arms Control to
the General Counsel, U.S. Department of Defense, Washington, DC, from 2009 to 2011.]
The United States justifiably prides itself on its devotion to “the rule of law.” We take legal instruments
seriously; when we assume a binding legal obligation at home, we mean it, and we expect all parties to the agreement to demonstrate
comparable fealty. !is commitment to the law also extends to international agreements. Treaties are the coin of the
international realm, and the United States leads the world both in making treaties and in publicly
and pointedly holding others accountable when they fall short of full compliance.1 What
happens, then, when the United States contravenes a binding international legal obligation in
a manner so obvious and unarguable that it can offer no defense to the charge of
breach? It happens more often than one might think and to more important treaties
than one would hope, including treaties for which the United States continues to depend upon fastidious performance by
other countries. Here, I present three illustrative cases studies of blatant U.S. violations of binding
international legal obligations: the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, the 1963 Vienna
Convention on Consular Relations, and the obligation to pay annual dues under the Charter of
the United Nations. I explain the causes of these breaches and examine their adverse consequences for
the United States and for the international rule of law.
Surveillance Thumps
Greenwald, 10/15/14 [UN Report Finds Mass Surveillance Violates International Treaties
and Privacy Rights, Glenn, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/15/un-investigatorreport-condemns-mass-surveillance/]
The United Nations’ top official for counter-terrorism and human rights (known as the “Special Rapporteur”)
issued a formal report to the U.N. General Assembly today that condemns mass electronic surveillance as a clear
violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. “The hard truth is that the use of
mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether,” the report concluded.
Central to the Rapporteur’s findings is the distinction between “targeted surveillance” — which “depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the
targeted individual or organization” — and “mass surveillance,” whereby “states with high levels of Internet penetration can [] gain access to the
telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular
websites.” In a system of “mass surveillance,” the report explained, “all of this is possible without any prior suspicion related to a specific individual or
organization. The communications of literally every Internet user are potentially open for inspection by intelligence and law enforcement agencies in
the States concerned.” Mass surveillance thus “amounts to a systematic interference with the right to respect for the privacy of communications,” it
declared. As a result, “it is incompatible with existing concepts of privacy for States to collect all communications or metadata all the time
indiscriminately.” In concluding that mass surveillance impinges core privacy rights, the
report was primarily focused on the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty enacted by the General Assembly in
1966, to which all of the members of the “Five Eyes” alliance are signatories. The U.S. ratified the treaty in 1992, albeit
with various reservations that allowed for the continuation of the death penalty and which rendered its domestic law supreme. With the exception of
the U.S.’s Persian Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar), virtually
every major country has signed the
treaty. Article 17 of the Covenant guarantees the right of privacy, the defining protection of which, the report explained, is “that individuals have
the right to share information and ideas with one another without interference by the State, secure in the knowledge that their communication will
reach and be read by the intended recipients alone.” The report’s key conclusion is that this core right is impinged by mass surveillance programs: “Bulk
access technology is indiscriminately corrosive of online privacy and impinges on the very essence of the right guaranteed by article 17. In the absence
of a formal derogation from States’ obligations under the Covenant, these
programs pose a direct and ongoing
challenge to an established norm of international law.” The report recognized that protecting citizens
from terrorism attacks is a vital duty of every state, and that the right of privacy is not absolute, as it can be compromised when doing so is “necessary”
to serve “compelling” purposes. It noted: “There may be a compelling counter-terrorism justification for the radical re-evaluation of Internet privacy
rights that these practices necessitate. ” But the report was adamant that no such justifications have ever been demonstrated by any member state using
mass surveillance: “The States engaging in mass surveillance have so far failed to provide a detailed and evidence-based public justification for its
necessity, and almost no States have enacted explicit domestic legislation to authorize its use.” Instead, explained the Rapporteur, states have relied on
vague claims whose validity cannot be assessed because of the secrecy behind which these programs are hidden: “The arguments in favor of a complete
abrogation of the right to privacy on the Internet have not been made publicly by the States concerned or subjected to informed scrutiny and debate.”
About the ongoing secrecy surrounding the programs, the report explained that “states deploying this technology retain a monopoly of information
about its impact,” which is “a form of conceptual censorship … that precludes informed debate.” A June report from the High Commissioner for Human
Rights similarly noted “the disturbing lack of governmental transparency associated with surveillance policies, laws and practices, which hinders any
effort to assess their coherence with international human rights law and to ensure accountability.” The rejection of the “terrorism” justification for mass
surveillance as devoid of evidence echoes virtually every other formal investigation into these programs. A federal judge last December found that the
U.S. Government was unable to “cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist
attack.” Later that month, President Obama’s own Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies concluded that mass surveillance
“was not essential to preventing attacks” and information used to detect plots “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional
[court] orders.” Three Democratic Senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote in The New York Times that “the usefulness of the bulk
collection program has been greatly exaggerated” and “we have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security.” A
study by the centrist New America Foundation found that mass metadata collection “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism”
and, where plots were disrupted, “traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case.” It labeled the
NSA’s claims to the contrary as “overblown and even misleading.” While worthless in counter-terrorism policies, the UN report warned that allowing
mass surveillance to persist with no transparency creates “an ever present danger of ‘purpose creep,’ by which measures justified on counter-terrorism
grounds are made available for use by public authorities for much less weighty public interest purposes.” Citing the UK as one example, the report
warned that, already, “a wide range of public bodies have access to communications data, for a wide variety of purposes, often without judicial
authorization or meaningful independent oversight.” The report was most scathing in its rejection of a key argument often made by American defenders
of the NSA: that mass surveillance is justified because Americans are given special protections (the requirement of a FISA court order for targeted
surveillance) which non-Americans (95% of the world) do not enjoy. Not only does this scheme fail to render mass surveillance legal, but it itself
constitutes a separate violation of international treaties (emphasis added): The Special Rapporteur concurs with the High Commissioner for Human
Rights that where States penetrate infrastructure located outside their territorial jurisdiction, they remain bound by their obligations under the
Covenant. Moreover, article 26 of the Covenant prohibits discrimination on grounds of, inter alia, nationality and citizenship. The Special Rapporteur
thus considers that States are legally obliged to afford the same privacy protection for nationals and non-nationals and for those within and outside
their jurisdiction. Asymmetrical privacy protection regimes are a clear violation of the requirements of the Covenant. That principle — that the right of
internet privacy belongs to all individuals, not just Americans — was invoked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he explained in a June,
2013 interview at The Guardian why he disclosed documents showing global surveillance rather than just the surveillance of Americans: “More
fundamentally, the ‘US Persons’ protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not
become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%.” The U.N. Rapporteur was clear that these systematic privacy
violations are the result of a union between governments and tech corporations: “States increasingly rely on the private sector to facilitate digital
surveillance. This is not confined to the enactment of mandatory data retention legislation. Corporates [sic] have also been directly complicit in
operationalizing bulk access technology through the design of communications infrastructure that facilitates mass surveillance. ” The
latest
finding adds to the growing number of international formal rulings that the mass surveillance
programs of the U.S. and its partners are illegal. In January, the European parliament’s civil liberties committee
condemned such programs in “the strongest possible terms.” In April, the European Court of Justice ruled that European legislation on data retention
contravened EU privacy rights. A top secret memo from the GCHQ, published last year by The Guardian, explicitly stated that one key reason for
concealing these programs was fear of a “damaging public debate” and specifically “legal challenges against the current regime.”
Nation’s empirically pay no attention
Thornberg and Edwards 2011 (Christopher [PhD] and Frances [JD]; Failure of Trade
Liberalization: A Study of the GATS Negotiation; Journal of International Business and Law
Volume 10 | Issue 2; kdf)
The second failure of the GATS was in regard to the actual results that emerged from the initial round of negotiation.
Overall the average level of participation was very small, with each nation only entering positive commitments in
25% of the total number of service sectors. The WTO claimed that this was due in part to the
relatively short time period available for negotiation available to participants in the initial
round.51 However the results are not significantly different for the financial and telecommunication sectors for which the
participating nations did have a longer period of negotiation available. Rather than nations pursuing policies that
would most benefit their economies, the data seem to have indicated that special interests inside
each nation almost completely dictated the degree of liberalization to which nations committed.
The nations who committed to the greatest degree of liberalization of service imports were those that possessed a comparative
advantage in the production of the service goods. In other words, the nations that would most benefit from
liberalizing the import of services (those nations with a comparative disadvantage in the production of services)
liberalized the least, while those who would benefit the least (those already with a comparative advantage in the production
of services and who would be exporting these services if there was free trade) liberalized the most. This pattern was consistent across
all sectors. Nations that possessed a large stock of human capital liberalized more than those nations with a relatively small stock.
Nations with a large stock of physical capital liberalized more in capital intensive telecommunications sector, but less in labor
intensive business and other service sectors. Nations already possessing a significant trade surplus in services liberalized more than
those with a trade deficit in services. The influence of special interests cannot be underestimated. This was most openly reflected in
the demonstrations and riots that occurred in Seattle during the start of the 2000 WTO talks. However, true influence was not
always wielded by those as vocally or as clearly in the public's eyes as these Seattle demonstrators. As a commentary stated regarding
these talks, while "world leaders may not show up [for] the conference ... up to 100 members of Congress and representatives of
many of America's largest corporations will be holed up at the hotels of Seattle, trying to influence the outcome of the talks."52
So do Drones
Reisenwitz, 13 (Cathy, “New UN Report Highlights How US Drone Policy Violates
International Law” 10/21, http://antiwar.com/blog/2013/10/21/new-un-report-highlights-howus-drone-policy-violates-international-law/)
The United Nations General Assembly just released the latest Report of the Special Rapporteur
on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. The report is necessary, in part, because
“There is… a notable lack of consensus on how to apply the rules of international law that
regulate the use of force to drones.”
The report provides a framework to help states ensure their fatal drone strikes are conducted in
line with existing international law. Evaluating US drone strike policy in light of these
recommendations, it is clear that the United States is not currently in line with international law
concerning targeted killings, first and foremost regarding transparency.
The recommendations include an exhortation for states to be transparent about not just their
use of drones, but how they develop them and acquire them as well.
[States] must publicly disclose the legal basis for the use of drones, operational responsibility,
criteria for targeting, impact (including civilian casualties), and information about alleged
violations, investigations and prosecutions.
The Obama Administration is in clear violation of this recommendation. The United States’ first
fatal drone strike killed an American citizen in 2002. But it wasn’t until May of 2013 that the
Obama Administration acknowledged that drone strikes have killed at least 4 Americans. In fact,
Obama joked about killing a Jonas Brother with a Predator drone while refusing to formally
acknowledge the drone war in Pakistan to the press.
The Obama Administration has actually blocked lawsuits brought by the American Civil
Liberties Union and Center for Constitutional Rights to delve into, for instance, how targeting
American citizens for death without a trial does not violate the Constitution. The administration
has consistently shot down Freedom of Information Act lawsuits which request the documents
which would explain the legal basis for targeting and killing people.
We’re also in clear violation when it comes to oversight. “Drone operators must not be placed
within a chain of command that requires them to report within institutions that are unable to
disclose their operations.”
Syria thumps the treaty regime
Zunes, 9/27/14 [Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics and program director for Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. Home Opinion Story Stephen Zunes: US
should use caution in the fight against ISIL By Stephen Zunes Special to the Sentinel Posted:
09/27/2014 11:01:30 PM PDT]
First of all, bombing
targets in Syria without permission from the Syrian government or
authorization from the UN Security Council is a flagrant violation of U.S. treaty
obligations under the United Nations charter. And, without Congressional authorization, it is also a violation of
the U.S. Constitution.
Spills over
Clarkson, 9/24/14 [“Humanitarian Air Strikes” against Syria: U.S. Breaks International Law,
Again By Alexander Clackson Global Research, September 24, 2014,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/humanitarian-air-strikes-against-syria-u-s-breaks-internationallaw-again/5404014]
The United States, assisted by a handful of Arab nations, conducted air strikes on Syria on 23rd September.
The attacks mark a striking expansion in America’s military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and
have occurred without the consent of the Syrian government. A U.S. State Department official confirmed that
the Syrian government was not asked for authorisation, saying: “We did not seek the regime’s permission, we didn’t coordinate our
actions with the Syrian government, and Secretary [of State John] Kerry did not send a letter to the Syrian regime.” The U.S.
airstrikes are therefore a clear violation of international law, as Damascus had earlier said
that any direct action by the United States within Syria would constitute an act of war and a breach of its
sovereignty. The U.S. administration lawyers have used spurious excuses, invoking Iraq’s right to self-defence and the weakness of
the Assad government as twin justifications for U.S. bombing in Syria. However, the fact of the matter is: without United Nations
authorisation or approval from the Syrian government, airstrikes on Syria are a violation of basic international law. The legal
circumlocutions to avoid requesting a UN Security Council resolution match similar efforts to avoid requesting specific legal
authority from the U.S. Congress. Fearing that U.S. politicians up for re-election in November may balk at voting for a third military
attack on Iraq and being sucked into a Syrian quagmire, the White House has avoided seeking a fresh authorisation of the use of
military force, preferring to rely on early authorisations against al-Qaida granted after the 11 September 2001 attacks. The President
of the Middle East Institute, Yevgeny Satanovsky, summarised succinctly the illegitimacy of the airstrikes, saying: “The fact that
Washington has notified Syria’s UN envoy of air strikes against militants’ positions in the territory of Syria does not change
anything. Aggression will be aggression. The UN Security Council’s resolution 2170 of August 15 envisaged creation of a basis for a
collective international response to the threat from the Islamic State that has emerged in Iraq and Syria, but gave Washington no
right to use force against a sovereign country.” It is important to note that recent testimony by US intelligence and homeland
security officials in Washington have acknowledged that Syrian groups such as Isis are not known to be planning any direct attacks
on the U.S. Thus, in bombing Islamic State targets in Syria, the United States cannot credibly claim that it used force in self-defence
or at the request of the Syrian state exercising lawful force to suppress rebellion. The United States has a vast track
record of breaking international law. It did so, for example, in March 1999, when along with its
NATO allies it launched an extended bombing campaign in Serbia. In this case also, the United States could not
claim it was acting in self-defence. Nor was military action authorised by the UN Security Council. In addition, the U.S.
government is making sure not to mention the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which also rested
on erroneous claims of weapons of mass destruction and arguably contributed to its current instability. As always, American allies
have remained silent over this blatant refusal to follow international law. Only Russia has forcefully condemned the illegality of the
airstrikes. In its statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned: “Any such action can be carried out only in accordance with
international law. That implies not a formal, one-sided ‘notification’ of airstrikes but the presence of explicit consent from the
government of Syria or a corresponding UN Security Council decision.” Describing the U.S.-led move as a bid to “achieve one’s own
geopolitical goals,” the Russian Ministry said the airstrikes would only “exacerbate tensions and further destabilize the situation.”
The point about “achieving one’s own geopolitical goals” is crucial here, as it is highly likely that the U.S. administration is once
again on a mission to carry out another regime chance, with President Bashar al-Assad being the main target. As the United
States and its allies continue to lecture other states on international law and respecting
sovereignty, once again the preacher has become the main violator of what is being
preached. It looks like the hypocritical nature of the United States knows no
bounds.
International law isn’t key to global cooperation to solve transnational problems
Estreicher, Law Professor at NYU, 3
(Samuel, “Rethinking the Binding Effect of Customary International Law,” Virginia Journal of
International Law Association, Fall, 44 Va. J. Int'l L. 5)
As for the subsidiary law that an increasingly interdependent world needs in advance of treaties,
traditional CIL could not easily play this role as it was essentially backwards looking. The new,
instantaneous customary law tries to play this role, but in a way that hardly comports with
legitimacy. Without relying on CIL, states, international organizations, and other actors
have ample means of identifying problems requiring interstate cooperation, drafting
instruments that might command state support, and marshaling the forces of moral
suasion. It is hard to see that the "law" aspiration of CIL offers the prospect of a
significant incremental gain. In any event, the ultimate question is whether any such benefit
warrants the accompanying costs - to which I now turn.
Treaties are fundamentally incapable of solving warming – lowest common
denominator problem
Nicholas Bakalar 9-15-2005; National Geographic News “Global Treaties Ineffective Against Warming, Experts Say”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0915_050915_warming.html
Lowest Common Denominator The authors of the new article, which will be published tomorrow in the journal Science, point out
that international treaties tend toward the mildest binding measures, since such measures are
always the easiest for everyone to agree upon. The more countries that sign on to a treaty, the
less stringent the terms become, because everyone has to be accommodated, the authors say. "A
system that originates from the top," they write, "takes the speed of its least ambitious
nation."
No global political will
Fred Tanner 9-30-2K; Fred Tanner is Deputy Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
“Conflict prevention and conflict resolution: limits of multilateralism” 30-09-2000 Article, International Review of the Red Cross,
No. 839 http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/57jqq2.htm
4. There
is no consensus on the utility of early warning in conflict prevention. Some analysts argue today
opportunities for conflict prevention have occurred not because of insufficient time to respond,
but because of a lack of political will to react to the warning. The Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly
that failed
Conflict made one of the first efforts to link early warning with receptivity of warning and early response. But, as the 1999 Rwanda
Report pointed out, early warning makes sense only if the warning signals are correctly analysed and
transferred to the relevant decision-making authority. In this context, the capacity to gather and
analyse information for the UN has fallen prey to “downsizing efforts”. In 1992, the UN did away with the
Office for Research and Collection of Information (OCRI) and transferred some of its functions to the Department of Political Affairs
and, as a consequence, the 1995 Report of the Commission on Global Governance proposed that the UN develop a new system to
collect information on trends and situations that may lead to violent conflict or humanitarian tragedies. [7 ]
DISEASE ADD-ON—1NR
Countermeasures and basic biology show how absurd this impact is
Coates 2009 – former adjunct professor at George Washington University, President of the
Kanawha Institute for the Study of the Future and was President of the International
Association for Impact Assessment and was President of the Association for Science, Technology
and Innovation, M.S., Hon D., FWAAS, FAAAS, (Joseph F., Futures 41, 694-705, "Risks and
threats to civilization, humankind, and the earth”, ScienceDirect, WEA)
Could diseases in animals be converted in a laboratory into ones transmissible among people? The answer is
yes, but it is very unlikely that one could accomplish this easily and if one did have an organism that would transmit
from animal to people, and then people to people, it would only be significant if that animal was widely distributed
in the target area. So birds would be ideal and rats might be significant. There are few other animals around to transmit to people
unless we consider pets and insects. We have pretty good protection against insects and, in a crisis, we would be
ready to use somewhat more dangerous materials like DDT to fight a contaminated invasion until we developed other remedies. The
serious limitation on self-propagating diseases generated for terrorists’ purposes is that it could be self-defeating because if it is effectively selfpropagating, it will eventually bounce back to the attacking country and, presumably, have similar effects there
as it has in the target country.
Early detection of disease spread is fairly straightforward in terms of modern epidemiology in most parts of the world. The most
dramatic effects, aside from deaths, would be in the preventive measure to reduce the propagation of the disease from spreading by extremely severe
reduction in travel for both people and cargoes, domestically and internationally. This may extend for quite a time until a preventive measure or vaccine
is developed, tested and proven. Even assuming that an enemy initiated an attack, there would be the problem of where and what would happen as we
learned about the attack. Would it become self-limiting? Suppose they managed a release in ten cities. Those ten largest
cities, perhaps,
take internal measures, as suggested above, to contain it in those cities.
Pandemics are a credible catastrophic situation slowing and disrupting the economy and society but not threatening
nationhood in the advanced nations. A high death-rate pandemic is likely to create a greater setback in Worlds 2 and 3. The Black
Death in Europe 1347–1352 killed an estimated third of the population, 25 million people. The Spanish Flu in 1918 killed 20–50 million
people and infected a billion. The latter had no lasting effects comprising a threat to stability.
represent 10% of the population and we could
POLITICS/T
T STUFF
Three, they must defend state action to be legalization – the US is a collective term
Oakley, 9 - American Civil Procedure: A Guide to Civil Adjudication in US Courts, Edited by
John Bilyeu Oakley, Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, and Vikram D.
Amar, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the School of Law of the
University of California at Davis, Kluwer Law International, 2009, page 19
Although it is commonplace today to refer to “the United States” as a single entity and as the subject
of statements that grammatically employ singular verbs, it is important to remember that “the United States”
remains in many important ways a collective term. The enduring legal significance of the fifty states that together
constitute the United States, and their essential dominion over most legal matters affecting day-to-day life within the United States,
vastly complicates any attempt to summarize the civil procedures within the United States. Within the community of
nations, the United States is a geopolitical superpower that acts through a federal government
granted constitutionally specified and limited powers. The organizing principle of the federal Constitution,1
however, is one of popular sovereignty, with governmental powers distributed in the first instance to
republican institutions of government organized autonomously and uniquely in each of the fifty states. Although there are
substantial similarities in the organization of state governments, idiosyncrasies abound.
Its illegal in California now
Pempus December 24, 2014 (Brian; One state carries online poker's hopes in 2015;
www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/18222-one-state-carries-online-poker-s-hopes-in-2015; kdf)
The only real chance for more online poker in America next year is California. According to research earlier
this year from financial services firm Morgan Stanley, the Golden State will be the only U.S. state to authorize the activity next year. However,
that is actually no sure bet. In early December, a new online poker bill hit the California legislature. It was introduced by Assemblyman
Mike Gatto, a Democrat from Glendale. The bill is dubbed the “Internet Poker Consumer Protection Act of
2015,” and it would establish a framework to authorize intrastate Internet poker—and poker
only—for those physically within California’s borders. It is worth noting that one tribe was looking to launch its own
online poker site under tribal sovereignty because, basically, it grew tired of waiting for the state to pass legislation for online betting. It ended up
launching online bingo instead and then was sued by California. Gatto said in a statement that his bill “is different from previous proposals, in that it
endeavors to address both the external criticisms of the industry, and expand the pie to obtain accord amongst competing gaming interests.” Online
poker efforts in California have failed for years. His comments sounded pretty promising, but there’s actually debate about whether the language in the
proposal (it’s still in its early stages) will be acceptable for some; most notably PokerStars and its potential partners. A coalition of PokerStars, the
Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, the Commerce Club, the Hawaiian Gardens Casino and the Bicycle Casino
came out with a statement not long after the new bill was introduced and basically condemned it. The coalition has criticized other efforts before. Sign
Up For DraftKings Daily Fantasy Sports And Get A Free Entry To Win $1 Million “Unfortunately, [ the
bill] is a rehash of previously
unsuccessful proposals,” the coalition wrote in its public statement. “Any bill that seeks to establish
artificial competitive advantages for some, while denying Californians the best online poker
experiences, will only serve to divide the community and will be opposed by our coalition.” The
coalition is concerned about the so-called “bad actor” provisions that they think limits the competition the industry needs to thrive. The issue stems
from the fact that PokerStars, under prior ownership, fell into hot water with the federal government. However, that case has been settled and
PokerStars never was found to be guilty of wrongdoing. Still, that case could hurt its California chances. Despite what Gallo says, there is still a long,
long way to go before California sees online poker. The PokerStars et al. coalition has a lot of political power in the Garden State, and it appears unlikely
anything could pass without that group signing off on the language in the legislation. So, if one had to bet on California, it would probably be better for
your money to not be too hopeful about 2015. It wouldn’t be too surprising if nothing happens there next year, given billionaire casino boss Sheldon
Adelson’s continued efforts to ban the activity nationwide, or at least prevent it from being legalized in any additional states. Nevada, New Jersey and
Delaware currently have ongoing online gaming industries, and revenues have been lackluster. Though, California is said to be large enough to support
its own intrastate industry, so performances elsewhere probably aren’t too scary if anyone in California is worried about online poker succeeding there.
The one great thing about California is that there is so much money to be made, which would make one think that it’s just a matter of time before
competing groups find a way to share. According to a study done last year by Academicon and PokerScout which analyzed the California market during
2009-2010, a total of 178,300 online poker players in California generated an average of $867 per year in revenue for offshore poker operators, creating
a $155 million market. California players accounted for 16 percent of U.S. revenue and four percent of worldwide online poker revenue, the study also
found. Gallo said that “millions” of people “regularly” play poker in California. It’s hard to imagine it being quite that many who play regularly even if
you factor in free-play games like ZyngaPoker. Politicians far and wide do sometimes throw out numbers to help their legislative projects. Take Chris
Christie in New Jersey, who once estimated that online gaming in the Garden State would yield $1 billion in its first year. Morgan Stanley predicts that
California’s online poker market will be $610 million by 2020, assuming it legalizes the activity in 2015 and the ball gets rolling. The fact that
Californians would only be able to play poker on the Internet does limit the overall size of California’s online gaming market. For example, Illinois is
predicted to be about the same size as California one day, because the former will likely authorize a slew of online casino games, in addition to peer-topeer poker play. After California, the U.S. states most likely to legalize online poker in 2015 or 2016 are Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, according
to the Morgan Stanley research. All three have well-established gambling industries and have flirted with online gaming in the past. New York might be
the last one to do so of the bunch, given that officials there are in the middle of overseeing the state’s first non-tribal Las Vegas-style brick-and-mortar
casinos. Gaming-friendly states Colorado, Iowa and Massachusetts could legalize online gaming by 2020, Morgan Stanley predicts, which probably also
makes them dark horses for 2015. The year 2014
saw no additional states legalize or debut online poker
industries. It could be the same for next year, but let’s hope that isn’t the case and California legalizes,
kicks off a hugely successful industry, and as a result convinces other states to embrace online
poker. It could happen.
1NC PTX
Brown’s climate agenda is a fight, but he has the political capital to get it done
Roth, 1/10/15 - Reporter, iSun Energy and Technology , News (Sammy, The Desert Sun,
“Experts: Brown's support bodes well for green mandate”
http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2015/01/09/brown-calls-percent-renewablemandate/21514667/)
With Gov. Jerry Brown throwing his political weight behind a plan to get half of California's
electricity from renewable energy, experts say the idea is an ambitious but attainable way to
limit climate change. California utilities are on track to meet the state's current clean energy
mandate, which requires them to buy 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by
2020. In his inaugural address last week, Brown proposed raising that mandate to 50 percent by 2030, as
one of several steps to reduce emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases. "This is exciting, it is bold and it is
absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to
our climate system," the Democrat told state lawmakers. A previous effort to raise the renewable energy mandate above 50
percent — championed by then-Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez, a Coachella Democrat — died in the state Legislature a year ago.
Pérez's bill faced stiff opposition from utilities and businesses groups, who argued that the plan would drive up energy costs. Now,
though, Brown has thrown his substantial influence behind the proposal, coming off a reelection in which he cruised to victory by 20 points. "With his leadership and commitment, and
extensive political capital to spend at this point, I think we're very confident that achieving
that outcome is doable," said Alex Jackson, legal director for the Natural Resources Defense Council's California
Climate Program. The details of Brown's renewable energy plan are still up in the air, and his office declined to offer more specifics.
But an increase in the renewable energy mandate could kick-start solar, wind and geothermal
development in the desert, all of which have slowed over the last few years. "The people putting
money into renewable energy need to have a clearer signal that there is going to be a market
for renewable energy," said Nancy Rader, executive director of the California Wind Energy Association. "It was great
for him to propose that goal." Ambitious, but achievable Energy and climate experts have long assumed that California would raise
its renewable energy mandate, officially known as the Renewables Portfolio Standard. State policymakers have set a goal of reducing
greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and that will be all but impossible without deeper cuts from the
electricity sector, which accounts for about one-fifth of all emissions. From a technical standpoint, energy experts say California
should have little difficulty getting 50 percent of its electricity from renewable energy. The state has some of the best solar, wind and
geothermal resources in the world, and it also has the option of importing renewable energy from other Western states. While
Democrats' control of both houses in the state Legislature doesn't give Brown a slam dunk,
political observers and renewable energy advocates say his decision to highlight the plan in the
inaugural address shows he's willing to fight for it.
Legalization in California is contentious and time-consuming—drains PC
McGreevy, 8/6/14 (Patrick, “Bill to legalize Internet poker in California dropped for 2014,”
http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-bill-to-legalize-internet-poker-in-californiadropped-for-2014-20140806-story.html, JMP)
One of two bills that would legalize Internet gambling in California was shelved for the year
Wednesday by Democratic state Sen. Lou Correa of Santa Ana, who said there was not enough time left
in the legislative session to refine it for a vote.
Correa is the author of SB 1366 and is chairman of the Senate Governmental Organization Committee, which screens all gambling
measures. His decision is a major setback for a proposal that has been debated for five years in
California's Legislature.
The senator decided that with less than a month left in the legislative session, there was not enough time to make major changes and
get consensus from Indian casino operators and card clubs to hold a vote this year.
“Internet poker is an important public policy. We need to make sure it’s done right," Correa said.
A second pending bill that would legalize Internet poker was introduced early this year by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer Sr.
(D-Los Angeles); it too has not moved through the committee process and no hearing date has been set. Jones-Sawyer has not
returned calls in recent days for comment on his plans for the bill.
Whittier Law School professor I. Nelson Rose, a leading expert on gambling law, had predicted
California would not legalize Internet poker this year, in part because it is an election year but
also because disagreement remains among Indian tribes and other gambling
interests about what a new law should look like. It would take a two-thirds vote to pass, which Rose said is
currently unlikely.
The sticking points include a proposal to disqualify Internet poker companies that offered Internet poker to Californians before it
was legalized. “The politics of this aren’t right for this to get rushed through by the end of this year,”
Rose said Wednesday. “The
anything.”
state is so large and there are so many tribes and they don’t agree on
A coalition of some dozen major tribes who proposed legislation said they are willing to wait until 2015.
“Instilling public confidence in the integrity of State-sanctioned Internet poker is a fundamental principle of ours,” the tribes said in
a statement. “To that end and in consultation with the bill authors, our tribal leaders have concluded that rushing a bill in the closing
days of this legislative session will not allow for the level of careful public examination and confidence an issue of this magnitude
requires.”
Although those tribes announced recently that they had overcome differences and agreed on a possible bill, other tribal casino
operators remain opposed, and there have been other setbacks.
Momentum appeared to stall when a leading proponent of legalization, Sen. Roderick Wright (D-Inglewood), was removed as the
Governmental Organization Committee chairman in February after a jury found him guilty of eight felonies, including voter fraud
and perjury for lying about living in his district.
In addition, billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson launched a campaign earlier this
year against the legalization of Internet gambling in California, paying $309,000
during the last nine months to powerhouse lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs to fight any
proposal and enlisting former Assembly Speakers Fabian Nunez and Willie Brown in the
crusade.
Because of term limits, Correa won't be back next year to revise his proposal, but Rose thinks Internet poker will be legalized
someday in California as it is already in Nevada and New Jersey.
Brown’s plan will catalyze a strong renewables industry nationally
Goldberg, 1/9/15 – Keith, “New Calif. Clean Energy Goals Need Projects Of All Sizes” Law360,
http://www.law360.com/articles/609260/new-calif-clean-energy-goals-need-projects-of-allsizes)
As Weiner puts it, Brown wants renewable energy to grab a bigger slice of a bigger electricity pie.
For clean energy developers who have seen their project pipelines slow to a trickle as utilities
have procured enough power to meet the current mandate, that’s a perfect storm of
thousands of additional megawatts that will be needed, experts say.
“There’s no shortage of renewable energy companies that are desperate to build more projects,”
said Jerry Bloom, who chairs Winston & Strawn LLP’s energy, project development and project
finance practice group. “In terms of the procurement process, basically, utilities are not going
out for requests for proposal, or going out for very small amounts. For many of the energy
companies, in terms of new development, nothing’s happening.”
No wonder industry groups such as the Solar Energy Industries Association are giddy over
Brown’s proposal.
“This new goal could be a real ‘game changer’ — not only in California, but for our nation,”
SEIA president and CEO Rhone Resch said in a statement Wednesday. “California’s ‘lead-byexample’ green initiatives are being copied in state after state, and have helped to fuel the
tremendous growth of solar nationwide.”
That’s key to overall hegemony and preventing warming --- extinction
Klarevas 9 –Louis Klarevas, Professor for Center for Global Affairs @ New York University,
12/15, “Securing American Primacy While Tackling Climate Change: Toward a National Strategy
of Greengemony,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis-klarevas/securing-americanprimacy_b_393223.html
the time is ripe to
re-assess America's current energy policies - but within the larger framework of how a new
approach on the environment will stave off global warming and shore up American primacy. By not
addressing climate change more aggressively and creatively, the United States is squandering an opportunity to secure its
global primacy for the next few generations to come. To do this, though, the U.S. must rely on innovation
to help the world escape the coming environmental meltdown. Developing the key technologies that
will save the planet from global warming will allow the U.S. to outmaneuver potential
great power rivals seeking to replace it as the international system's hegemon. But the greening of American
strategy must occur soon. The U.S., however, seems to be stuck in time, unable to move beyond oil-centric geo-politics in any meaningful way. Often, the
As national leaders from around the world are gathering in Copenhagen, Denmark, to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference,
gridlock is portrayed as a partisan difference, with Republicans resisting action and Democrats pleading for action. This, though, is an unfair characterization as there are
Students of realpolitik, which
discount environmental issues as they are not seen as advancing
numerous proactive Republicans and quite a few reticent Democrats. The real divide is instead one between realists and liberals.
still heavily guides American foreign policy, largely
national interests in a way that generates relative power advantages vis-à-vis the other major powers in the system: Russia, China, Japan, India, and the European
Union. ¶ Liberals, on the other hand, have recognized that global warming might very well become the
greatest challenge ever faced by [hu]mankind. As such, their thinking often eschews narrowly defined national interests for
the greater global good. This, though, ruffles elected officials whose sworn obligation is, above all, to protect and promote American national interests. What both sides need to
by becoming a lean, mean, green fighting machine, the U.S. can actually bring
together liberals and realists to advance a collective interest which benefits every nation, while at the
same time, securing America's global primacy well into the future. To do so, the U.S. must re-invent itself as not just your
traditional hegemon, but as history's first ever green hegemon. Hegemons are countries that dominate the international
understand is that
system - bailing out other countries in times of global crisis, establishing and maintaining the most important international institutions, and covering the costs that result from
free-riding and cheating global obligations. Since 1945, that role has been the purview of the United States. Immediately after World War II, Europe and Asia laid in ruin, the
global economy required resuscitation, the countries of the free world needed security guarantees, and the entire system longed for a multilateral forum where global concerns
could be addressed. The U.S., emerging the least scathed by the systemic crisis of fascism's rise, stepped up to the challenge and established the postwar (and current) liberal
order. But don't let the world "liberal" fool you. While many nations benefited from America's new-found hegemony, the U.S. was driven largely by "realist" selfish national
interests. The liberal order first and foremost benefited the U.S. With the U.S. becoming bogged down in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, running a record national debt, and
failing to shore up the dollar, the future of American hegemony now seems to be facing a serious contest: potential rivals - acting like sharks smelling blood in the water - wish to
This has led numerous commentators to forecast the U.S.'s imminent fall
from grace. Not all hope is lost however. With the impending systemic crisis of global warming
on the horizon, the U.S. again finds itself in a position to address a transnational problem in a
way that will benefit both the international community collectively and the U.S. selfishly. The current
challenge the U.S. on a variety of fronts.
problem is two-fold. First, the competition for oil is fueling animosities between the major powers. The geopolitics of oil has already emboldened Russia in its 'near abroad' and
a nasty zero-sum contest could be
looming on the horizon for the U.S. and its major power rivals - a contest which threatens
American primacy and global stability. Second, converting fossil fuels like oil to run national
economies is producing irreversible harm in the form of carbon dioxide emissions . So long as the global
economy remains oil-dependent, greenhouse gases will continue to rise. Experts are predicting as much as a 60% increase in carbon
dioxide emissions in the next twenty-five years. That likely means more devastating water shortages, droughts,
forest fires, floods, and storms. In other words, if global competition for access to energy resources does
not undermine international security, global warming will. And in either case, oil will be a culprit for the
China in far-off places like Africa and Latin America. As oil is a limited natural resource,
instability. Oil arguably has been the most precious energy resource of the last half-century. But "black gold" is so 20th century. The key resource for this century will be green
Climate change leaves no alternative. And the
sooner we realize this, the better off we will be. What Washington must do in order to avoid the traps of petropolitics is to convert the U.S.
into the world's first-ever green hegemon. For starters, the federal government must drastically increase investment in
energy and environmental research and development (E&E R&D). This will require a serious sacrifice, committing upwards of $40
billion annually to E&E R&D - a far cry from the few billion dollars currently being spent. By promoting a new national project, the U.S. could develop new
technologies that will assure it does not drown in a pool of oil. Some solutions are already well known, such as raising fuel
gold - clean, environmentally-friendly energy like wind, solar, and hydrogen power.
standards for automobiles; improving public transportation networks; and expanding nuclear and wind power sources. Others, however, have not progressed much beyond the
batteries that can store massive amounts of solar (and possibly even wind) power; efficient and cost-effective
photovoltaic cells, crop-fuels, and hydrogen-based fuels; and even fusion . Such innovations will not only provide
alternatives to oil, they will also give the U.S. an edge in the global competition for
hegemony. If the U.S. is able to produce technologies that allow modern, globalized societies to escape the oil trap, those nations will eventually
have no choice but to adopt such technologies. And this will give the U.S. a tremendous
economic boom, while simultaneously providing it with means of leverage that can be employed to
keep potential foes in check. The bottom-line is that the U.S. needs to become green energy dominant
as opposed to black energy independent - and the best approach for achieving this is to promote a national strategy of greengemony.
drawing board:
1NR IMPACT WALL
Hegemony is key to prevent disease
Meier ’10 – Asst. Professor of Global Health Policy @ UNC Chapel Hill (Benjamin Mason, The Obama Administration’s Global
Health Initiative: Public Health Law, U.S. Foreign Policy & Universal Human Rights, Public Health Law, 2010)
Global health is fast becoming an explicit goal of U.S. policy – with legislation, regulations, and
policy statements guiding our funding, activities, and programs to address public health abroad.
At the intersection of foreign policy and health policy, this global health imperative for public health law is poised to grow under the
Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative. With contemporary institutions of global health governance now over 60 years
old, the nature of the global health architecture has changed considerably as the United States has shifted its global health
priorities.[i] As a leading progenitor of the global health governance framework, the United States has long sought a place for global
health policy to alleviate suffering in an increasingly interconnected world. However, with U.S. policymakers harboring suspicions
that global governance would advance “socialized medicine” in the midst of the Cold War, the United States constrained
international organizations to medical “impact projects” that would advance U.S. foreign policy interests.[ii] Despite fleeting U.S.
support for global health policy in the 1970s,[iii] the 1980 election of President Reagan—and with it, principled opposition to
international organizations—would limit opportunities for global health governance.[iv] Given a growing leadership
vacuum in global health, the global health architecture began to shift toward greater U.S.
hegemony in global health policy, with scholars increasingly noting that “the U.S. domestic
agenda is driving the global agenda.”[v] Moving away from a model of working through
international institutions for global health governance, the United States is bypassing
multilateral organizations and pursuing a herculean expansion in bilateral health assistance,
increasingly making U.S. foreign policy a singular force for global health.[vi] As the largest donor to
global health—in absolute dollars, albeit less committed relative to GDP—foreign health assistance is fast becoming an anchor of
U.S. soft power – answering the call for global health leadership in a post-Cold War world.[vii] Where once this role was
defined by uncoordinated medical approaches to select high-profile diseases, the United States
is moving toward coordinated foreign assistance to public health systems. With U.S. health diplomacy
once grounded solely in the containment of the Cold War—to combat the “unsatisfactory living conditions on which Communism
feeds,” influencing minds as much as bodies[viii]—the 1961 establishment of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) galvanized foreign assistance for public health, administering technical and economic assistance for the provision of health
services.[ix] However, even as extended by President Bush’s 2003 Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), these ambitious
global health commitments would be criticized for excessive reliance on medical services and for “crowding out” public health
systems in the developing world.[x] In spite of burgeoning efforts to address HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, these fragmented U.S.
efforts continued to lack coordination across government agencies, attention to health systems, and strategy for foreign assistance.
But as ethical claims and human rights have renewed attention to the plight of the world’s poor,[xi] the United States has moved to
coordinate foreign assistance for global health. Given the need for a comprehensive strategy to govern U.S. engagement with global
health[xii]—a need that grew dire as the global financial crisis decimated global health[xiii]—the Institute of Medicine (IOM)
recommended that the United States engage more deliberately in global health leadership.[xiv] To reshape foreign health assistance
across U.S. agencies, programs, and partners, the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) seeks to develop a unified
global health strategy to integrate and organize U.S. global health efforts. Focusing on public health systems (specifically health
financing, information management, and workforce capacity-building institutions)—adding onto existing disease-specific efforts
(with 70% of funds earmarked for PEPFAR, notwithstanding a stabilization in HIV funding)—the GHI seeks to shape how the U.S.
government coordinates its resources across global health activities and engages with developing countries in meeting nine targets
for global health (delineated in figure 1), achieving these targets through seven key principles (delineated in figure 2).[xv] While it is
unclear to what extent this foreign policy effort will meet its targets and principles for health system strengthening, preliminary
coordination among agencies has begun to identify areas in which the United States could have the greatest sustainable impact on
public health outcomes.[xvi] With $63 billion requested for this Initiative over a six year period, the GHI will seek to prioritize
country-led efforts to reach the most effective and efficient improvements for public health systems. These changes in U.S.
policy will greatly influence disease prevention and health promotion throughout the
world, with public health lawyers holding key positions in shaping this policy. With an
imperative to create policy frameworks to guide our innovative programs in global health, the
need has never been greater to rethink how we in public health law endeavor to meet global
health needs – viewing ourselves as key actors in the global health architecture and viewing our
work as medicine on a global scale.
Wrong
Miller, 12 [National Insecurity Just How Safe Is the United States? By Paul D. Miller; Micah
Zenko and Michael A. Cohen From our July/August 2012 Issue BE AFRAID Paul D.
Miller,PAUL D. MILLER is Assistant Professor of International Security Studies at the National
Defense University. He served as Director for Afghanistan on the U.S. National Security Council
staff from September 2007 to September 2009. The views expressed here are his own.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137698/paul-d-miller-micah-zenko-and-michael-acohen/national-insecurity]
Micah Zenko and Michael Cohen ("Clear and Present Safety," March/April 2012) argue that "the world that the United
States inhabits today is a remarkably safe and secure place." The country faces no "existential" threats, greatpower war is unlikely, democracy and prosperity have spread, public health has improved, and
few international challenges place American lives at risk. In light of these developments, they argue, the United States
is safer today than it was during the Cold War. The biggest problem with this argument is the authors' narrow definition
of what constitutes a threat to the United States: a situation that poses existential danger or causes immediate bodily harm or death to
U.S. citizens. This threshold is shortsighted and unrealistically high. If the same framework were applied to the twentieth
century, then the outbreak of World War I and the German invasion of Poland in 1939 would not
have been considered threats to the United States. But U.S. strategists then understood that
because their country was a primary beneficiary and architect of the world order , any threat to
that order was a threat to the United States itself. So, too, today, there are major challenges to the
global order that endanger U.S. national security, whether or not they pose existential or immediate threats. They include nucleararmed autocracies, the spread of failed states and the rogue actors who operate from within them, and a global Islamist insurgency. Because the
United States has lacked a single superpower rival and has focused chiefly on defeating terrorism and al Qaeda, it has
underestimated the danger from all three. ATOMIC AUTOCRACIES The single greatest danger to global peace and to the United
States is the presence of powerful autocratic states armed with nuclear weapons. Democracies, including those with atomic weapons, generally share a
similar view of the world as the United States and thus rarely pose threats. Unlike during the Cold War, when the United States faced only two nucleararmed autocratic adversaries, China and the Soviet Union, now it may soon face five: Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan (if
civilian rule there proves illusory and relations with the United States continue to deteriorate), and Iran (should its nuclear program succeed). All
these countries are at least uncooperative with, if not outright hostile to, the United States. Zenko and Cohen
are sanguine about the prospects of great-power war, but a militarized crisis involving
nuclear weapons states is more likely today than at any time in decades. Russia no
longer purports to lead a global revolution aimed at overthrowing all capitalist states, but its contemporary ideology -authoritarian, nationalist, and quasi-imperialist -- threatens Europe's future freedom and territorial
integrity. The Kremlin was likely involved in the 2007 cyberattack on Estonia, a NATO ally, which targeted the country's parliament, government
offices, banks, and media organizations. And in 2008, Russia
invaded Georgia, which had been promised future NATO membership. As
his popularity at home erodes, Russian President Vladimir Putin may once again allow a foreign crisis to
escalate to win nationalist plaudits. For more than 70 years, U.S. policymakers have equated Europe's security with that of the
United States; it is that notion that gives credence to the U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney's contention that Russia is the United States'
"number one geopolitical foe." Meanwhile, China
clearly poses a greater danger today than it did during the
Cold War. The United States and China fought to a bloody stalemate in the Korean War and remained enemies for the next two decades. But
crippled by economic weakness, in 1972, Beijing embraced diplomatic relations with Washington. China's power quickly grew as the country liberalized
its economy and modernized its military. It
is now a formidable power, armed with nuclear weapons and a
ballistic missile capability, and it has invested heavily in building up its navy. Its increasing
strength has emboldened it to aim more overtly at reducing U.S. influence in East Asia. The same
Pentagon report that Zenko and Cohen cite to calm fears about China also notes that "Beijing is developing capabilities intended to deter, delay, or deny
possible U.S. support for [Taiwan] in the event of conflict. The
balance of cross-Strait military forces and capabilities continues to
shift in the mainland's favor." And because U.S. relations with China are prone to regular crises, as
during the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and after the accidental U.S. bombing of the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, a militarized confrontation with China is more likely today
than at any point since the Korean War. In addition to Russia and China, there may soon be up to three more nuclear
autocracies hostile to the United States. North Korea and Iran are avowed enemies of the United States, and
distrust between the United States and Pakistan has never been higher. Pakistan and North Korea tested
nuclear weapons in 1998 and 2006, respectively, and Iran will almost certainly develop a nuclear weapons capability. (To be sure, a U.S. or Israeli strike
could temporarily delay Iran's nuclear program. But such an attack might well provoke a wider war, illustrating once again the dangers rife in the
international system.) All three states have invested in medium- and long-range ballistic missiles that could hit U.S. allies, and despite the failure of
North Korea's recent missile test, the United States must take seriously the possibility that any of these three states could soon be able to produce
missiles that could hit the U.S. homeland. North Korea's nuclear arsenal is very small, and it would take years for Iran to accumulate a nuclear
stockpile. But these states need only a few dozen warheads to pose a major challenge to the United States. What is more, because of their technological
and conventional military weakness, North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran have sought to level the playing field by investing in unconventional capabilities
or terrorist organizations, the latter of which could be used to carry out a nuclear attack. PIRATES AND TERRORISTS AND HACKERS, OH MY! In
addition to traditional threats from nuclear-armed states, the United States faces dangers that it rarely or never encountered during the Cold War:
failed states and the rogue actors that operate from within them, including pirates, organized criminals, drug cartels, terrorists, and hackers. Zenko and
Cohen correctly observe that these kinds of dangers have often been overblown. There is nothing new about pirates and terrorists, for example, and
they have rarely been more than a nuisance. What is new are their increased capabilities to threaten the United States, capabilities magnified by
technology, globalization, and state failure. Travel
and communication have become easier, weapons technology
is more lethal, and the growing number of lawless countries offers fertile ground for rogue actors
to operate with impunity. At the same time, U.S. border, port, and infrastructure security has
not kept up. Osama bin Laden harmed the United States in a way that would have been inconceivable for a nonstate actor during the Cold War.
And even if the United States can prevent another 9/11 or a crippling cyberattack, the aggregate effects of an increasing
number of malicious nonstate actors include rising costs of sustaining the global liberal order, a
slowing of the gears of normal diplomatic and economic exchange, and heightened public
suspicion and uncertainty. The most dangerous threat of this type is what the counterterrorism scholar David Kilcullen has called the
global Islamist insurgency, consisting of campaigns by Islamist militants to erase Western influence in Muslim countries, replace secular governments
in the Muslim world with hard-line regimes, and eventually establish the supremacy of their brand of Islam across the world. Some Islamist
organizations have directly targeted the United States and its allies in dozens of attacks and attempted attacks over the last decade. Of these groups,
Zenko and Cohen mention only al Qaeda, and they repeat the Obama administration's claim that
the organization is near defeat. The claim is wrong, but even if it were true, it would be irrelevant: al Qaeda is only the
most famous member of a global network of Islamist movements that oppose the United States. If such a movement were to take over any country, that
country would offer a safe haven to al Qaeda and its affiliates, allies, and copycats. But if one were to seize control of Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons,
or Saudi Arabia, with its oil wealth, the resulting regime would pose a major threat to global order. During the Cold War, the only phenomenon
comparable to today's proliferation of militant Islamist groups was the Soviet Union's sponsorship of communist insurgencies around the world. But
the Islamist movements will likely prove more resilient and more dangerous, because they are decentralized, their ideology does not rest on the fate of
one particular regime, and globalization has made it easier for them to operate across borders. There
is also a greater risk that
Islamists will acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, since they are not accountable to one
particular sponsoring power that can be deterred. Zenko and Cohen are right that the United States
needs to reinvest in its tools of soft power, including diplomacy and development. But those tools
are not enough to cope with hostile states armed with nuclear weapons, rogue actors empowered by
technology and globalization, and a worldwide network of insurgent and terrorist groups that claim they have a
religious duty to oppose the United States. In attempting to manage or defeat these threats, the United States
cannot afford to reduce its military capabilities, as Zenko and Cohen advise. Waiting to respond to
dangers only once they threaten the very existence of the United States, instead of trying to prevent
them from materializing, is an irresponsible basis for foreign policy.
This is statistically proven
Drezner, 5 [Daniel W. Drezner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, Senior Editor at the National Interest, M.A. in
Economics and Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University, “Gregg Easterbrook, War,
and the Dangers of Extrapolation”, http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002087.html]
explosions in Iraq, massacres in Sudan,
the Koreas
plagues human society
But here is something you would never guess from watching the news: War has
entered a cycle of decline. Combat in Iraq and other places is an exception to a
significant global trend that has gone nearly unnoticed--namely that, for about 15 years,
there have been steadily fewer armed conflicts worldwide
studies find the number of
conflicts
peaked in 1991
Since 1991, the number has fallen steadily
Via Oxblog's Patrick Belton, I see that Gregg Easterbrook has a cover story in The New Republic entitled "The End of War?" It has a killer opening: Daily
staring at each other through artillery barrels, a Hobbesian war of all against all in eastern Congo--combat
as it has, perhaps, since our distant forebears realized that a tree
limb could be used as a club.
in a few
. In fact, it is possible that a person's chance of dying because of war has, in the last decade or more, become
the lowest in human history. Is Easterbrook right? He has a few more paragraphs on the numbers: The University of Maryland
wars and armed
at 51, which may represent the most wars happening simultaneously at any point in history.
worldwide
. There were 26
armed conflicts in 2000 and 25 in 2002, even after the Al Qaeda attack on the United States and the U.S. counterattack against Afghanistan. By 2004, Marshall and Gurr's latest study shows, the number of armed conflicts in the world had declined to 20, even after
the invasion of Iraq.
All told, there were less than half as many wars in 2004 as there were in 1991
. Marshall and Gurr also have a
second ranking, gauging the magnitude of fighting. This section of the report is more subjective. Everyone agrees that the worst moment for human conflict was World War II; but how to rank, say, the current separatist fighting in Indonesia versus, say, the Algerian
war of independence is more speculative. Nevertheless, the Peace and Conflict studies name 1991 as the peak post-World War II year for totality of global fighting, giving that year a ranking of 179 on a scale that rates the extent and destructiveness of combat. By
the extent and intensity of global
combat is now less than half what it was 15 years ago. Easterbrook spends
the essay
postulating the causes
the decline in great power war, the spread of democracies, the growth
of economic interdependence, and
peacekeeping capabilities
he neglects to
mention the biggest reason for why war is on the decline -- there's a global hegemon called the
U S right now
the reason "great powers" get along is that the U S is much, much
more powerful than anyone else
2000, in spite of war in the Balkans and genocide in Rwanda, the number had fallen to 97; by 2002 to 81; and, at the end of 2004, it stood at 65. This suggests
the rest of
of this --
even the
of the United Nations. Easterbrook makes a lot of good points -- most people are genuinely
shocked when they are told that even in a post-9/11 climate, there has been a steady and persistent decline in wars and deaths from wars. That said, what bothers me in the piece is what Easterbrook leaves out. First,
nited
tates
. Easterbrook acknowledges that "the most powerful factor must be the end of the cold war" but he doesn't understand why it's the most powerful factor. Elsewhere in the piece he talks about the growing comity among
the great powers, without discussing the elephant in the room:
the
nited
tates
. If you quantify power only by relative military capabilities, the U.S. is a great power, there are maybe ten or so middle powers, and then there are a lot of mosquitoes. [If the U.S.
is so powerful, why can't it subdue the Iraqi insurgency?--ed. Power is a relative measure -- the U.S. might be having difficulties, but no other country in the world would have fewer problems.] Joshua Goldstein, who knows a thing or two about this phenomenon,
made this clear in a Christian Science Monitor op-ed three years ago: We probably owe this lull to the end of the cold war, and to a unipolar world order with a single superpower to impose its will in places like Kuwait, Serbia, and Afghanistan. The emerging world
order is not exactly benign – Sept. 11 comes to mind – and Pax Americana delivers neither justice nor harmony to the corners of the earth. But
a unipolar world is inherently more peaceful
than the bipolar one where two superpowers fueled rival armies around the world
. The long-delayed "peace dividend" has
arrived, like a tax refund check long lost in the mail. The difference in language between Goldstein and Easterbrook highlights my second problem with "The End of War?" Goldstein rightly refers to the past fifteen years as a "lull" -- a temporary reduction in war and
The flip side of U.S. hegemony being responsible for the reduction of armed conflict is
what would happen if U.S. hegemony were to ever fade away
if the U.S. should find primacy challenged
all best about
economic interdependence, U.N. peacekeeping, and the spread of
democracy are right out the window
U.S. hegemony
important to the reduction of conflict in two ways. First, U.S. power can act as a powerful if
imperfect constraint on pairs of enduring rivals (Greece-Turkey, India-Pakistan) that
contemplate war on a regular basis. It can't stop every conflict, but it can blunt a lot of them.
Second,
U.S. supremacy in conventional military affairs prevents middle-range
states -- China, Russia, India, Great Britain, France, etc. -- from challenging the U.S. or each
other in a war
the prospect of U.S. intervention would
be daunting
war-related death.
. Easterbrook focuses on the trends that suggest an ever-decreasing
amount of armed conflict -- and I hope he's right. But I'm enough of a realist to know that
other side of the Pacific Ocean,
its
by, say, a really populous non-democratic country on the
the utility of
. UPDATE: To respond to a few thoughts posted by the commenters: 1) To spell things out a bit more clearly --
and more important to Easterbrook's thesis,
other
. It would be suicide for anyone to fight a war with the U.S., and if any of these countries waged a war with each other,
equally
.
Heg solves great power wars
Zachary Keck 14, Assistant Editor at The Diplomat, M.A. candidate in the Department of Public
and International Affairs at George Mason University, “America’s Relative Decline: Should We
Panic?”, 1-24, http://thediplomat.com/2014/01/americas-relative-decline-should-we-panic/
Still, on balance, the U.S. has been a positive force in the world, especially for a unipolar power .
Certainly, it’s hard to imagine many other countries acting as benignly if they possessed the amount of relative power
America had at the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the British were not nearly as powerful as the U.S. in the 19th Century and they incorporated most of
the globe in their colonial empire. Even when it had to contend with another superpower, Russia occupied half a continent by brutally suppressing its
populace. Had the U.S. collapsed and the Soviet Union emerged as the Cold War victor, Western Europe would likely be speaking Russian by now. It’s
difficult to imagine China defending a rule-based, open international order if it were a unipolar power, much less making an effort to uphold a
minimum level of human rights in the world.¶ Regardless
of your opinion on U.S. global leadership over the last
two decades, however, there is good reason to fear its relative decline compared with China and other emerging
nations. To begin with, hegemonic transition periods have historically been the most
destabilizing eras in history. This is not only because of the malign intentions of the rising and established power(s). Even if
all the parties have benign, peaceful intentions, the rise of new global powers necessitates
revisions to the “rules of the road.” This is nearly impossible to do in any organized fashion given
the anarchic nature of the international system, where there is no central authority that can govern interactions between
states.¶ We are already starting to see the potential dangers of hegemonic transition periods in the
Asia-Pacific (and arguably the Middle East). As China grows more economically and militarily powerful, it has unsurprisingly sought to
expand its influence in East Asia. This necessarily has to come at the expense of other powers, which so far has primarily meant the U.S., Japan,
Vietnam and the Philippines. Naturally, these powers have sought to resist Chinese encroachments on their territory and influence, and the situation
grows more tense with each passing day. Should China eventually emerge as a global power, or should nations in other regions enjoy a similar rise as
Kenny suggests, this situation will play itself out elsewhere in the years and decades ahead. ¶ All of this highlights some of the advantages
of a
unipolar system. Namely, although the U.S. has asserted military force quite frequently in the post-Cold War era, it has only fought weak
powers and thus its wars have been fairly limited in terms of the number of casualties involved . At the same
time, America’s preponderance of power has prevented a great power war, and even
restrained major regional powers from coming to blows. For instance, the past 25 years haven’t seen
any conflicts on par with the Israeli-Arab or Iran-Iraq wars of the Cold War. As the unipolar era comes to a close, the
possibility of great power conflict and especially major regional wars rises dramatically.
The world will also have to contend with conventionally inferior powers like Japan acquiring nuclear weapons
to protect their interests against their newly empowered rivals.¶ But even if the transitions caused by China’s and
potentially other nations’ rises are managed successfully, there are still likely to be significant negative
effects on international relations. In today’s “globalized” world, it is commonly asserted that many of the defining
challenges of our era can only be solved through multilateral cooperation. Examples of this include
climate change, health pandemics, organized crime and terrorism, global financial
crises, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, among many others.¶ A unipolar system, for all its limitations, is
uniquely suited for organizing effective global action on these transnational issues.
This is because there is a clear global leader who can take the initiative and, to some degree, compel
others to fall in line. In addition, the unipole’s preponderance of power lessens the intensity of
competition among the global players involved. Thus, while there are no shortages of complaints
about the limitations of global governance today, there is no question that global governance has
been many times more effective in the last 25 years than it was during the Cold War.¶ The rise of China
and potentially other powers will create a new bipolar or multipolar order. This, in turn, will make solving these
transnational issues much more difficult. Despite the optimistic rhetoric that emanates from official U.S.-China meetings, the
reality is that Sino-American competition is likely to overshadow an increasing number of global issues in
the years ahead. If other countries like India, Turkey, and Brazil also become significant global
powers, this will only further dampen the prospects for effective global governance.
The impact is global conflict escalation
Brooks, et al, 13 [Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment Stephen G.
Brooks (bio), G. John Ikenberry (bio) and William C. Wohlforth (bio), Stephen G. Brooks; G.
John Ikenberry and William C. Wohlforth STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of
Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of
Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung
Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of
Government at Dartmouth College, International Security ¶ Volume 37, Number 3, Winter 2012,
p. Project Muse]
Assessing the Security Benefits of Deep Engagement¶ Even if deep engagement's costs are far less than retrenchment
advocates claim, they are not worth bearing unless they yield greater benefits. We focus here on the strategy's major security
benefits; in the next section, we take up the wider payoffs of the United States' security role for its interests in other realms, notably
the global economy—an interaction relatively unexplored by international relations scholars.¶ A core premise of deep
¶
engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far [End Page 33] more dangerous global security
environment. For one thing, as noted above, the United States' overseas presence gives it the leverage to
restrain partners from taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance
commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating
expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to
their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security dilemmas. The contention
that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential
variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the
"American Pacifier" is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions
replete with security competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive
war temptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great
power war.72¶ How do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are
complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and
conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different
theory or set of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would
happen to Eurasia's security setting if the United States truly disengaged?). Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these
responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge.¶ The first response flows from defensive
realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under
contemporary conditions.73 Defensive realists maintain that the high expected [End Page 34] costs of territorial conquest, defense
dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia's major states
could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without the American pacifier.¶ Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship,
particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense
institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however, that might
give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net
security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense
great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the political costs of increased
EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays.74 The result might be a Europe that is incapable of
securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional conflict akin to the
1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is
vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers.¶ What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial
military presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins to swing toward pessimists concerned that states currently backed
by Washington—notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security
dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimism regarding the region's prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced.
Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and
increase their military commitments, which could stoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It is notable that during the Cold War,
both South Korea and [End Page 35] Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity and were only constrained from doing so
by a still-engaged United States.75¶ The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism's sanguine
portrayal is all of the research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism's optimism about what would
happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent on its particular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state
preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of postAmerican tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security
defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem
is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative to defense.
Burgeoning research across the social and other sciences, however, undermines that core assumption: states have preferences not
only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and they engage in trade-offs among the various objectives.76 In
addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It follows that
even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical studies show that this is
indeed sometimes the case.77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never
allow these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices.¶ To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have
predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment would result in a significant deterioration in the security
environment in at least some of the world's key regions. We have already [End Page 36] mentioned the third,
even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier
will yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity,
arms racing, crisis instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional
hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of local great powers to contain (and which in any case
would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war).¶ Hence it is
unsurprising that retrenchment advocates are prone to focus on the second argument noted above: that avoiding wars and security
dilemmas in the world's core regions is not a U.S. national interest. Few doubt that the United States could survive the return of
insecurity and conflict among Eurasian powers, but at what cost? Much of the work in this area has focused on the economic
externalities of a renewed threat of insecurity and war, which we discuss below. Focusing on the pure security ramifications, there
are two main reasons why decisionmakers may be rationally reluctant to run the retrenchment experiment. First, overall higher
levels of conflict make the world a more dangerous place. Were Eurasia to return to higher levels
of interstate military competition, one would see overall higher levels of military spending and
innovation and a higher likelihood of competitive regional proxy wars and arming of client
states—all of which would be concerning, in part because it would promote a faster diffusion of military power away
from the United States.¶ Greater regional insecurity could well feed proliferation cascades, as states
such as Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia all might choose to create nuclear
forces.78 It is unlikely that proliferation decisions by any of these actors would be the end of the game: they would
likely generate pressure locally for more proliferation. Following Kenneth Waltz, many retrenchment
advocates are proliferation optimists, assuming that nuclear deterrence solves the security problem.79 Usually carried out in dyadic
terms, the debate [End Page 37] over the stability of proliferation changes as the numbers go up. Proliferation optimism rests on
assumptions of rationality and narrow security preferences. In social science, however, such assumptions are inevitably
probabilistic. Optimists assume that most states are led by rational leaders, most will overcome organizational problems and
resist the temptation to preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, and most pursue only security and are risk averse.
Confidence in such probabilistic assumptions declines if the world were to move from nine to
twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states. In addition, many of the other dangers noted by analysts who are
concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—including the risk of accidents
and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not have truly survivable forces—seem
prone to go up as the number of nuclear powers grows.80 Moreover, the risk of "unforeseen crisis
dynamics" that could spin out of control is also higher as the number of nuclear powers
increases. Finally, add to these concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear leakage, and a world with
overall higher levels of security competition becomes yet more worrisome.¶ The argument that
maintaining Eurasian peace is not a U.S. interest faces a second problem. On widely accepted realist assumptions, acknowledging
that U.S. engagement preserves peace dramatically narrows the difference between retrenchment and deep engagement. For many
supporters of retrenchment, the optimal strategy for a power such as the United States, which has attained regional hegemony and is
separated from other great powers by oceans, is offshore balancing: stay over the horizon and "pass the buck" to local powers to do
the dangerous work of counterbalancing any local rising power. The United States should commit to onshore balancing only when
local balancing is likely to fail and a great power appears to be a credible contender for regional hegemony, as in the cases of
Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union in the mid-twentieth century.¶ The problem is that China's rise puts the possibility of its
attaining regional hegemony on the table, at least in the medium to long term. As Mearsheimer notes, "The United States will have
to play a key role in countering China, because its Asian neighbors are not strong enough to do it by themselves."81 [End Page 38]
Therefore, unless China's rise stalls, "the United States is likely to act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward the Soviet
Union during the Cold War."82 It follows that the United States should take no action that would compromise its capacity to move
to onshore balancing in the future. It will need to maintain key alliance relationships in Asia as well as the formidably expensive
military capacity to intervene there. The implication is to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, reduce the presence in Europe, and pivot
to Asia—just what the United States is doing.83¶ In sum, the argument that U.S. security commitments are unnecessary for peace is
countered by a lot of scholarship, including highly influential realist scholarship. In addition, the argument that Eurasian peace is
unnecessary for U.S. security is weakened by the potential for a large number of nasty security consequences as well as the need to
retain a latent onshore balancing capacity that dramatically reduces the savings retrenchment might bring. Moreover, switching
between offshore and onshore balancing could well be difficult.¶ Bringing together the thrust of many of the arguments discussed so
far underlines the degree to which the case for retrenchment misses the underlying logic of the deep engagement strategy. By
supplying reassurance, deterrence, and active management, the United States lowers security
competition in the world's key regions, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse
atmosphere for growing new military capabilities. Alliance ties dissuade partners from ramping
up and also provide leverage to prevent military transfers to potential rivals. On top of all this, the
United States' formidable military machine may deter entry by potential rivals. Current great
power military expenditures as a percentage of GDP are at historical lows, and thus far other
major powers have shied away from seeking to match top-end U.S. military capabilities. In addition,
they have so far been careful to avoid attracting the "focused enmity" [End Page 39] of the United States.84 All of the world's
most modern militaries are U.S. allies (America's alliance system of more than sixty countries now accounts for some
80 percent of global military spending), and the gap between the U.S. military capability and that of potential rivals is by many
measures growing rather than shrinking.85¶ In the end, therefore, deep engagement reduces security competition and does so in a
way that slows the diffusion of power away from the United States. This in turn makes it easier to sustain the policy over the long
term.¶ The Wider Benefits of Deep Engagement¶ The case against deep engagement overstates its costs and underestimates its
security benefits. Perhaps its most important weakness, however, is that its preoccupation with security issues diverts attention from
some of deep engagement's most important benefits: sustaining the global economy and fostering institutionalized cooperation in
ways advantageous to U.S. national interests.¶ Economic Benefits¶ Deep engagement is based on a premise central to realist
scholarship from E.H. Carr to Robert Gilpin: economic orders do not just emerge spontaneously; they are
created and sustained by and for powerful states.86 To be sure, the sheer size of its economy would guarantee the
United States a significant role in the politics of the global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet the fact that it is the
leading military power and security provider also enables economic leadership. The security role figures in the creation,
maintenance, and expansion of the system. In part because other states—including all but one of the world's largest economies—
were heavily dependent on U.S. security protection during the Cold War, the United States was able not only to foster the economic
order but also to prod other states to buy into it and to support plans for its progressive expansion.87 Today, as the discussion in the
[End Page 40] previous section underscores, the security commitments of deep engagement support the
global economic order by reducing the likelihood of security dilemmas, arms racing, instability,
regional conflicts and, in extremis, major power war. In so doing, the strategy helps to
maintain a stable and comparatively open world economy—a long-standing U.S. national
interest.¶ In addition to ensuring the global economy against important sources of insecurity, the extensive set of U.S.
military commitments and deployments helps to protect the "global economic commons." One
key way is by helping to keep sea-lanes and other shipping corridors freely available for
commerce.88 A second key way is by helping to establish and protect property/sovereignty rights in the oceans. Although it
is not the only global actor relevant to protecting the global economic commons, the United
States has by far the most important role given its massive naval superiority and the leadership
role it plays in international economic institutions.
If the United States were to pull back from the world, protecting the global economic commons
would likely be much harder to accomplish for a number of reasons: cooperating with other
nations on these matters would be less likely to occur; maintaining the relevant institutional
foundations for promoting this goal would be harder; and preserving access to bases throughout
the world—which is needed to accomplish this mission—would likely be curtailed to some degree.¶
Advocates of retrenchment agree that a flourishing global economy is an important U.S. interest, but they are largely silent on the
role U.S. grand strategy plays in sustaining it.89 For their part, many scholars of international political [End Page 41] economy have
long argued that economic openness might continue even in the absence of hegemonic leadership.90 Yet this does not address the
real question of interest: Does hegemonic leadership make the continuation of global economic stability more likely? The
voluminous literature contains no analysis that suggests a negative answer; what scholars instead note is that the likelihood of
overcoming problems of collective action, relative gains, and incomplete information drops in the absence of leadership.91 It would
thus take a bold if not reckless leader to run a grand experiment to determine whether the global economy can continue to expand in
the absence of U.S. leadership.¶ Deep engagement not only helps to underwrite the global economy in a general sense, but it also
allows the United States to structure it in ways that serve the United States' narrow economic interests. Carla Norrlof argues
persuasively that America disproportionately benefits from the current structure of the global economy, and that its ability to reap
these advantages is directly tied to its position of military preeminence within the system.92 One way this occurs is via "microlevel
structuring"—that is, the United States gets better economic bargains or increased economic cooperation on some specific issues
than it would if it did not play such a key security role. As Joseph Nye observes, [End Page 42] "Even if the direct use of force were
banned among a group of countries, military force would still play an important political role. For example, the American military
role in deterring threats to allies, or of assuring access to a crucial resource such as oil in the Persian Gulf, means that the provision
of protective force can be used in bargaining situations. Sometimes the linkage may be direct; more often it is a factor not mentioned
openly but present in the back of statesmen's minds."93 Although Nye is right that such linkage will generally be implicit, extensive
analyses of declassified documents by historians shows that the United States directly used its overseas security commitments and
military deployments to convince allies to change their economic policies to its benefit during the Cold War.94¶ The United States'
security commitments continue to bolster the pursuit of its economic interests. Interviews with current and past U.S. administration
officials reveal wide agreement that alliance ties help gain favorable outcomes on trade and other economic issues. To the question,
"Does the alliance system pay dividends for America in nonsecurity areas, such as economic relations?," the typical answer in
interviews is "an unequivocal yes."95 U.S. security commitments sometimes enhance bargaining leverage over the specific terms of
economic agreements and give other governments more general incentives to enter into agreements that benefit the United States
economically—two recent examples being the 2012 Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) and the United StatesAustralia FTA (which entered into force in 2005).96 Officials across administrations of different parties stress that the desire of
Korea and Australia to tighten their security relationships with the United States was a core reason why Washington was able to
enter into free [End Page 43] trade agreements with them and to do so on terms favorable to U.S. economic interests. As one former
official indicates, "The KORUS FTA—and I was involved in the initial planning—was attractive to Korea in large measure because it
would help to underpin the US-ROK [South Korea] alliance at a time of shifting power in the region."97 Korean leaders' interest in
maintaining a strong security relationship with the United States, another former official stressed, made them more willing to be
flexible regarding the terms of the agreement because "failure would look like a setback to the political and security relationship.
Once we got into negotiations with the ROK, look at how many times we reneged even after we signed a deal. . . . We asked for
changes in labor and environment clauses, in auto clauses and the Koreans took it all."98¶ U.S. security leverage is economically
beneficial in a second respect: it can facilitate "macrolevel structuring" of the global economy. Macrolevel structuring is crucial
because so much of what the United States wants from the economic order is simply "more of the same"—it prefers the structure of
the main international economic institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund; it prefers
the existence of "open regionalism" 99; it prefers the dollar as the reserve currency; and so on. U.S. interests are thus well served to
the extent that American allies favor the global economic status quo rather than revisions that could be harmful to U.S. economic
interests. One reason they are often inclined to take this approach is because of their security relationship with the United States.
For example, interviews with U.S. officials stress that alliance ties give Washington leverage and authority in the current struggle
over multilateral governance institutions in Asia. As one official noted, "On the economic side, the existence of the security alliance
contributes to an atmosphere of trust that enables the United States and Japan to present a united front on shared economic goals—
such as open markets and transparency, for example, through APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation]."100 Likewise, Japan's
current interest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's most important long-term economic initiative in East
Asia, is widely understood to be shaped less by specific Japanese [End Page 44] economic interests than by the belief of Yoshihiko
Noda's administration that it will strengthen alliance ties with the United States.101 As one former administration official stressed,
this enhanced allied interest in supporting U.S. favored economic frameworks as a means of strengthening security ties with the
United States helps to ensure against any shift to "a Sino-centric/ nontransparent/more mercantilist economic order in Asia."102¶
The United States' security leverage over its allies matters even if it is not used actively to garner support for its conception of the
global economy and other economic issues. This is perhaps best illustrated by the status of the dollar as the reserve currency, which
confers major benefits on the United States.103 For many analysts, the U.S. position as the leading superpower with worldwide
security commitments is an important reason why the dollar was established as the reserve currency and why it is likely to retain this
status for a long time.104 In the past, Washington frequently used direct security leverage to get its allies to support the dollar.105
There are a number of subtler mechanisms, however, through which the current U.S. geopolitical position serves the same end. First,
Kathleen McNamara builds on the logic of focal points to argue that the U.S. global military role bolsters the likelihood that the
dollar will long continue to be the currency that actors converge upon as the "'natural' dominant currency."106 Second, Norrlof
emphasizes the significance of a mechanism that U.S. officials also stress: the United States' geopolitical position gives it the ability
to constrain certain forms of Asian regionalism that, if they were to eventuate, could help to promote movement away from the
dollar. 107 Third, Adam Posen emphasizes that the EU's security dependence on the United States makes it less likely that the euro
countries will develop a true [End Page 45] global military capacity and thus "that the dollar will continue to benefit from the
geopolitical sources of its global role" in ways that the euro countries will never match.108¶ In sum, the United States is a
key pillar of the global economy, but it does not provide this service for free: it also extracts disproportionate benefits.
Undertaking retrenchment would place these benefits at risk.¶ Institutional Benefits¶ What goes for the global
economy also applies to larger patterns of institutionalized cooperation. Here, too, the leadership enabled by the United
States' grand strategy fosters cooperation that generates diffuse benefits for many states but
often disproportionately reflects U.S. preferences. This basic premise subsumes three claims.¶ First, benefits flow to the
United States from institutionalized cooperation to address a wide range of problems . There is
general agreement that a stable, open, and loosely rule-based international order serves the
interests of the United States. Indeed, we are aware of no serious studies suggesting that U.S. interests would be better
advanced in a world that is closed (i.e., built around blocs and spheres of influence) and devoid of basic, agreed-upon rules and
institutions. As scholars have long argued, under conditions of rising complex interdependence, states often can benefit from
institutionalized cooperation.109¶ In the security realm, newly emerging threats arguably are producing
rapid rise in the benefits of such cooperation for the United States. Some of these threats are
transnational and emerge from environmental, health, and resource vulnerabilities, such as
those concerning pandemics. Transnational nonstate groups with various capacities for violence have also
become salient in recent decades, including groups involved in terrorism, piracy, and organized
a
crime.110 [End Page 46] As is widely argued, these sorts of nontraditional, transnational threats can be
realistically addressed only through various types of collective action.111 Unless countries
are prepared to radically restrict their integration into an increasingly globalized world system,
the problems must be solved through coordinated action. 112 In the face of these diffuse and shifting threats,
the United States is going to find itself needing to work with other states to an increasing degree,
sharing information, building capacities, and responding to crises.113¶ Second, U.S. leadership
increases the prospects that such cooperation will emerge in a manner relatively favorable to U.S.
interests. Of course, the prospects for cooperation are partly a function of compatible interests. Yet even when interests
overlap, scholars of all theoretical stripes have established that institutionalized cooperation does
not emerge effortlessly: generating agreement on the particular cooperative solution can
often be elusive. And when interests do not overlap, the bargaining becomes tougher yet: not just how, but whether
cooperation will occur is on the table. Many factors affect the initiation of cooperation, and under various
conditions states can and have cooperated without hegemonic leadership.114 As noted above, however,
scholars acknowledge that the likelihood of cooperation drops in the absence of leadership.¶
Finally, U.S. security commitments are an integral component of this leadership. Historically, as Gilpin and other theorists of
hegemonic order have shown, the background security and stability that the United States provided facilitated the creation of
multilateral institutions for ongoing cooperation across policy areas.115 As in the case of the global economy, U.S. security provision
[End Page 47] plays a role in fostering stability within and across regions, and this has an impact on the ability of states to engage in
institutional cooperation. Institutional cooperation is least likely in areas of the world where instability is pervasive. It is more likely
to flourish in areas where states are secure and leaders can anticipate stable and continuous relations—where the "shadow of the
future" is most evident. And because of the key security role it plays in fostering this institutional cooperation, the United States is in
a stronger position to help shape the contours of these cooperative efforts.¶ The United States' extended system of
security commitments creates a set of institutional relationships that foster political
communication. Alliance institutions are in the first instance about security protection, but they are also mechanisms that
provide a kind of "political architecture" that is useful beyond narrow issues of military affairs. Alliances bind states together and
create institutional channels of communication. NATO has facilitated ties and associated institutions—such as the Atlantic Council—
that increase the ability of the United States and Europe to talk to each other and do business.116 Likewise, the bilateral alliances in
East Asia also play a communication role beyond narrow security issues. Consultations and exchanges spill over into other policy
areas.117 For example, when U.S. officials travel to Seoul to consult on alliance issues, they also routinely talk about other pending
issues, such as, recently, the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This gives the United
States the capacity to work across issue areas, using assets and bargaining chips in one area to make progress in another. It also
provides more diffuse political benefits to cooperation that flow from the "voice opportunities" created by the security alliance
architecture.118 The alliances provide channels and access points for wider flows of communication—and [End Page 48] the benefits
of greater political solidarity and institutional cooperation that follow.¶ The benefits of these communication flows
cut across all international issues, but are arguably enhanced with respect to generating security
cooperation to deal with new kinds of threats—such as terrorism and health pandemics—that
require a multitude of novel bargains and newly established procedures of shared
responsibilities among a wide range of countries. With the existing U.S.-led security system in place, the United
States is in a stronger position than it otherwise would be to strike bargains and share burdens of security cooperation in such areas.
The challenge of rising security interdependence is greater security cooperation. That is, when countries are increasingly mutually
vulnerable to nontraditional, diffuse, transnational threats, they need to work together to eradicate the conditions that allow for
these threats and limit the damage. The U.S.-led alliance system is a platform with already existing capacities and routines for
security cooperation. These assets can be used or adapted, saving the cost of generating security cooperation from scratch. In short,
having an institution in place to facilitate cooperation on one issue makes it easier, and more likely, that the participating states will
be able to achieve cooperation rapidly on a related issue.119¶ The usefulness of the U.S. alliance system for generating enhanced
non-security cooperation is confirmed in interviews with former State Department and National Security Council officials. One
former administration official noted, using the examples of Australia and South Korea, that the security ties "create nonsecurity
benefits in terms of support for global agenda issues," such as Afghanistan, Copenhagen, disaster relief, and the financial crisis.
"This is not security leverage per se, but it is an indication of how the deepness of the security relationship creates working
relationships [and] interoperability that can then be leveraged to address other regional issues." This official notes, "We could not
have organized the Core Group (India, U.S., Australia, Japan) in [End Page 49] response to the 2004 tsunami without the deep
bilateral military relationships that had already been in place. It was much easier for us to organize with these countries almost
immediately (within forty-eight hours) than anyone else for a large-scale humanitarian operation because our militaries were
accustomed to each other."120¶ The United States' role as security provider also has a more direct effect of enhancing its authority
and capacity to initiate institutional cooperation in various policy areas. The fact that the United States is a security patron of Japan,
South Korea, and other countries in East Asia, for example, gives it a weight and presence in regional diplomacy over the shape and
scope of multilateral cooperation not just within the region but also elsewhere. This does not mean that the United States always
wins these diplomatic encounters, but its leverage is greater than it would be if the United States were purely an offshore great power
without institutionalized security ties to the region.¶ In sum, the deep engagement strategy enables U.S.
leadership, which results in more cooperation on matters of importance than would occur if the
United States disengaged—even as it pushes cooperation toward U.S. preferences.
2NR AT: FETTWEIS
Fettweis is wrong---U.S. heg is the cause of declining conflict
Francis P. Sempa 11, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, an
adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University, and a contributing editor to American
Diplomacy, October 2011, Review of Dangerous Times? The International Politics of Great
Power Peace By Christopher J. Fettweis, Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 63, p. 150
Forget Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli. Put aside Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman. Close the military academies and war
colleges. Shut our overseas bases. Bring our troops home. Make dramatic cuts in the defense budget. The
end of major war, and perhaps the end of war itself, is near, according to Tulane assistant professor Christopher
Fettweis in his recent book, Dangerous Times? The International Politics of Great Power Peace.
Fettweis is not the first intellectual, nor will he be the last, to proclaim the onset of perpetual peace. He is squarely in the tradition of
Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, and Norman Angell, to name just three. Indeed, in the book’s introduction, Fettweis attempts to
rehabilitate Angell’s reputation for prophecy, which suffered a devastating blow when the Great War falsified his claim in The Great
Illusion that economic interdependence had rendered great power war obsolete. Angell, Fettweis writes, was the first “prominent
constructivist thinker of the twentieth century,” and was not wrong—just ahead of his time (p. 5).
Fettweis bases his theory or vision of the obsolescence of major war on the supposed linear progress of human nature, a major tenet
of 20th-century liberalism that is rooted in the rationalist theories of the Enlightenment. “History,” according to Fettweis, “seems to
be unfolding as a line extending into the future—a halting, incomplete, inconsistent line perhaps, one with frequent temporary
reversals, but a line nonetheless.” The world is growing “more liberal and more reliant upon reason, logic, and science” (p. 217).
We have heard this all before. Human nature can be perfected. Statesmen and leaders will be guided by
reason and science. Such thinking influenced the visionaries of the French Revolution and produced 25 years of war among the
great powers of Europe. Similar ideas influenced President Woodrow Wilson and his intellectual supporters who endeavored at
Versailles to transform the horrors of World War I into a peace that would make that conflict “the war to end all wars.” What
followed were disarmament conferences, an international agreement to outlaw war, the rise of expansionist powers, appeasement by
the democracies, and the most destructive war in human history. Ideas, which Fettweis claims will bring about the
proliferation of peace, transformed Russia, Germany, and Japan into expansionist, totalitarian
powers. Those same ideas led to the Gulag, the Holocaust, and the Rape of Nanking. So much for human progress.
Fettweis knows all of this, but claims that since the end of the Cold War, the leaders and peoples of the major
powers, except the United States, have accepted the idea that major war is unthinkable. His proof is
that there has been no major war among the great powers for 20 years— a historical period that
coincides with the American “unipolar” moment . This is very thin empirical evidence upon
which to base a predictive theory of international relations.
Fettweis criticizes the realist and neorealist schools of thought, claiming that their adherents focus too narrowly on the past behavior
of states in the international system. In his view, realists place too great an emphasis on power. Ideas and norms instead of power,
he claims, provide structure to the international system. Classical geopolitical theorists such as Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer
Mahan, Nicholas Spykman, and Colin Gray are dismissed by Fettweis in less than two pages, despite the fact that their analyses of
great power politics and conflict have long been considered sound and frequently prescient.
Realists and classical geopoliticians have more than 2,000 years of empirical evidence to support
their theories of how states and empires behave and how the international system works. Ideas
are important, but power is the governing force in international politics , and geography is the most
permanent factor in the analysis of power.
Fettweis makes much of the fact that the countries of Western and Central Europe, which waged war against each
other repeatedly for nearly 400 years, are at peace, and claims that there is little likelihood that they will ever again wage war
against each other. Even if the latter assertion turns out to be true, that does not mean that the end of major war is
in sight . Throughout history, some peoples and empires that previously waged war for one reason or another became pacific
without producing worldwide perpetual peace: the Mongols, Saracens, Ottomans, Dutch, Venetians, and the Spanish Empire come
immediately to mind. A Europe at peace does not translate to an Asia, Africa, and Middle East at peace.
In a world in which major wars are obsolete, Fettweis
believes the United States needs to adjust its grand
strategy from vigorous internationalism to strategic restraint. His specific recommendations include the
removal of all U.S. military forces from Europe; an end to our bilateral security guarantees to Japan and South Korea; an end to our
alliance with Israel; an indifference to the balance of power on the Eurasian landmass; a law enforcement approach to terrorism; a
drastic cut in military spending; a much smaller Navy; and the abolition of regional combatant commands.
What Fettweis is proposing is effectively an end to what Walter Russell Mead calls “the maritime world order”
that was established by Great Britain and maintained first by the British Empire and then by the United States. It
is a world
order that has defeated repeated challenges by potential hegemonic powers and resulted in an
unprecedented spread of prosperity and freedom. But all of that, we are assured, is in the past.
China poses no threat . The United States can safely withdraw from Eurasia. The power vacuum will remain
unfilled.
Fettweis needs a dose of humility . Sir Halford Mackinder, the greatest of all geopoliticians, was referring to visionaries
and liberal idealists like Fettweis when he cautioned, “He would be a sanguine man . . . who would trust the future peace of the world
to a change in the mentality of any nation.” Most profoundly, General Douglas MacArthur, who knew a little bit more about war and
international conflict than Fettweis, reminded the cadets at West Point in 1962 that “only the dead have seen the end of war.”
CLEAN TECH SOLVES WARMING
We’ll concede this—says tech i.e. renewables solves warming—we have the only
internal link based on Californnia investment because state is key—that’ll be the
1nr—but if we win a 1% risk that treaties fail then try or die neg because only we
have a way to solve climate
Matt Ridley, visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, former science editor of The
Economist, and award-winning science writer, ’14
(“The World's Resources Aren't Running Out,” April 25, 2014,
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579517862612287156?mg
=reno64wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304279904579517
862612287156.html)
"We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we
change course, that number will grow fast—by 2030, even two planets will not be enough," says
Jim Leape, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the
World Wildlife Fund).
But here's a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and
again. After all, as a Saudi oil minister once said, the Stone Age didn't end for lack of
stone. Ecologists call this "niche construction"—that people (and indeed some other
animals) can create new opportunities for themselves by making their habitats more productive
in some way. Agriculture is the classic example of niche construction: We stopped relying on
nature's bounty and substituted an artificial and much larger bounty.
Economists call the same phenomenon innovation. What frustrates them about ecologists is
the latter's tendency to think in terms of static limits. Ecologists can't seem to see that when
whale oil starts to run out, petroleum is discovered, or that when farm yields flatten, fertilizer
comes along, or that when glass fiber is invented, demand for copper falls.
That frustration is heartily reciprocated. Ecologists think that economists espouse a sort
of superstitious magic called "markets" or "prices" to avoid confronting the reality of limits to
growth. The easiest way to raise a cheer in a conference of ecologists is to make a rude joke
about economists.
I have lived among both tribes. I studied various forms of ecology in an academic setting for
seven years and then worked at the Economist magazine for eight years. When I was an
ecologist (in the academic sense of the word, not the political one, though I also had antinuclear
stickers on my car), I very much espoused the carrying-capacity viewpoint—that there were
limits to growth. I nowadays lean to the view that there are no limits because we can invent new
ways of doing more with less.
This disagreement goes to the heart of many current political issues and explains much about
why people disagree about environmental policy. In the climate debate, for example, pessimists
see a limit to the atmosphere's capacity to cope with extra carbon dioxide without rapid
warming. So a continuing increase in emissions if economic growth continues will eventually
accelerate warming to dangerous rates. But optimists see economic growth leading to
technological change that would result in the use of lower-carbon energy. That
would allow warming to level off long before it does much harm.
It is striking, for example, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent forecast
that temperatures would rise by 3.7 to 4.8 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels by
2100 was based on several assumptions: little technological change, an end to the 50-year fall in
population growth rates, a tripling (only) of per capita income and not much improvement in
the energy efficiency of the economy. Basically, that would mean a world much like today's but
with lots more people burning lots more coal and oil, leading to an increase in emissions. Most
economists expect a five- or tenfold increase in income, huge changes in technology and an end
to population growth by 2100: not so many more people needing much less carbon.
In 1679, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the great Dutch microscopist, estimated that the planet
could hold 13.4 billion people, a number that most demographers think we may never reach.
Since then, estimates have bounced around between 1 billion and 100 billion, with no sign of
converging on an agreed figure.
Economists point out that we keep improving the productivity of each acre of land by
applying fertilizer, mechanization, pesticides and irrigation. Further innovation is
bound to shift the ceiling upward. Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University calculates that the
amount of land required to grow a given quantity of food has fallen by 65% over the past 50
years, world-wide.
Ecologists object that these innovations rely on nonrenewable resources, such as oil and gas, or
renewable ones that are being used up faster than they are replenished, such as aquifers.
So current yields cannot be maintained, let alone improved.
In his recent book "The View from Lazy Point," the ecologist Carl Safina estimates that if everybody had the living standards of
Americans, we would need 2.5 Earths because the world's agricultural land just couldn't grow enough food for more than 2.5 billion
people at that level of consumption. Harvard emeritus professor E.O. Wilson, one of ecology's patriarchs, reckoned that only if we all
turned vegetarian could the world's farms grow enough food to support 10 billion people.
Economists respond by saying that since large parts of the world, especially in Africa, have yet to gain access to fertilizer and modern
farming techniques, there is no reason to think that the global land requirements for a given amount of food will cease shrinking any
time soon. Indeed, Mr. Ausubel, together with his colleagues Iddo Wernick and Paul Waggoner, came to the startling conclusion
that, even with generous assumptions about population growth and growing affluence leading to greater demand for meat and other
luxuries, and with ungenerous assumptions about future global yield improvements, we will need less farmland in 2050 than we
needed in 2000. (So long, that is, as we don't grow more biofuels on land that could be growing food.)
But surely intensification of yields depends on inputs that may run out? Take water, a
commodity that limits the production of food in many places. Estimates made in the 1960s and
1970s of water demand by the year 2000 proved grossly overestimated: The world used half as
much water as experts had projected 30 years before.
The reason was greater economy in the use of water by new irrigation techniques. Some
countries, such as Israel and Cyprus, have cut water use for irrigation through the use of drip
irrigation. Combine these improvements with solar-driven desalination of seawater world-wide,
and it is highly unlikely that fresh water will limit human population.
The best-selling book "Limits to Growth," published in 1972 by the Club of Rome (an influential
global think tank), argued that we would have bumped our heads against all sorts of
ceilings by now, running short of various metals, fuels, minerals and space. Why
did it not happen? In a word, technology: better mining techniques, more frugal
use of materials, and if scarcity causes price increases, substitution by cheaper material. We
use 100 times thinner gold plating on computer connectors than we did 40 years ago. The steel
content of cars and buildings keeps on falling.
Until about 10 years ago, it was reasonable to expect that natural gas might run out in a few
short decades and oil soon thereafter. If that were to happen, agricultural yields would plummet,
and the world would be faced with a stark dilemma: Plow up all the remaining rain forest to
grow food, or starve.
But thanks to fracking and the shale revolution, peak oil and gas have been postponed.
They will run out one day, but only in the sense that you will run out of Atlantic Ocean
one day if you take a rowboat west out of a harbor in Ireland. Just as you are likely to
stop rowing long before you bump into Newfoundland, so we may well find cheap
substitutes for fossil fuels long before they run out.
Yes Spillover
Jaffe & Sperling, 13 --- *executive director for energy and sustainability at UC Davis, AND **
founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis (AMY MYERS JAFFE,
DANIEL SPERLING, 1/24/2013, “An Idea Whose Time Has Come; It's not just Obama -- the
entire world is ready to get serious about climate change,”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/24/An_Idea_Whose_Time_Has_Come_0?pa
ge=full&wp_login_redirect=0))
In January 2012, the chairman of state oil behemoth Saudi Aramco went on record saying,
"Greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are among humanity's most pressing concerns.
Societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a
leadership role." If the world's oil superpower is willing to accept responsibility, certainly the
United States can afford to take a more forward diplomatic stance. By starting with programs
that revolve around transportation and standards like those underway in California, the United
States might find it can build trust and the will for progress on the global climate change
agenda. The Obama administration can leverage emerging successes at the state and local
level into a credible global dialogue on climate and transportation policy. That would
elevate the standing of the United States to a position of global environmental leadership - and allow the president to make good on the promise he laid out in his inaugural address.
POKER LINKS
Empirically costs governors PC
US Poker, 12 (9/26/2012, “Delaware Could Opt-Out of Federal Online Poker Bill,”
http://www.uspoker.com/blog/delaware-could-opt-out-of-federal-online-poker-bill/2595/,
JMP)
In an article appearing the University of Delaware’s Independent Student Newspaper known as
The Review, Economics and public policy professor Williams Latham believes that Delaware
would opt-out of the bill because the bill would nullify their recently passed online gambling
law.
The bill entitled The Delaware Gaming Competitiveness Act of 2012 was passed and signed into
law in June of this year and made Delaware the first state in the US to legalize online gambling
outside of poker. Per the bill, each of the state’s three casinos can setup and run their own
gambling site to include horse racing, poker, and online casino games.
The bill currently going through Congress would eliminate the online casino games and leave
only poker and horse racing available to the state. According to Tammy Anderson, a professor of
Sociology and Criminal Justice, the bill would face natural resistance because Governor Jack
Markell spent a great deal of political capital in order to get online gambling
legalized.
It’s unlikely the bill will even make it out of committee – even the bill’s sponsor
admits there may not be a floor debate
Pempus, 1/23/15 (Brian, “Second California Web Poker Bill Introduced”
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/18335-second-california-web-poker-bill-introduced)
Basically, the Jones-Sawyer bill contains language that is more favorable to PokerStars having
access to the market, as long as it has partners. So-called “bad-actor” provisions in other bills,
past and present, could hurt PokerStars thanks to the company’s prior run-in with the U.S.
government. The Jones-Sawyer bill essentially is softer on bad-actor clauses.
However, as a result, the Jones-Sawyer bill is already disliked by other tribal groups. Gatto’s bill
was condemned by the PokerStars coalition, but liked by others. The Jones-Sawyer bill also
differs from Gatto’s proposal in its language that would help racetracks get involved with the
online gaming industry, another huge point of debate among gaming groups that hasn’t been
resolved.
According to a statement from Jones-Sawyer, web poker was first discussed over seven years
ago in the state, but there has never been a vote in any committee on any previously
introduced bill. He is hoping to change that, but it’s important for poker players not to get
too hopeful.
The stalemate will eventually break, but the statements released by various groups in response
to both current I-poker bills doesn’t make 2015 seem too likely.
There could still be a lot of work to be done before a consensus is reached between powerful
gaming interests in California, which has the nation’s richest tribal casino industry.
Politics are heavily against it
Pempus, 1/20/15 (Brian, “California Corruption Investigation Could Hurt Online Poker
Legalization Efforts: Report” http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/18319-californiacorruption-investigation-could-hurt-online-poker-legalization-efforts)
The Golden State needs all the help it can get with finally passing a law legalizing intrastate
online poker. However, recent allegations against a former state gaming official reportedly have
the potential to deal 2015’s chances for real-money online poker a fatal blow.
California’s attorney general has accused a former chief of the state’s gambling enforcement
agency of misconduct related to his work with Casino M8trix, a San Jose card club targeted in a
$119 million skimming investigation, the Sacramento Bee reported Sunday.
Basically, Attorney General Kamala Harris is alleging that Robert Lytle, who left the Bureau of
Gambling Control in 2007 to work as a compliance officer for Casino M8trix, received
confidential information about the state’s investigation into the card club.
Attorney General Harris is claiming that Lytle receiving the information “potentially
compromised the effectiveness, and undermined the integrity, of the bureau’s investigations.” In
other words, an allegedly serious violation of conflict of interest laws.
Lytle also currently has ownership stakes in multiple California gambling facilities.
According to a separate piece of reporting from journalist Dave Palermo: “Lytle also is accused
in the complaint of directing agents to ‘cut back ongoing investigatory activities’ into [Casino]
M8trix in December, 2007, a month before he retired from the bureau and after he began
negotiating a contract to work as a compliance officer for the casino.”
It is not uncommon for former gaming regulators across the U.S. to eventually go into the
private sector after leaving their positions in public office, after so-called “cooling-off” periods
that vary by state. Scandals involving this transition are uncommon within the U.S. gambling
industry. Lytle’s camp says he didn’t break the cooling-off period rule.
In addition to the Bureau of Gambling Control, the state of California also has a Gambling
Control Commission, which is separate from the former and has its own duties.
Even though the accusations against Lytle don’t have anything to do directly with California’s
ongoing online poker legalization debate, it could actually damage the already shaky
likelihood of getting an online poker bill passed—if the appetite for gaming expansion is
diminished in light of the Lytle complaint, according to Palermo’s reporting.
“An accusation suggesting there is corruption within the regulatory environment could become a
sticking point with respect to a desire to expand gambling in the state with I-poker,” Richard
Schuetz, a member of the state Gambling Control Commission, told Palermo.
“I hope they get this cleared up because this could create noise for the whole I-poker effort,”
tribal gaming lobbyist David Quintana also told Palermo. “We’re talking about the regulatory
body that is supposed to be overseeing I-poker."
Currently, there is one online poker bill on the table in California. Assemblyman Mike Gatto just
recently announced proposed amendments to his online poker bill. Efforts in past years have
failed because competing gaming interests in the Golden State haven’t be able to come to a
consensus on the rules and regulations for a new online poker industry.
YES SPILLOVER
Brown’s political popularity empirically drives passage of his agenda
Marois, 11/9/14 (Michael B., “Jerry Brown Sets California on a Course of Public Works,”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-10/jerry-brown-sets-california-on-a-course-ofpublic-works.html, JMP)
‘Paradoxical’ Priorities
“Then the economy tanked, the budgets went haywire and he became a pariah,” Pitney said.
Brown has traded on his acumen from two terms as governor from 1975 to 1983, as well as time
as secretary of state, attorney general and mayor of Oakland, to tame some of the most vexing
issues in a state of about 38 million, more than Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio combined.
He leveraged record approval ratings to win passage of temporary sales- and incometax increases in 2012, and this year pushed through ballot measures to bolster water works and
strengthen reserves against economic downturns.
Standard & Poor’s upgraded the state’s credit rating a day later, citing passage of the rainy day
measure, the fourth increase since Brown took office.
“I’m going to try and do everything I can to keep the state in balance but I also want to build
things,” Brown told reporters in his Sacramento office after the election last week. “It’s a balance
between holding my foot on the brake while pushing my other foot on the accelerator. It’s
definitely paradoxical.”
Spillover is key in this context—Brown realizes issues are interconnected
Marois, 9/8/14 (Michael B., “California’s Brown Turns Foes to Friends in No. 1 Economy,”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-08/california-s-brown-turns-foes-to-friends-in-no1-economy.html, JMP)
Again at the helm of the nation-sized state and up for re-election, Brown has shown
bipartisanship can work in Sacramento, even as it fails in Washington, as he steers California to
projected surpluses from record deficits. He won almost unanimous votes on $7.5 billion of
bonds for projects to battle an historic drought and on a rainy-day reserve fund to cushion
against economic downturns.
Economic Viewpoints
“I anticipate,” Brown said in the Sept. 5 interview. “I look at issues that can then put me in
position later on, when I’m going to have to do something else. You can call it
building coalitions but underneath all of that is a lot of very specific, unique ideas and bills
and actions and personalities and those have to be seized.”
1NC MISC
1NC K
Knowledge production on behalf of online gambling externalizes social harm and naturalizes
corporate control
Cassidy and Livingstone 10/30/2014 (Rebecca [prof of Anthropology @ Goldsmith, U of
London] and Charles [Senior Lecturer, Global Heath and Society @ Monash U]; The problem
with gambling research; https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-gambling-research31934; kdf)
Casino gaming is on the rise across much of the developed world, with governments increasingly unable to resist the allure of windfall taxes and a hefty
influx of cash for the local economy. Massachusetts embraced the trend in 2011 when the state legislature voted to legalise casinos. Construction is
underway for the state’s first casino at Plainridge Park, with 1,250 slot machines, harness racing and an estimated 500 new jobs. That decision is now
up for review, with a repeal referendum to be considered in the November midterms. In deciding whether to support the repeal, Massachusetts voters
will need unbiased information about the social impact of gambling and its downsides. Sadly it’s going to be much harder to come by than you might
think. A compromised research agenda Anyone
looking for good quality evidence about the consequences of
gambling first needs to understand how knowledge about gambling is produced. How do we know
what we know? Who dictates the research agenda? How is research funded? How do we ensure that we have a sound base of impartial knowledge on
which to build policy? The answers to these questions are profoundly depressing. While
in the fields of tobacco and alcohol
research, academics regularly debate conflicts of interest and interrogate the strategic use of
research and evidence, many gambling researchers remain dependent on industry
funding. Gambling is an area largely devoid of disclosure policies, and many researchers are
unreflective or outright defiant about industry influence. Researchers, regulators and policy
makers champion a “partnership model” for producing research, not so much “business as usual” as “we are all in
this together.” This remarkable state of affairs contrasts markedly with other fields and
produces a weak knowledge base that is unevenly influenced by industry interests. The impact on the
discipline is striking. A large proportion of spending goes on prevalence studies – counting problem gamblers in the
general population. These surveys are popular with industry because they make it possible to downplay
the absolute numbers of pathological gamblers, along with the percentage of the general
population at risk from gambling problems, the percentage of gamblers who experience problems and the proportion of profits
that come from problem gamblers (estimated at between 30 and 50%). Prevalence studies also tend to sidestep the
question of social class, thus disguising the inconvenient fact that most of the harm from
gambling occurs in disadvantaged populations – those with the least capacity to absorb it. The
problem with problem gamblers Complementing prevalence studies is a vast body of research on problem
gamblers. Much of it rests on the assumption that gambling is a harmless leisure activity which
makes a net contribution to public funds through either taxation or out of town tourism. The idea that normal consumers gamble without ill-effect
creates a separate category of defective consumers labelled as “problem gamblers”. According to this framework,
solutions to problems
with gambling are to be sought on an individual level. The alternative approach – to see
gambling as an aspect of public health that may be managed by limiting the supply of
particular products - is poorly supported by industry or government funding, particularly where
taxes on the profits of gambling have become an important source of state income, as in Australia,
Canada and, increasingly, the United States. A minority of critical researchers continue to agitate for change –
arguing that research should not be funded by the industry, that priorities should not be set by industry-influenced
panels, and that research should have a public health remit. The role of researchers So far, these arguments have fallen on deaf ears. Senior
researchers are not only content to take industry money, they are also prepared to defend these
arrangements. In December 2000 Nottingham University decided to accept a donation from British American Tobacco of £3.8 million to
establish an International Centre for Corporate Responsibility. The executive editors of leading respiratory medicine journal Thorax, John Briton and
Alan Knox, wrote an open letter arguing that “accepting money from the tobacco industry degrades the reputation of our University and undermines
the work of all with a commitment to the teaching of medicine and the promotion of public health.” Professor Richard Smith, editor of the British
Medical Journal, resigned from his post at Nottingham, followed by a team of 20 cancer researchers, led by Professor David Thurston. Almost 14 years
later, Professor Alex Blaszczynski, editor-in-chief of the journal International Gambling Studies, and one of the most prominent gambling scholars in
the world, received $1.2 million from the New South Wales clubs industry to study problem gambling in Australia. Australians have the highest
gambling losses per resident adult of any country in the world and spend more on gambling than they do on alcohol or petrol. Asked to defend this
arrangement, Blaszczynski said: Because of the nature of gambling, you do have to start looking at gaining access to data held by the industry, by
patrons who are in industry venues and start looking at real life research that provides sensible, evidence-based information. Blaszczynski’s defence is
disappointing. It does not engage with the most pressing criticism: scholars in the fields of alcohol and tobacco have shown that industry funding
systematically influences findings. Further, by accepting
effect, arguing
that industry can control such access, Blaszczynski is, in
for a monopoly on knowledge production for those who get along with the industry.
How industry funding frames the agenda Blaszczynski’s
acceptance of industry funding is not, however,
exceptional and many in the field of gambling studies in the US, where funding for research is one-twentieth that of
Australia and Canada, would vigorously defend his actions. US universities enter into partnerships with individual
casino companies. US academics compete for funding from the National Centre for Responsible Gaming
(NCRG) which is paid for by the American Gaming Association and claims to have mandated,
“stringent firewalls to separate the gaming industry’s contributions from the research it funds”.
The effectiveness of these firewalls, and similar mechanisms in the UK and Australia, is debatable. Not surprisingly, the National Centre
for Responsible Gaming focuses exclusively on the disease model of gambling addiction and
does not fund research with a wider social purview. Senior research director Christine Reilly recently justified this
approach by saying: To me it seems kind of silly to spend time and money on an issue that is extremely difficult to research, because you can’t count on
people’s memory.” John Warren Kindt, Professor of Business and Administration at the University of Illinois recently described NCRG output as
“research designed not to hurt the gambling industry and to misdirect the debate”. The trust deficit Some
research with a broader
public health remit can be found in Australia and the US, but, as I discovered when I interviewed researchers for my study of
gambling research, it is likely to be criticised and ignored. The price of independence is the loss of funding and access to data. We
depend on researchers and public health organisations to inform us about the potential harms
associated with gambling, consuming alcohol or smoking. The purpose of this research is to better understand how risky activities affect
communities and help us to judge what restrictions, if any, should be placed on their supply and promotion. We cannot trust
gambling research. We must therefore be sceptics. Every expert invited to give evidence to a committee on
gambling should be asked, “Have you ever accepted money from the industry to conduct a piece of research, write a paper or attend a conference?” In
the absence of a culture of disclosing interests, every paper submitted as evidence should be contextualised – again we must ask “Who paid for this
research?” and “How did this person gain access to data?” It’s not much - it
doesn’t produce the independent research that
we so urgently need - but until the field of gambling research undergoes meaningful reform it’s
the least we need to do. In the meantime, voters such as those in Massachusetts looking for
independent research, will have little choice but to roll the dice.
Neolib is a protection racket—questioning its operating logic is key to any
alternative
Naidu 1998 – Ph.D., LL.B., LL.M., Professor of Political Science at Brandon University (M.V.,
Peace Research 30.2, Proquest)
present globalization as the positive, the constructive and the beneficial evolution of
the modern age being shaped by the forces of industrialization, technologicalization and internationalization. In other words, globalization is
being considered as a process that is providing solutions to serious problems of world wars, ecological
disasters, transportation restrictions, cultural misunderstandings, bad use of world resources, high unemployment, Third
World poverty, imbalances in international trade, and economic crises resulting out of poor investments, high interest rates and
high inflation. But the question that should be raised is--what caused these problems? Otherwise we end up
All the above arguments
with the logic of the tragedies caused by drunk driving. More policing, more fines, more restrictions on licensing or more punishment, while selling
more alcohol, can't end the problem of drunk driving; at best, these steps can help as first aid. Only prohibiting alcohol consumption by drivers can
eliminate drunk driving. In other words, rooting
out the causes, not the treatment of the symptoms, can avoid
diseases. Globalized military action can, at best, stop or limit war, but can't eliminate
war. What causes have led to the world wars of the modern age, should be the question. Answer? Modern weapons and
their enormous destructive capabilities.(f.6) And modern weapons of war are very much the products of modern
industry and technology.(f.7) Modern militarization and weaponry of mass destruction are now threatening
the very existence of life on earth. What factors have caused today's life endangering phenomena
ofecological disasters--the depletion of the ozone layer, the warming of the global temperature,(f.8) the dead rivers,
lakes and oceans, deforestation, the poisoned fruits, fishes and food grains, and species extinction?
Worldwide reckless massive industrialization and dehumanized science-technology. By
dehumanization I mean the total concentration of the industries on power and profit to the almost total exclusion
of concerns for human health and happiness in terms of physical, emotional, intellectual and economic well-being.
modern facilities of ships, planes, trains and trucks, essentials of modern industrialization and products of modern technology, have
globalized transportation, they have also globalized the shipment of arms, military equipment, war
While
tanks, battleships, submarines, bombers,(f.9) and transportation, in a matter of hours or days, of thousands of troops to wage wars in every nook and
corner of the world. Besides, the massive increase in the numbers and accidents in transportation have been causing unprecedented damages to
economic wealth, human health and the global ecology.(f.10) Before the advent of modern technology and industry, knowledge, especially in the realms
of the histories, the religions and the cultures of the peoples of the world, was seriously limited. Consequently, international understanding was lacking.
However, misunderstanding was not then a problem. But thanks
to the globalization of the modern modes and
instruments of mass communications--from the printing press to computer chips and communication satellites--the necessary
concomitants of massive industrialization--powerful techniques of propaganda, thought
control and brainwashing have been
globalized. The evils of ethnicism, racism, religionism, chauvinism
and jingoism(f.11) are now spread worldwide through the instrumentality of media colonialism.(f.12) An accounting of the
world's natural resources today reveals the realities that the global resources have either been unused or misused, maldeveloped
or mismanaged, distorted or depleted. This globalization of resource misuse or destruction is the very result of unscrupulous
exploitation of the
globalized colonialism. Neo-colonialism is now proclaiming that globalization of natural resources is good for all. In
other words, neo-colonialism
is spreading the deceptive slogan that what is good for the
developed states is also good for the poor states. The haunting fact is that out of 185 states in the world, almost 40% of world
resources are used up by just one country--the United States. Can we name one politician in the United States, or in any of the developed states, whose
argument that Third World poverty
cannot be eradicated except through globalized efforts hides the fact that poverty has been
the very result of globalized economic exploitation for the industrial development of the Western world. As the only
campaign slogan is--"vote for me and I promise to reduce your standards of living?" The
U
S
hegemony is
globalized
superpower, the
nited tates
now
. Remember, the sun never sets on the globalized British Empire! The old
imperialists now call themselves G-7 or G-8, the OECD countries, the developed states, the donor nations, the money lenders to the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund. The old victims of colonial exploitation have been given new names--the protectorates, the military allies, the
satellites, the Mandates of the League of Nations, the Trust Territories of the United Nations, the client states, the recipients of development assistance,
and so on. Modern
mass industrialization has always resulted in colonialism, i.e., the exploitation and
by an elite that works for the
enrichment of a handful of captains of industry and for the benefit of the ruling class.(f.13) In its early stage colonialism was domestic,
impoverishment of the masses through deception, coercion and political domination
i.e., within the political boundaries of the country. The victims were the landless peasantry, the slaves bought or captured, the ethnic and religious
minorities, destitute women and children, and the undeveloped regions in the country. These victims were best portrayed by the British novelist
Charles Dickens and by American writers like Jane Addams. As
industrialization advanced, colonial exploitation reached foreign
conquests and occupations of territories in Asia, Africa and the Western Hemisphere created colonies(f.14) that
became the backbone of European industrialization by supplying vast natural resources(f.15), enormous slave or cheap labor,
millions of captive consumers, and tremendous opportunities for trade, investment,(f.16) employment and emigration.
lands. Military
Massive
industrialization is impossible without globalized colonialization. Colonialization, in turn, is unavoidable
Thus domestic colonialism evolved into international colonialism. In other words, colonialism was globalized.
by globalized industrialization. Because modern economy of mass industrialization--i.e., the economy of mass production, mass distribution and mass
consumption--cannot be sustained without colonial exploitation, neo-colonialism
now wears the garbs of
globalization--of foreign aid,(f.17) of international investment, of free trade, of technology
transfer, and so on. It is an oxymoron to argue that globalized poverty and economic
inequalities can be eliminated by globalized industrialization and neo-imperialism. Today
one-third of the world controls three-fourths of world trade. Yet this phenomenon is considered a reflection of beneficial globalization whose advocates
are now calling for further globalization through expanded free-market economies. Economically
developed countries benefit
through unrestricted trade in two ways: one, they are ever ready to buy or secure raw materials from
the Third World countries, but not their finished products. The other, they have enormous surpluses of finished
products to sell to the developing countries. These proponents have already set up free trade zones like the Canada-U.S. Free Trade agreement,
NAFTA, the European Common Market, the OECD, the World Trade Organization, etc. The globalization of free trade is
undoubtedly to the advantage of the developed states. On the other hand, the less developed
states that cannot earn much through international trade can ill afford to buy foreign goods. If they do buy, out of pressure or
unavoidability, they become heavily indebted.(f.18) These debts, in turn, retard their economic development. More than this, the less developed
industries of the Third World that cannot compete, either in quality or in quantity, with the products from developed
economies, need protection. In the words of Kaiser, free trade is the weapon of the strong, and
protectionism is the shield of the weak. As long as economic inequalities exist in the world,
and as long as the rich and developed states insist on improving or sustaining their own development, globalization of free trade will
never bring about equitable trade among all states of the world. In every case of massive industrialization, some
groups and regions within and without the state always end up as the victims suffering trade inequalities. Another tragic
consequence that is often played down by the advocates of massive industrialization is the fact that the
more technological and
industrialized an economy becomes, the more susceptible its economy becomes to increased
unemployment. Irrespective of all the complex and complicated explanations offered by the sophisticated economists with econometric
models, the simple truth behind unemployment is the fact that mechanization displaces workers; automation decreases human
employment by making workers surplus or redundant.(f.19) Advanced industrialization, whether under capitalism, communism or fascism,
becomes dehumanized when it pays least or no attention to the fate of the workers and the problems of
the unemployed. Instead, its main focus is on the twin goals of increasing productivity and competitiveness, both of
which mean higher levels of mechanization, automation and rationalization, leading inevitably to lower levels of employment. When European
industrialization during the 18th and 19th centuries made workers redundant, Europe
got rid of the surplus of the
unemployed and the unemployable population in more than one way. The main method of reducing the unemployable and the unwanted was
sending them away to new colonies in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and so on. Today
people of European ancestry--pure or mixed--living outside Europe amount to hundreds of millions. Most of the European emigrants were peasants,
unemployed workers and artisans, criminals, social misfits and exploited ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. These colonies of Europeans not only
saved and supported European industries by absorbing the unwanted population of Europe, the colonies also boosted European industrialization by
becoming suppliers of raw materials, primary industries, cheap labor, huge markets, big profits, large investment and employment opportunities.
Besides, the colonies also provided arms, armies(f.20) and battlefields, thereby enhancing the military capability to fight colonial wars,(f.21) to defend
old possessions or to acquire new territories. These factors further boosted European commerce, diplomacy and international power status
.
As profitability of mass industries leads to huge capital surpluses, need arises for investment
opportunities. Of course, only the rich nations and the wealthy multinational corporations (MNCs) seek outlets for
their surplus wealth. The recipients for such investments are always the poor and the not-so-rich
nations. The current euphemisms for such surplus trade and investments are foreign
aid, development loans, technological assistance, free markets, financial assistance from the World Bank or
International Monetary Fund, and so on. The recent proposal called the Multinational Agreement on Investments (MAI) by the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), consisting of the 29 richest nations in the world, is a good example of the latest neo-colonial
machinations.(f.22) While
,
proclaiming pious platitudes of humanitarianism, the lenders and investors,
of course work for their own profitability. It is like my banker who lends me money and seeks high interest and a mortgage on
everything I own, and then claims that he was doing me a favor, while awaiting to confiscate my possessions the moment I fail to make the payments.
Without the opportunities to substantially increase my earnings, I end up being at the mercy of the bank, borrowing more to pay the interest on
previous borrowings. My banker Shylock will not hesitate to demand his pound of my flesh! Should I feel grateful to this
Globalization of trade, investment and banking(f.23) can only mean further dictation and domination
of the developed countries and further indebtedness and impoverishment of the undeveloped or developing
Shylock?
countries. The globalized Shylock will undoubtedly demand the pound of flesh from the globalized debtors. Countries
like the G-7 that
manipulate interest
rates, stock markets, currency values, inflation, deflation, etc. The recent episodes of the financial collapse
of the seemingly thriving industrialization and economies of countries like South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia
and Indonesia stand as testimony to the fact that the so-called development of the
control most of the world's trade, investment and lending, indirectly control the world's financial markets; they can
dependent economies can be flimsy(f.24), deceptive, corrupt and dehumanized. Thus
the globalization of the financial markets simply means the strengthening
of the stranglehold that the developed
world has on the economies of the underdeveloped world. There is no gainsaying that wars, ecological
disasters, transportation bottlenecks, cultural misunderstandings and brainwashing have become
globalized. The root causes of these problems are massive and dehumanized technology and
industrialization. Similarly, the evils of globalized poverty and economic inequalities, globalized misuse of
world resources and international trade, and globalized manipulation of the world's investments and financial markets are the
results of massive industrialization and colonialism and neocolonialism--domestic and external. The antidote for
these cases of economic globalization is not more globalization, but less of it. The distinction between "globalization from the
top" and "globalization from the bottom" is false. The premise that we can evolve a "globalized civil
society" out of the "globalized militaristic society" is
misleading. Superficial globalized counter-moves for immediate solutions can only be
counter-productive. The target of attack for the evils of globalization should be globalization, through
in-depth and long-term measures, not through band-aid treatments. In order to reduce
and eliminate the root causes, measures should be initiated to reduce in varying stages
the current levels of technologicalization, industrialization and dehumanization of world
economies. This means decentralization, devolution and indiginization of huge economies into small-scale and self-sustaining economies.
Such small economies will only need small-sized and self-governing polities. In a word, small can be beautiful. Reduction in the economicpolitical system implies fundamental changes at the intellectual and cultural level--a reduction in the
s
aspiration of material wealth, greed and selfishness, and an expansion in the values of co-operation, compassion and humanism. These change
in politico-economic-cultural aspects of life necessitate a paradigm shift. Two main arguments can be raised
against the proposed paradigm shift. One, science-technology and industry are not inherently negative or immoral, because they are non-human and
therefore amoral. It is their misuse or misdirection that causes problems discussed above. The other, reduction or elimination of massive
industrialization and technologicalization is neither practical nor desirable. The first argument is falsely formulated because the criticism
of science-technology and industry per se; the criticism is of their massiveness
and their dehumanization. When their impacts on human life and well-being are deliberately
is not
disregardedby those who use them, then science-technology and industry become dehumanized and
cause all the evils of our modern age. It may be argued that science-technology and industry by themselves are not harmful or immoral. This argument
is similar to the one which says that a sword by itself does not kill people; people using it kill people. Therefore the sword is amoral! But in the human
context, the very purpose (telos) in the creation of the sword is to inflict physical harm or death on human beings. The sword is not meant to till the soil.
It is not built to serve as a crutch for a lame person. The destructive purpose of the sword will not change until it is beaten into a ploughshare. But when
it becomes a ploughshare, it is not a sword by definition. For modern science-technology and mass industries power and profit have become the driving
forces, and materialism has become the cherished goal. Power is the capacity of A to influence, persuade, dominate, coerce or force B so as to make B do
or not do something according to the will of A. Profit reflects the drive and the desire to buy, acquire or possess material wealth. The craze for power,
pelf or profit, either at the personal or national level, usually resorts to unscrupulousness, exploitativeness and immorality. Obsession with materialism
devalues intellectual or spiritual goals and induces instinctual behavior, thereby reducing Homo sapiens to the level of beasts. Thus dehumanized
who argue that limiting
globalization of science-technology and industry is impractical and hence impossible,
seem to adhere to the doctrines of fatalism or predestination or historicism similar to the Augustinian concept of
science-technology and industries would cause greater harm when further globalized. Those
original sin and damnation, or Herbert Spencer's concept of social Darwinism, or the Marxist concept of historical materialism or the evolutionist
concept of unidirectional linear progression. Though
raised in the name of realism, none of these concepts are
rational, real or proven; all of them are cynical or pessimistic. Does the argument of impracticality mean the inevitability of globalized selfdestruction of humanity? Cannot human Karma (action) play a part in shaping human destiny? Is
it unrealistic to believe that
human suffering and destruction can be limited, reduced or eliminated through deglobalization
of weapons and wars, and through deglobalization of political oppression, economic
exploitation, and environmental degradation? When someone claims to be "practical," she really
means that she will get what she wants by hook or crook. In this sense, any means whatsoever could be employed to
achieve the ends one desires. That is, the ends should not determine in any way the means to be employed. This approach, thus sets up a dichotomy
between ends and means. Further, when someone argues that something is impractical, she really means she cannot be successful in attaining her
goals. In this sense, success is the essential consideration. The argument that there is no interrelatedness between ends and means is a false dichotomy.
The seed predetermines the nature of the tree, the flower and the fruit, the results. Similarly, hate-filled or violent or immoral means are bound to lead
to results that endorse or establish hatred or violence or immorality. When people are obsessed with success, they want to get what they want within a
prescribed or a short period of time, and if they cannot, then they won't even try. When effort is enslaved to success, human will loses its autonomy; and
pessimism and cynicism that set in rob humanity of its challenge and dynamism. To avoid such losses, we should focus upon and emphasize the view
that effort is essential, not the result, that struggle is important, not the success! For the cynics, being "practical" means being successful in achieving
any goal by any means. Success is critical; means could be immoral or amoral. The Gandhian paradigm of "practical idealism" overcomes both the
problems of bad means and of obsession with success. The paradigm avoids the artificial dichotomy between ends and means by postulating that moral
means are essential for moral goals; the formulation avoids cynicism and frustration by focusing on the struggle without any concern over its success,
and by prescribing modest measures that are feasible in a given situation. The Gandhian paradigm can be translated into two simple phrases--"Think
morally and act morally," and "Think globally and act locally." In fine, deglobalization
of dehumanized science-technology
and mass industrialization can be pursued through practical idealism. In conclusion, globalization is
not the panacea for the world crises; instead it is the deepening of the crises. The answer to the
problems of globalization is decrease, not increase, in globalization. Rehumanization of science-technology and
industrialization is the permanent panacea for the 21st century.
Vote neg to refuse the neoliberal paradigm. Critique is a political choice.
Hay, PHD POLSIS, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham 2004
(Colin, Economy and Society Volume 33 Number 4 November 2004: 500-527 p.523-4)
Accordingly, however
depoliticized and normalized neoliberalism has become, it remains a political and
not a simple necessity. This brings us naturally to the question of alternatives. A number of points
might here be made which follow fairly directly from the above analysis. First, our ability to offer alternatives to
neoliberalism rests now on our ability to identify that there is a choice in such matters and, in so doing, to
demystify and deconstruct the rationalist premises upon which its public legitimation
has been predicated. This, it would seem, is a condition of the return of a more normative and
engaging form of politics in which more is at stake than the personnel to administer a largely
agreed and ostensibly technical neoliberal reform agenda. Second, the present custodians of
neoliberalism are, in many cases, reluctant converts, whose accommodation to neoliberalism is
essentially borne of perceived pragmatism and necessity rather than out of any deep normative
economic choice,
commitment to the sanctity of the market. Thus, rather than defend neoliberalism publicly and in its
own terms, they have sought instead to appeal to the absence of a choice which might be defended in such
terms. Consequently, political discourse is technocratic rather than political. Furthermore, as
Peter Burnham has recently noted, neoliberalism is itself a deeply depoliticizing paradigm (2001), whose
effect is to subordinate social and political priorities, such as might arise from a more dialogic,
responsive and democratic politics, to perceived economic imperatives and to the ruthless efficiency of
the market. As I have sought to demonstrate, this antipathy to ‘politics’ is a direct correlate of public choice
theory’s projection of its most cherished assumption of instrumental rationality onto public
officials. This is an important point, for it suggests the crucial role played by stylized rationalist
assumptions, particularly (as in the overload thesis, public choice theory more generally and even the time-inconsistency
thesis) those which relate to the rational conduct of public officials, in contributing to the depoliticizing
dynamics now reflected in political disaffection and disengagement. As this perhaps serves to indicate, seemingly innocent
assumptions may have alarmingly cumulative consequences. Indeed, the internalization of a
neoliberalism predicated on rationalist assumptions may well serve to render the so-called ‘rational voter
paradox’ something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.12 The rational voter paradox / that in a democratic polity in which parties
behave in a ‘rational’ manner it is irrational for citizens to vote (since the chances of the vote they cast proving decisive are
negligible) / has always been seen as the central weakness of rational choice theory as a set of analytical techniques for exploring
electoral competition. Yet, as the above analysis suggests, in a world constructed in the image of rationalist assumptions, it may
become depressingly accurate. Political parties behaving in a narrowly ‘rational’ manner, assuming
others (electors and market participants) to behave in a similarly ‘rational’ fashion will contribute to a dynamic
which sees real electors (rational or otherwise) disengage in increasing numbers from the facade of
electoral competition. That this is so is only reinforced by a final factor. The institutionalization and
normalization of neoliberalism in many advanced liberal democracies in recent years have been defended in
largely technical and rationalist terms and in a manner almost entirely inaccessible to public
political scrutiny, contestation and debate. The electorate, in recent years, has not been invited to choose
between competing programmatic mandates to be delivered in office, but to pass a judgement on the credibility and competence of
the respective candidates for high office to behave in the appropriate (technical) manner in response to contingent external stimuli.
Is it any wonder that they have chosen, in increasing numbers, not to exercise any such judgement at all at the ballot box? As this
final point suggests, the rejection of the neoliberal paradigm, the demystification of its presumed
inevitability and the rejection of the technical and rationalist terms in which that defence has
been constructed are intimately connected. They are, moreover, likely to be a condition not only
of the return of normative politics but also of the re-animation of a worryingly disaffected and
disengaged democratic culture.
1NC POKER CP
The United States should affirm nearly all prohibitions on linline gambling in the
United States violate the Charming Betsy canon. The United States should legalize
online poker.
Solves case, competes, and politics is a net benefit
Kuznick 2012 (David B [J.D. Candidate 2012, Suffolk University Law School]; ARTICLE:
BETTING BLIND: PROBLEMS WITH PROPOSED FEDERAL REGULATION OF ONLINE
POKER; 12 J. High Tech. L. 450; kdf)
Online poker is here to stay. Chris Moneymaker's rags-to-riches story, the excitement brought to televised poker from the hole-card
camera, and the spread of the Internet, all served to make poker a success. The industry has grown continuously since its inception
and showed no sign of slowing until the Department of Justice's action in April 2011. Yet, because of the lack of U.S.
regulation, online poker in this country is sometimes perceived as being not very different from
when cowboys played cards in the back of saloons in the Wild West with guns close at hand. Congress
previously proposed two different bills, the Internet Gambling Act and the Internet Poker Act, that would regulate, license, and tax
online poker. The bills have the potential to increase revenue at a time when the Federal and State
governments are dealing with the repercussions of an economic crisis. Yet, both bills have flaws that will
likely either prevent their passage, or undermine the revenue potential by crippling the online poker industry. Instead, what is
needed is hybrid legislation that keeps the core ideas intact, while addressing the flaws. The
hybrid legislation should contain the following provisions: legalize only online poker because the Internet Gambling Act's broad legalization of nearly all forms of online gambling
may be a much tougher political sell; a default opt in scheme that provides a solid [*486] U.S.
player base while acknowledging the moral objections to gambling present in some states that
has resulted in some dissatisfaction with the Internet Gambling Act--a good compromise is the
combination of the Internet Poker Act's fifteen states that offer commercial poker with the states
that allow residents to place inter-state horserace wagers; allow U.S. players to compete against
foreign players to ensure an adequate base--both in the event of a larger number of opted out states than expected
and to help online poker sites to continue offering large guaranteed prize pools; and no blackout period as that could drive a sizeable
number of players away who might never return. The more recent Internet Poker Act of 2011, introduced by Barton, is a
good example of this kind of hybrid legislation. It has the best chance of being passed, while still
favorably balancing the social, economic, and political concerns involved.
1NC ZIVOTOFSKY DA
Court will rule against Zivotofsky now, which prevents Palestine escalation – but
Kennedy is key
Amy Howe 11-4-2014; Editor/Reporter for SCOTUSBlog, Jerusalem passport case divides Court: In Plain English
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/11/jerusalem-passport-case-divides-court-in-plain-english/
We often think of the Supreme Court as the arbiter of distinctly national disputes – for example, whether the Affordable Care Act can require all of us to
obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, or whether public universities can consider race as one factor in their admissions process. But yesterday the
Court waded into a dispute that is playing out on a global stage: whether a U.S. citizen born in
Jerusalem can choose to have his place of birth listed as “Israel” on his passport. The answer, according to
the U.S. government, could have a potentially explosive impact on the U.S.’s role in the Middle East peace process, and possibly even on the peace
process itself. Let’s talk about Zivotofsky v. Kerry and yesterday’s argument in Plain English. sSC141103_clock Since 1948, the United States has
declined to recognize any country as having sovereignty over the holy city of Jerusalem. But in 2002, Congress passed a law that instructed the
Secretary of State, upon request, to list the birthplace of a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem as “Israel” on his passport. President George W. Bush signed
the law, but at the same time he issued a statement – known as a “signing statement” – in which he protested that the law “interferes with the
President’s constitutional authority to conduct the Nation’s foreign affairs and to supervise the . . . executive branch.” The child at the heart of today’s
case, Menachem Zivotofsky, was born in Jerusalem in 2002 to U.S.-citizen parents. When his parents applied for a passport for him, they asked –
consistent with the then-new law — to have his place of birth be designated as “Israel” on his passport. When the State Department refused, the family
brought this lawsuit, which has already been to the Supreme Court once before. Two years ago, the Justices decided that the lawsuit could continue; it
was not, they concluded, the kind of “political question” that courts should leave to the president and Congress. The case went back to the lower court,
which ruled in the government’s favor. It agreed with the government that only the president has the power to recognize foreign countries. And the law
ran afoul of that power, it concluded, because it tried to change the government’s long-standing policy of not recognizing any country as having
sovereignty over Jerusalem. Zivotofsky asked the Supreme Court to weigh in, and it agreed to do so earlier this year. At yesterday’s oral argument,
lawyers for the two sides painted very different pictures of the potential effects of the law. Representing the United States, Solicitor General Don Verrilli
told the Justices that the
“question of the status of Jerusalem is the most vexing and volatile and
difficult diplomatic issue that this nation has faced for decades.” He cautioned the Court that upholding the
statute would undermine the president’s credibility in the Middle East peace process, and he
reminded the Justices that the passage of the law had prompted “mass demonstrations in Jerusalem,
thousands of people in the streets, some turning violent.” Alyza Lewin, representing Zivotofsky, downplayed the
government’s warnings about the possibly dire international consequences of the law, dismissing them as “grossly exaggerated.” Eventually, she
suggested, listing Israel as the birthplace on the passports of U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem would “become a non-issue.” And Congress has the power
to require the State Department to do so, she maintained, pursuant to its power to regulate passports. That exercise of the “passport power” here does
not infringe on the president’s power to recognize foreign countries, she contended, because a passport simply identifies someone as a U.S. citizen for
purposes of overseas travel. Identifying Menachem Zivotofsky on his passport as having been born in “Israel” does not, she argued, amount to a formal
recognition by the U.S. government of Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Lewin’s argument drew criticism from the Court’s more liberal members.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg countered that the
whole purpose of the law was to declare that Jerusalem is the
capital of Israel. Justice Elena Kagan echoed that question later in the oral argument, asking Lewin how to characterize the statute if it isn’t a
recognition statute. Lewin’s response — that the statute was “created to give individuals the right to self-identify” as someone born in Israel – prompted
Kagan to label it “a very selective vanity plate law.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor also appeared skeptical of Lewin’s argument, describing the law as an
effort by Congress to direct the Secretary of State to say something that isn’t true: “that someone born in Jerusalem is actually born in Israel.” During
his thirty minutes of argument time, Verrilli repeatedly emphasized that the fundamental problem with the law is that – in conflict with the president’s
exclusive power to recognize foreign countries — it purports to order the president to issue “diplomatic communications” (passports) that contradict
the official policy of the U.S. on Jerusalem. But several of the Court’s more conservative Justices were clearly unconvinced. Justice Samuel Alito
questioned whether the law really would make much of a difference. After all, he observed, the United States has already recognized that Israel has
control over Jerusalem in other ways – for example, the Israeli government issued a birth certificate to Zivotofsky, which the U.S. government accepted
as part of the documentation needed to get a passport. Justice Antonin Scalia did not mince words, telling Verrilli that, if the law falls within Congress’s
power to regulate passports, “what difference does it make whether it antagonizes foreign countries?” And Chief Justice John Roberts asked Verrilli
why, if recording Zivotofsky’s place of birth as Israel were really such a problem, President George W. Bush signed the law at all. Justice Anthony
Kennedy, who often proves to be the deciding vote in closely divided cases, could play that role
again here, and he was harder to read. On the one hand, he suggested to Lewin that, if the Court were to defer
to the government’s contention that listing “Israel” as the birthplace of U.S. citizens born in
Jerusalem amounted to recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the government’s
position would trump the law. On the other hand, he asked Verrilli why the State Department couldn’t comply with the law and
list “Israel” as the birthplace of U.S. citizens like Zivotofsky, but at the same time put a disclaimer inside the passport to make clear that the designation
did not reflect the position of the State Department or “an indication that Israel . . . had jurisdiction over Jerusalem.” After an hour of oral argument,
the case appeared to be a close one. It ended on a somber note, with Justice Kagan noting that “history suggests that everything is a big deal with
respect to the status of Jerusalem. And right now,” she continued, “Jerusalem
is a tinderbox because of issues about
the status of and access to a particularly holy site there. And so . . . everything matters, doesn’t it?”
Whether Kagan’s words will ultimately sway at least four other Justices, and the extent to which its ruling
will ultimately matter, remains to be seen.
The plan trades off---the Court has limited willingness to fight Congress by striking
down statutes
Ernest A. Young 99, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, 1999,
“ARTICLE: State Sovereign Immunity and the Future of Federalism,” Supreme Court Review,
1999 Sup. Ct. Rev. 1, p. lexis
The opportunity cost of immunity rulings. The first reason, and the simplest, is that the Court has limited political
capital. n261 As Dean Choper has argued, "the federal judiciary's ability to persuade the populace and public
leaders that it is right and they are wrong is determined by the number and frequency of its
attempts [*59] to do so, the felt importance of the policies it disapproves, and the perceived substantive correctness
of its decisions." n262 There is thus likely to be, at some point, a limit on the Court's ability to continue striking
down federal statutes in the name of states' rights. n263 To the extent that this limit exists, then the Court's extended adventure in
aggressive enforcement of state sovereign immunity will trade off with its ability to develop a meaningful jurisprudence of process or power federalism.
If protecting state authority to regulate private conduct is the key to a viable state/federal balance, then a considered reaffirmation, explanation, or
extension of Lopez may do more good than another expansion of Seminole Tribe. ¶ "Political capital," of course, is a pretty vague concept. It might be
that the Court's ability to enforce federalism limits is more like muscles than money: it atrophies unless it is exercised regularly. n264 The National
League of Cities story arguably illustrates this phenomenon, in that the Court's failure to apply the doctrine to check federal power in a series of
subsequent cases may have helped lead to the outright rejection of the doctrine in Garcia. n265 The
important point, however, is that
the Justices who matter most on these issues tend to think in terms of limited capital and
worry about judicial actions that may draw down the reserves. n266 Political capital [*60] is thus
likely to function as an internal constraint on the Court's willingness repeatedly to
confront Congress.
Kennedy wants to keep his centrist creds – he’ll swing the ruling to preserve
capital
Samuel Ashe Bilionis, 2005; Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, (Samuel, 83 N.C.L. Rev.
1353, Lexis)
We could say that Justice Kennedy is a switch-hitting centrist. When shared faith cannot serve as the centering
force, a more palatable, metaphorically centered and grounded framework that avoids the extremes of the competition does.
(Given his ability to produce rulings that please conservatives one day and liberals the next, we
also could
say that Justice Kennedy can hit the ball to all fields.) It should interest us that an
intelligent man who obviously has devoted much thought to these matters has chosen to invoke both of these
brands of centrism to stake his ground in the areas that have proved most controversial during his years on the
Supreme Court. Justice Kennedy plainly perceives himself as a centrist and wishes to be perceived as
one. These are the ways he has chosen to construct a centrist judicial personam.
Global war
Seth Lipsky 4-22-2014, founder and editor of the New York Sun, foreign editor and member of the Wall Street Journal editorial
board “The Jerusalem Question: Will a U.S. Court Case Trigger WWIII?”, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.586566
The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court Monday to give another hearing to one of the most
explosive cases before it in years – the so-called Jerusalem question – certainly sets the stage for some
high court drama in the Middle East. It concerns whether Secretary of State John Kerry will have to bow to
Congress and state in Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky’s U.S. passport that he was born in Israel. The law that requires Kerry to do
this – for Zivotofsky, or any other American born in Jerusalem who wants Israel listed as his place of birth – was passed in 2002 by
an almost unanimous House and a unanimous Senate. The Jerusalem requirement was part of a larger bill funding the State
Department. It was signed by one of America’s most pro-Israel presidents, George W. Bush. But Bush issued a signing statement
saying the requirement to issue consular documents listing Jerusalem as part of Israel infringed on his executive powers. He may
have promised to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, but he defaulted on that. He also refused to yield to Congress on the
passport question. President Barack Obama took the same position, as did secretaries of state Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton and now
Kerry. Clinton and Kerry balked, even though they’d been in the Senate that passed the law unanimously. They all tried to dodge it
by saying that the question of Jerusalem was the president’s to decide and, in any event, was a political matter beyond the ken of the
courts. All the liberal commentators and the anti-Israel left were certain Master Zivotofsky was going to lose. And he was losing,
until it reached the Supreme Court the first time. Then, in March 2012, the Supreme Court stunned the foreign policy bar by casting
aside Secretary of State Clinton’s pettifogging. It did so by a vote of 8-1, in a stern opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts,
who told the lower court in no uncertain terms that it would have to step up and decide the matter. Roberts made clear that the
courts weren’t being asked to decide whether Jerusalem was part of Israel. That is a political question. They were being asked to
decide whether Congress has the authority, under the Constitution, to decide the political question. “This is what courts do,” Roberts
wrote. “The political question doctrine poses no bar to judicial review of this case.” So, the matter went back to the second most
powerful bench: the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Last year, it issued its second ruling against
Zivotofsky. It held that Congress had infringed on the president’s so-called “recognition power.” So Zivotofsky went back to the
Supreme Court and successfully asked for a second hearing. Now the Nine will have an opportunity to answer
what I call the World War III question. It was first posed by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who asked point-blank
about the possibility that war could result from America listing “Israel” as the country of birth of a
person born in Jerusalem. “Let’s assume that a dozen nations said this designation on the
passport is – we view as an act of war; if the United States is going to do this, we’re going to view it as an act of war,”
Justice Sotomayor said. “Would that then permit the president to ignore Congress...” The court’s transcript indicates the justice let
the last word hang in the air. Zivotofsky’s lawyer – the famed constitutionalist Nathan Lewin – replied, “If Congress determines that
in any event this is what the passport should say, then that is Congress...” He was interrupted by one of the justices, and the
moment, through no fault of his own, was lost. The answer is – or ought to be – that if it’s war that the Supreme Court fears, then the
decision belongs to Congress. For it is expressly to Congress that the Constitution grants the power to declare war in the first place.
There were signs that the Supreme Court was having a hard time deciding even whether to take a second look at the case.
Zivotofsky’s petition had been on the docket for its secret conference three times so far this term, and no decision had emerged. But
the court finally granted certiorari, setting the stage for a final showdown. The consequences
are potentially huge – not only for Israel, but also for other countries at a time when we have an administration that
wants to retreat overseas and a Congress that doesn’t.
“Gotcha” application of Charming Betsy causes backlash and turns case
Kuhner, 3 (Timothy, 13 Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L. 419, “HUMAN RIGHTS TREATIES IN U.S.
LAW: THE STATUS QUO, ITS UNDERLYING BASES, AND PATHWAYS FOR CHANGE”,
Spring, lexis)
Advocates of the "gotcha" approach must bear in mind the unintended consequences of
enforcing upon a state obligations to which it did not consent, or could not reasonably be
construed as having consented. For example, the United States might cease to advocate for
human rights treaties and fail to join future treaties. This latter implication, however,
seems increasingly irrelevant as U.S. "exceptionalism" grows. 238 Nevertheless, even strong
human rights proponents, such as Professor Louis Henkin, maintain that in a multilateral
treaty, a reservation or understanding embodies the intent of the party and this intent is used to
interpret what obligations that party undertook. 239 The "gotcha" approach seeks to steamroll
over the disjuncture between the Senate power as understood by the Senate and, presumably,
the Supreme Court, and the official interpretation of applicable rights and duties under
international law. The approach is only useful, insofar as its execution constitutes judicial notice of a problem in need of
resolution and reminds the political branches that the Constitution [*468] makes international law "our law." 240