Kentucky 1AC
Contention 1 is Banks
Financial sector collapse inevitable absent capital buffer
Wall Street Journal 8/7 (8/7/14; "Dodd-Frank Goes 0 for 11: Reulators Admit They Think Giant
Banks are Still Too Big to Fail"; online.wsj.com/articles/dodd-frank-goes-0-for-11-1407368348. Moir)
The debate over whether federal officials believe the largest banks are still too big to fail ended this week in Washington. After examining the second drafts of
"living wills" that each bank is required to submit under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, financial regulators voted unanimously that not one of the country's 11
most complicated banks would be able to enter bankruptcy without causing dire economic consequences. The Federal Reserve and the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation jointly announced that the giant banks did not have adequate plans in the event of distress or failure. The FDIC board was especially
pungent, finding that the plans submitted by the 11 giants "are not credible and do not facilitate an orderly resolution under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code." The Fed
said the shortcomings include "unsupported expectations regarding the international resolution process" and "failures to address structural and organizational
impediments to an orderly resolution." In a separate statement, FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig sent a more direct warning to taxpayers: "Despite the
thousands of pages of material these firms submitted, the plans provide no credible or clear path through bankruptcy that doesn't require unrealistic assumptions
and direct or indirect public support." That's
because, Mr. Hoenig said, these firms are more complicated than they
were in 2008 and "when failure is imminent, no firm has yet shown how it will access private sector
'debtor in possession' financing, a critical element in restructuring a firm." The media are portraying all of this as another
Washington castigation of Wall Street. But when every kid in the class is flunking the test, parents naturally raise questions about the quality of the school—and the
test. Plenty of bankers will tell you they were given little guidance from D.C. on this bankruptcy test and felt blind-sided by the results. The failing students are Bank
of America, BAC +0.13% Bank of New York Mellon, BK -0.16% Barclays, BARC.LN +0.96% Citigroup, C -0.12% Credit Suisse, CSGN.VX -0.41% Deutsche Bank, DBK.XE
+0.10% Goldman Sachs, GS +0.12% JPMorgan Chase, JPM -0.04% Morgan Stanley, MS +0.41% State Street Corp. STT -0.09% , and UBS. UBSN.VX +0.13%. These
institutions can afford some of the highest-priced legal talent in the world. Could not one of them find
lawyers able to figure out how to satisfy Washington? The failures, two years after the initial "living will"
drafts were submitted, raise questions about whether it will ever be possible for such large institutions
to write their own funeral arrangements. In that sense Tuesday's failing grades represent most of all a failure of the Dodd-Frank vision for
bank regulation. The model is supposed to be that regulators will be able to see failure coming and prevent it. They will also so thoroughly understand all that the
banks do that the wind-downs will be seamless. Apparently not. As
Mr. Hoenig also explained, the giant banks "remain
excessively leveraged with ratios of nearly 22 to 1 on average. The remainder of the industry averages
closer to 12 to 1. Thus, the margin for error and time to default for the largest, most systemically
important financial firms is nearly half that of other far less systemically important commercial banks."
Our view is that it would be a brave Treasury Secretary, of either party, willing to shut down one of these banks without taxpayer help if they fail. That
means the only way to prevent a bailout is with a large enough capital buffer to make failure less
likely,
or by writing a special provision of the federal bankruptcy code for these large institutions that removes political discretion. Until that happens, the living
wills will be a fiction no matter what regulators say.
The aff injects capital into the industry
Miller 08 (2/20/2008; Jason Miller: multi-national corporation business consultant, Attorney at Miller
& Monroe Law; “Don't Bet on This Legislation: The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act Places a
Bigger Burden on Financial Institutions Than Internet Gambling”;
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&
ved=0CCcQFjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.unc.edu%2Fcomponents%2Fhandlers%2Fdocument.as
hx%3Fcategory%3D24%26subcategory%3D52%26cid%3D105&ei=h6bqU8OTIMnMsQSLw4GwBw&usg=A
FQjCNHOWmhLvbBE_VrxIMXVMiPIAq8veQ&sig2=OCMROrJt2en94Ot-vXan0A. Moir)
Legalizing Internet gambling would have a huge impact on the financial industry.279 Bringing this fastgrowing industry under the regulation of the U.S. government would allow institutions to profit from a
sundry of transaction fees.280 Experts estimate that a credit card is used in 90% of Internet gambling
transactions.281 Internet gambling operations often incur as much as 7.5% per transaction in charges
and fees from the merchant acquirer,282 card network,283 and issuing bank.284 Conservatively
assuming 7% in fees and charges and a U.S. gambling market of $6 billion, 285 financial institutions
stand to gain about $420 million per year in revenues. Legalization would also mitigate the risk of
customers defaulting on money owed and then suing to expunge the debt because it was accrued on an
illegal activity, a risk that currently exists for financial institutions.286 Legalization would also present serious financial
benefits to the U.S. government and citizens via tax revenues.287 The Internal Revenue Code already has a section in place to include gambling
winnings in an individual’s gross income.288 Licensing and regulation would give the Internal Revenue Service a mechanism to collect taxes on
gambling deposits, gambling withdrawals, or just net winnings.289 In any scenario, with the U.S. gambling market currently at $6 billion and
growing, there is an opportunity for significant tax revenue. Legalization
would produce a windfall for financial
institutions and the U.S. government in taxes, but at what social cost? Anti-gambling advocates argue that these costs
include youth gambling, an exacerbation of compulsive gambling, a gateway to other criminal activities, and a negative impact on sports.290
However, these negative
implications are speculative at best. A 2007 study by the Harvard Medical School’s
Division on Addictions found that only 1% of Internet gamblers exhibited excessive gambling patterns.291
Regarding underage gambling, technology is available to control this problem in a more effective manner than pure prohibition.292 In the end,
the strongest remaining opposition to legalization is a purely moral one.293 And as Prohibition proved,
moral disdain by a small minority of individuals is not strong enough to control the overwhelming
opinion of the masses.294 If the masses prevail, there will be a tremendous windfall for financial institutions.295 Anti-gambling
advocates have presented valid concerns about the dangers of gambling.296 But just like the Prohibition era, these dangers are most
appropriately addressed through proactive regulation.297 Furthermore, there is a significant social cost to prohibiting Internet gambling. Many
gambling advocates argue that prohibiting this activity is an unreasonable infringement on personal liberties.298 These advocates cite the often
victimless nature of gambling.299 Freedom advocates might separate the question of whether gambling is morally acceptable from the
question of whether the government should take affirmative action to legislate a moral position on the issue.300 Although this issue is not
analyzed thoroughly in this Note, it bears mention as another viewpoint in the social cost discussion. The UIGEA will not be effective in curbing
Internet gambling and its related social evils.301 Legalization could better address these evils while providing financial benefits to the U.S.
government, citizens, financial services and other related industries.302 Therefore,
Congress should consider controlling
Internet gambling by regulating it, rather than squandering government and private resources on
fighting a losing battle.303
Even absent capital buffers- the aff is necessary to sustain industry investments
Miller 08 (2/20/2008; Jason Miller: multi-national corporation business consultant, Attorney at Miller
& Monroe Law; “Don't Bet on This Legislation: The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act Places a
Bigger Burden on Financial Institutions Than Internet Gambling”;
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&
ved=0CCcQFjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.unc.edu%2Fcomponents%2Fhandlers%2Fdocument.as
hx%3Fcategory%3D24%26subcategory%3D52%26cid%3D105&ei=h6bqU8OTIMnMsQSLw4GwBw&usg=A
FQjCNHOWmhLvbBE_VrxIMXVMiPIAq8veQ&sig2=OCMROrJt2en94Ot-vXan0A. Moir)
(The Agencies: Treasury and the Federal Reserve System)
Although the Agencies met the mandate imposed by the UIGEA, they seem to have drafted regulations
with the goal of minimizing the burden on financial institutions.148 This is favorable for financial
institutions, but it undermines the fundamental goal of the UIGEA: hindering Internet gambling.149
Thus, the costs that these regulations impose on financial institutions are unnecessary.
Because the drafters of the UIGEA were unwilling to make a determination on the legality of Internet
gambling, the Agencies were forced to draft ambiguous regulations that restrict “unlawful Internet
gambling” with no determination of what constitutes “unlawful Internet gambling.”151 Just like the drafters of
the UIGEA, the Agencies have deferred to state and federal laws to determine which Internet gambling transactions are illegal.152 Ironically,
the Agencies rejected the blacklist approach (the micro approach) because it would have unfairly required them “to formally interpret the
various [f]ederal and [s]tate gambling laws in order to determine whether the activities of each business that appears to conduct some type of
gambling-related function are unlawful under those statutes.”153 Yet, in adopting the macro approach, the Agencies are instead leaving
financial institutions to determine what is lawful in the states in which they operate.154 If the Agencies are not suited to make this decision,
then financial institutions are certainly no better positioned.155 Financial
institutions that operate in multiple states will
be subject to uncertainty, as each state’s laws may differ on the subject of gambling and there is no
consensus on the reach of the federal laws.156 A bank that operates in all fifty states will have to analyze, interpret and
monitor the anti-gambling laws of all fifty states.157 Furthermore, citizens of the same state could potentially be treated differently by their
financial institutions based on interpretations of state law.158 Forcing
financial institutions to absorb the ongoing costs of
making these legal determinations is just one negative consequence of the ill-conceived UIGEA.159 Another
negative consequence of the UIGEA is that it forces financial institutions to become law enforcement agents. Some financial institutions,
specifically those with a direct connection to foreign banks that serve the Internet gambling industry, will now be required to act as the
enforcement mechanism in the U.S. government’s fight against Internet gambling.160 Other institutions will be required to implement
procedures to reasonably protect against the use of their systems for Internet gambling transactions.161 Although the largest burden is placed
on participants in the card system and wire transfer system, significant compliance burdens are also placed on participants in the other
systems.162 As could be reasonably expected, financial institutions are deeply troubled by the government’s decision to force them into this
law enforcement role.163 They
fear that the financial burden of complying with the UIGEA will drain them of
“‘finite resources currently engaged in complying with anti-terrorism, anti-money laundering regulations
and daily operations.’”164 Many experts are also concerned about the reach of this federal legislation and the impact it will have on
the private relationship between banks and consumers.165 The concern is that if citizens perceive banks as law
enforcement agents, citizens may be less likely to use the services of a particular bank or the banking
industry in general.166 If citizens lose confidence in their private relationships with their banks, they
may decide to terminate those relationships and retain their funds or seek other alternatives, possibly
even foreign banks.167 Cumulatively, this type of movement could have a profound impact on the
viability and profitability of financial institutions in the United States.168
Financial institutions are key to clean tech advancement that solves extinction via
warming- maintaining profitability in the short term is key
Weston 14 (Del- writer selected to participate in the Routledge Explorations in Environmental ScienceRoutledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and
social sciences., 2014, “The Political Economy of Global Warming: The Terminal Crisis”,
http://books.google.com/books?id=qORXAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=%22financial+institution
s%22+%22global+warming%22&source=bl&ots=HJAwviyhC0&sig=bnweVlocRwdx8hf_oJ_Rop7z8E0&hl=
en&sa=X&ei=9nYOVNmcLpGRgwTrmoGICQ&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22financial%20institu
tions%22%20%22global%20warming%22&f=false)
*we can win that oil an dren
Financial institutions and solutions to global warming Various statements made by or around the finance
sector by a number of financial institutions, while not necessarily fully reflecting the severity of the global warming situation,
go much further than our governments and global institutions. Perhaps this is inevitable as the’ are seeking to build
into their forecasts the threat to their profits. Let me recap here some of these ‘financial’ observations in relation to global warming. A joint
report produced by the Allianz Group and the World Wide Fund for Nature (2005: i)) begins by saving:
‘Climate change poses a major risk to the global economy : It affects the wealth of societies, the
availability of resources. the price of energy and the value of companies. The report continues: the changes are
principally man-made The issue has become urgent because the pace of change is accelerating .. Europe
is not only warming 40 percent faster than the world as a whole, but has already sustained severe damage from climate change. Storms in 1999
and hoods in 2002 each cost 13 billion euros, whiIe a heat wave in 2003 cost 10 billion euros. Although no precise estimate of all future costs
can be made. a European Commission paper puts the future cost of all the potential cumulative global damage at 74 trillion euros at todays
value if effective action is not taken ,. Globally, climate
change already results in about 160,000 deaths a year, and
this is likely to rise sharply because of increasing shortages of food and water. The extraordinary heat wave in 2003
caused 27,000 deaths in Europe and disrupted agriculture. inland shipping. and electricity production: I luge swathes of forests covering a total
of 5 per cent of Portugal’s surface area were destroyed in a loss put at one billion euros. By the end of this century such a summer could be
routine Mediterranean agriculture might be in a state of collapse. Everywhere in Europe rainfall will he more intense. The number of major
floods in Europe has already risen from one per year to IS in recent decades. In the UK, the annual cost of flooding this century will rise to as
much as 30 billion euros... (ihid, V) In a similar vein, in a 2008 report produced for the banking sector b’ Ceres and commissioned by RiskMctrics
Group (Cogan 2008: 11). an international risk management body, states that: There
is now overwhelming scientific evidence
that worldwide temperatures are rising, glaciers are melting, and drought and wildfires are becoming
more severe Scientists believe most of the warming in the last 50 years is human- induced. This confluence of
evidence has galvanized public attention and governments worldwide to take action to avert a possible climate catastrophe. This report is
a comprehensive assessment of how 40 of the world’s largest banks are preparing themselves to face
the colossal climate change challenge. With nearly $6 trillion in market capitalization, the global financial sector will
play a vital role in supporting timely, cost—effective solutions to reduce U. S. and global greenhouse
gas emissions. As risk management experts. it is essential that banks begin now to consider the financial risk
implications of continued investment in carbon-intensive energy technologies It continues: For a global
economy already faced with $100-barrel oil and a projected 50 percent increase in energy demand over
the next 25 years. the climate change mega-trend may bring the global economy to a historic tipping
point. While globalization and the spread of market-based economies have created wealth for a fastgrowing human population, they have also hastened a day of reckoning when fossil fuel shortages and
excess climate-changing emissions could combine to spawn a global climate and energy crisis. As Theodore
Roosevelt IV. a managing director for Lehman brothers, stated recently. The economic transformation driven by climate change. we believe, will
be more profound and deeper than globalization, as energy is so fundamental to economic growth’ (ibid.: Il) When
institutions that
are at the very heart of the capitalist system are making such statements. it is difficult to understand
why governments are not acting more decisively.
US clean tech investment is necessary to solve warming
Cheeseman 9
Gina-Marie Cheeseman, Writer for care2, a web magazine, “Is Clean Tech the Solution to Global
Warming?” December 31st, 2009, http://www.care2.com/causes/is-clean-tech-the-solution-to-globalwarming.html
“If there is a solution to global warming it will be technological, not political, in nature,” a
recent editorial proclaimed. At COP15, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) held a side event to highlight the need for business
to deploy clean technology. Jean-Yves Caneill, sustainable development project manager for Electricité de France said that there are
already
technologies in existence which “can help decarbonizes the economy.” He added that “successful
deployment conditions” need to be created along with progressively building the international architecture. Peter
Taylor, head of the Energy Technology Policy Division for the International Energy Agency (IEA) said, “The IEA believes that technology will
be at the heart of the discussion. Whatever Copenhagen’s outcome, it is vital to marry the public and private sectors in order to spread
clean technology as fast as possible. “Stimulating sustainability and economic growth in developing countries requires a different way of
looking at technology, finance and regional partnerships from the energy and electricity sectors,” said Wendy Poulton, Chair, ICC Energy
Task Force A
study by the Gigaton Throwdown Initiative released last summer identified seven clean technologies
that could be drastically scaled up by 2020 in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by one
gigaton (one billion tons), which is equivalent to the installed capacity of 205 gigawatts (GW). The seven clean technologies
are: biofuels, building efficiency, concentrating solar power, construction materials, geothermal, solar photovoltaics, and wind According
to the study, each
clean technology will need considerable amounts of investment to achieve gigaton
scale by 2020. Biofuels-$383 billion investment Building efficiency-$61 billion to achieve gigaton scale Concentrating solar power$2.24 trillion Construction materials-$445 billion Geothermal-$919 billion Solar photovoltaics-$2.1 trillion Wind- $1.38 trillion Current
investment in clean tech This year, South Korea devoted 80 percent of its economic stimulus package to clean technology. Now the South
Korean government is predicting that manufacturing companies will invest over $3.4 billion in its clean technology sector in 2010, up from
$2.7 billion in 2009. A senior government official told Reuters earlier this month, “The government will help private firms raise their
investment in clean technology by preparing new policies to expand the industries, for instance requiring public buildings to consume
renewable energy.” He added, “The government would rather help more private funds to be spent in clean and renewable energy sectors
as lots of private funds are already out there.” China, South Korea, and Japan will invest $519 billion in clean technology between 2009 and
2013, according to a study by the Breakthrough Institute and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, titled Rising Tigers,
Sleeping Giant. The U.S. government will only invest $172 billion. Between 2000 and 2008 the U.S. attracted $52 billion in private capital
for renewable energy technologies. The Cleantech Group predicts that clean
tech in the U.S. will be the largest recipient
of venture capital funding. Clean tech received approximately 25 percent of all venture capital investment during the third
quarter of 2009. Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association said, “Cleantech investing by US venture firms has
grown from under 5 percent of venture investing just several years ago to 15 percent of venture investing in 2008. Two-thirds of the
$1.6 billion invested in clean tech by venture capital firms globally was invested into U.S. firms,
according to the Cleantech Group. Solar-based technologies received $451 million, the largest amount of investment. Cleantech
transportation technologies, including biofuels, received $383 million. Green buildings received $110 million Read
more: http://www.care2.com/causes/is-clean-tech-the-solution-to-global-warming.html#ixzz1RzyABRMe
Absent US lead, other countries wont latch onto programs and conflicts are inevitable
Klarevas 9 – Professor of Global Affairs
Louis, Professor at the Center for Global Affairs – New York University, “Securing American Primacy
While Tackling Climate Change: Toward a National Strategy of Greengemony”, Huffington Post, 12-15,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis-klarevas/securing-american-primacy_b_393223.html
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 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 numerous
proactive Republicans and quite a few reticent Democrats. The real divide is instead one between realists and liberals. Students of
realpolitik, which still heavily guides American foreign policy, largely discount environmental issues as they are not seen as advancing
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 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 understand is that 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 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 challenge the U.S. on a variety of fronts. 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 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 China in far-off places like Africa and
Latin America. As oil is a limited natural resource, 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
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 gold - clean, environmentally-friendly energy like wind, solar, and hydrogen power. 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 standards for automobiles; improving public transportation networks; and
expanding nuclear and wind power sources. Others, however, have not progressed much beyond the drawing board: 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.
Warming outweighs and turns every impact- guarantees extinction
Sharp and Kennedy, 14 – is an associate professor on the faculty of the Near East South Asia Center
for Strategic Studies (NESA). A former British Army Colonel he retired in 2006 and emigrated to the U.S.
Since joining NESA in 2010, he has focused on Yemen and Lebanon, and also supported NESA events into
Afghanistan, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Qatar. He is the faculty lead for NESA’s work supporting
theUAE National Defense College through an ongoing Foreign Military Sales (FMS) case. He also directs
the Network of Defense and Staff Colleges (NDSC) which aims to provide best practice support to
regional professional military and security sector education development and reform. Prior to joining
NESA, he served for 4 years as an assistant professor at the College of International Security Affairs
(CISA) at National Defense University where he wrote and taught a Masters' Degree syllabus for a
program concentration in Conflict Management of Stability Operations and also taught strategy,
counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and also created an International Homeland Defense Fellowship
program. At CISA he also designed, wrote and taught courses supporting the State Department's Civilian
Response Corps utilizing conflict management approaches. Bob served 25 years in the British Army and
was personally decorated by Her Majesty the Queen twice. Aftergraduating from the Royal Military
Academy, Sandhurst in 1981, he served in command and staff roles on operations in Northern Ireland,
Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Afghanistan, and Cyprus. He has worked in policy and technical staff appointments
in the UK Ministry of Defense and also UK Defense Intelligence plus several multi-national organizations
including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In his later career, he
specialized in intelligence. He is a 2004 distinguished graduate of the National War College and holds a
masters degree in National Security Strategy from National Defense University, Washington, D.C. AND is
a renewable energy and climate change specialist who has worked for the World Bank and the Spanish
Electric Utility ENDESA on carbon policy and markets (Robert and Edward, 8-22, “Climate Change and
Implications for National Security” http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2014/08/22/climatechange-implications-national-security/)djm
Our planet is 4.5 billion years old. If that whole time was to be reflected on a single one-year calendar then the dinosaurs died off sometime
late in the afternoon of December 27th and modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago, or at around lunchtime on December 28th.
Therefore, human life on earth is very recent. Sometime on December 28th humans made the first fires – wood fires – neutral in the carbon
balance. Now reflect on those most recent 200,000 years again on a single one-year calendar and you might be surprised to learn that the
industrial revolution began only a few hours ago during the middle of the afternoon on December 31st, 250 years ago, coinciding with the
discovery of underground carbon fuels. Over the 250 years carbon fuels have enabled tremendous technological advances including a
population growth from about 800 million then to 7.5 billion today and the consequent demand to extract even more carbon. This has occurred
during a handful of generations, which is hardly noticeable on our imaginary one-year calendar. The
release of this carbon – however –
is changing our climate at such a rapid rate that it threatens our survival and presence on earth. It defies
imagination that so much damage has been done in such a relatively short time. The
implications of climate change are the
single most significant threat to life on earth and, put simply, we are not doing enough to rectify the
damage. This relatively very recent ability to change our climate is an inconvenient truth; the science is sound. We know of the
complex set of interrelated national and global security risks that are a result of global warming and the velocity at
which climate change is occurring. We worry it may already be too late. Climate change writ large has informed few, interested some, confused
many, and polarized politics. It
has already led to an increase in natural disasters
including but not limited to droughts,
storms, floods, fires etc. The year 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to an American Meteorological Society (AMS)
report. Research suggests that climate
change is already affecting human displacement; reportedly 36 million people were
displaced
because of rising sea levels, heat and storms. Climate change affects all natural systems . It impacts
displaced in 2008 alone because of sudden natural disasters. Figures for 2010 and 2011 paint a grimmer picture of people
temperature and consequently it
affects water and weather patterns . It contributes to desertification,
deforestation and acidification of the oceans . Changes in weather patterns may mean droughts in one area and floods in
another. Counter-intuitively, perhaps, sea levels rise but perennial river water supplies are reduced because glaciers
are retreating. As glaciers and polar ice caps melt, there is an albedo effect, which is a double whammy of
less temperature regulation because of less surface area of ice present. This means that less absorption occurs and also
there is less reflection of the sun’s light. A potentially critical wild card could be runaway climate change due to the release of
methane from melting tundra. Worldwide permafrost soils contain about 1,700 Giga Tons of carbon, which is about four times more than all
the carbon released through human activity thus far. The
planet has already adapted itself to dramatic climate change
including a wide range of distinct geologic periods and multiple extinctions, and at a pace that it can be managed. It is human
intervention
more severe
systems
that
has accelerated the pace dramatically : An increased surface temperature, coupled with
weather and changes in water distribution will create uneven threats to our agricultural
and will foster
Rising sea levels will
people –
and support the spread of insect borne diseases
increasingly
half the planet
threaten
like Malaria, Dengue and the West Nile virus.
our coastal population and infrastructure centers and with more than 3.5 billion
– depending on the ocean for their primary source of food, ocean acidification may dangerously undercut
critical natural food systems which would result in reduced rations. Climate change also carries significant inertia. Even if emissions were
completely halted today, temperature increases would continue for some time. Thus
the impact is not only to the
environment, water, coastal homes, agriculture and fisheries as mentioned, but also would lead to conflict
and thus impact national security . Resource wars are inevitable as countries respond, adapt and
compete for the shrinking set of those available resources . These wars have arguably already started and will continue in
the future because climate change will force countries to act for national survival; the so-called Climate Wars. As early as
2003 Greenpeace alluded to a report which it claimed was commissioned by the Pentagon titled: An Abrupt Climate Change
Scenario and Its Implications for U.S. National Security. It painted a picture of a world in turmoil because global warming
had accelerated. The scenario outlined was both abrupt and alarming. The report offered recommendations but backed away from
declaring climate change an immediate problem, concluding that it would actually be more incremental and measured; as such it would be an
irritant, not a shock for national security systems. In 2006 the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) – Institute of Public Research – convened
a board of 11 senior retired generals and admirals to assess National Security and the Threat to Climate
Change. Their initial report was published in April 2007 and made no mention of the potential acceleration of climate change. The team
found that climate change was a serious threat to national security and that it was: “most likely to happen in regions
of the world that are already fertile ground for extremism.” The team made recommendations from their analysis of regional impacts which
suggested the following.
Europe would experience some fracturing because of border migration. Africa would
need more stability and humanitarian operations provided by the United States. The Middle East would
experience a “loss of food and water security (which) will increase pressure to emigrate across borders.”
Asia would suffer from “threats to water and the spread of infectious disease.” In 2009 the CIA opened a Center
on Climate Change and National Security to coordinate across the intelligence community and to focus policy. In May 2014, CNA again
convened a Military Advisory Board but this time to assess National Security and the Accelerating Risk of
Climate Change. The report concludes that climate change is no longer a future threat but occurring
right now
and the authors appeal
to the security community, the entire government and the American people to not only
build resilience against projected climate change impacts but to
integrate climate change across
all
form agreements to stabilize climate change and also to
strategy and planning . The calm of the 2007 report is replaced by a tone of anxiety
concerning the future coupled with calls for public discourse and debate because “time and tide wait for no man.” The report notes a key
distinction between resilience (mitigating the impact of climate change) and agreements (ways to stabilize climate change) and states that:
Actions by the United States and the international community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with
projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will
reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on
ways to stabilize climate change. The 9/11 Report framed the terrorist attacks as less of a failure of intelligence than a failure of
imagination. Greenpeace’s 2003 account of the Pentagon’s alleged report describes a coming climate Armageddon
which to readers was unimaginable and hence the report was not really taken seriously. It described:
A world thrown into turmoil
by drought, floods, typhoons . Whole countries rendered uninhabitable . The capital of the Netherlands submerged.
The borders of the U.S. and Australia patrolled by armies firing into waves of starving boat people desperate to
find a new home. Fishing boats armed with cannon to drive off competitors. Demands for access to water and farmland
backed up with nuclear weapons . The CNA and Greenpeace/Pentagon reports are both mirrored by similar analysis by the
World Bank which highlighted not only the physical manifestations of climate change, but also the significant human
impacts that threaten to unravel decades of economic development , which will ultimately foster
conflict . Climate change is the quintessential “Tragedy of the Commons,” where the cumulative impact of many individual actions
(carbon emission in this case) is not seen as linked to the marginal gains available to each individual action and not seen as cause and effect. It
is simultaneously huge, yet amorphous and nearly invisible from day to day. It is occurring very fast in geologic time terms, but in human time it
is (was) slow and incremental. Among environmental problems, it is uniquely global. With our planet and culture figuratively and literally
honeycombed with a reliance on fossil fuels, we face systemic challenges in changing the reliance across multiple layers of consumption,
investment patterns, and political decisions; it will be hard to fix!
Contention 2 is Costa Rica
Legalization not inevitable- too many hurdles
Dicker 12 (Ron- writer/editor HuffingtonPost ,01/04, “Online Gambling Is No Sure Bet For States Even
With DOJ Ruling”, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/online-gambling_n_1183545.html,
RTFD)
The Justice Department may have paved the way for Internet gambling, but that doesn't mean
everything will come up aces for online poker players. Those envisioning a boom in virtual casinos and card rooms can
expect several obstacles. That's the word from legal experts following the department's about-face
announcement Dec. 23. The DOJ said it was reversing its stance that the Wire Act of 1961 prevents online lottery sales and, by
implication, other Internet gambling except sports betting. The move could allow states to implement their own
intrastate virtual casinos and card rooms, tapping yet another gambling revenue stream in a stale economy. With states
desperate to close a combined $95 billion 2012 deficit, gambling has emerged as a possible quick fix. The payoff from Internet casinos,
however, won't be automatic. "No
one can assume that it's a free ride to Internet poker, said attorney Anthony Cabot, a
the hurdles: Sparsely populated states may lack
enough gamblers: Most states are too small to support an in-state online casino. The cost of software
and monitoring is too great for less-populated states to justify Internet casino play, especially poker, which
requires a certain amount of players at the "table." "You have to have enough players to populate that ecosphere," Cabot
gaming specialist at the Lewis and Roca firm in Las Vegas. Among
said. "Little states don't have enough to make it work." Cabot wondered whether his state, the nation's casino capital, would have enough
resident gamblers to support a virtual gaming site. Both the casino-affiliated computer servers and players presumably would have to be inside
the state for any transactions to be legal, so states must be staked with a sufficient pool of gamblers, he said. One state could team with
another to form a larger casino entity, according to authorities. Games played against the house, such as blackjack and roulette, wouldn't be a
problem for smaller states, others said. Who gets the money? Lotteries, Native American-run casinos and brick-and-mortar card rooms will all
be vying for a share of the profits. In California, all three are in the mix. I. Nelson Rose, a Whittier College law professor who specializes in
gambling, predicted that California would issue as many as three licenses to keep all parties happy. But he added that the lottery would likely
be the loser in this scenario, with powerful Indian interests getting a hefty chunk of the action. "The tribes see [online gambling] as inevitable
and something that must be shared," he said. Online gambling hasn't been approved in most states. Only Nevada and the District of Columbia
already have legalized (but do not yet host) intra-regional casinos online, leaving 49 states to push through an online gambling law if they want
it. That's no sure thing, according to attorney Stephen Schrier, head of the gaming practice at the law firm Blank Rome and a former regulator
for the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement. Schrier said it's possible that at least one state will implement online gaming this year -most likely Nevada as it already is entertaining bids from software makers and operators. New Jersey could be next if an aggressive campaign
by State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D) succeeds in pushing through a bill before the Jersey legislature adjourns Jan. 9. Another early adopter could
be Iowa, a relatively prosperous state that has eyed online gambling for years. One study determined the state could net as much as $13 million
in tax revenue annually as a result. Iowa began the riverboat casino trend in 1991. "Iowa likes being the first on these things," Rose said.
Nuances could be a nuisance. Every state will have issues interpreting the legalities. In Jersey, for instance, an
existing law permits casino gambling only within Atlantic City, Schrier pointed out. So the conundrum is: If the computer server is in Atlantic City
but the online gambler is in Trenton, where is the betting taking place? Jersey's most recent bill has decided it's where the server is. Stay tuned.
Other states might also wrestle with what constitutes an in-state gambler. Software can already let the
host and law enforcement know whether a player is actually in the approved state at the time, Schrier
said. A smartphone application, for example, could cut off a gambler in New Jersey as soon as he or she steps into New York. And if the host
should misinterpret the law or be lax in applying it, a slew of other federal statutes, including the Travel Act, are still on the books, according to
legal eagles. While authorities agree that the
Justice Department's decision is significant, it is a mere first step on the
road toward legalizing casino gambling in cyberspace. This opinion could even be challenged or
jettisoned, as Howard Stutz of the Las Vegas Review-Journal observed. Rose called the development a gift from the Obama administration
to debt-ridden states. But it might not be a gift that starts giving as fast as many might hope.
Legalization crushes Costa Rica’s online gambling industry- diverts revenue sources
Lopez 14 (Jaime- Costa Rica Star News Staff writer, 3/31, “The End Is Near for Online Gambling in Costa
Rica”, http://news.co.cr/the-end-is-near-for-online-gambling-in-costa-rica/34157/, RTFD)
In the last few years, the online gambling industry of Costa Rica has experienced one major upheaval after
another. On one hand, there’s the overzealous law enforcement and prosecutorial actions taken by the
United States; on the other hand, powerful lobby groups are slandering Internet gaming and wagering operations in Costa Rica for the
purpose of encouraging lawmakers to allow gambling in various jurisdictions. At the current rate of events,
disappear in Costa Rica
online gambling may
by the end of this decade. Writing for the respected online magazine Slate, technology columnist and
investor Jon Nathanson recently predicted that online gambling: [...] will be broadly legal in the United States by the end of this decade. It will
start with online poker, which is currently legal only in Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware. But it will expand from there, both in categories of
games and in geographic acceptance. This is already happening, to a certain extent: The wheel’s started spinning, and the ball is in play. When it
drops, the video gaming business will win big. The makers of today’s mobile games will build tomorrow’s mobile casinos. Mr. Nathanson’s
wager is one that The Costa Rica Star can certainly get behind. This was explained in October 2013 by the bold move taken by the American
Gaming Association (AGA) in adopting the film Runner Runner, which was based on a story about online poker in Costa Rica even though it was
not filmed here, as a cautionary tale about the fictionally shady Internet gambling industry in this country. The Runner Runner article was
followed by another look into various other reasons why online casinos and sportsbooks are moving their operations out of Costa Rica: More
than two years have passed since Black Friday, and the online gambling industry in Costa Rica has shrunk considerably. In the sportsbook world,
the proliferation of Pay-Per-Head (PPH) business models has consolidated sports wagering down to just a few call centers. Bookies
with
U.S. clients can make use of these PPH services and run their underground business from a smartphone.
Notice how sportsbooks can streamline their operations through PPH services that can be accessed by smartphones. Mr, Nathanson argues that
the mobile platform will be the ace in the hole for the AGA to push their gambling legalization proposals through across the U.S.: Worldwide,
revenues from online casinos exceed $32 billion, and Juniper Research estimates that revenues from gambling on mobile devices alone will top
$100 billion by 2017. As more states soften gambling laws, and more follow the example set by Nevada and Delaware, expect the $12 billion
mobile gaming industry to pay close attention. Zynga, King, and other giants in the mobile gaming business won’t be content to sit on the
sidelines. I suspect they’ll strike partnerships with state-based gambling companies to provide the software for the next generation of virtual
casinos. Since
the great majority of online gambling and sportsbooks operations in Costa Rica cater to
U.S. players , the gradual legalization in that North American nation will spell the end for the industry in
this country -and it could all go down in the next few years.
Costa Rica’s online gambling industry is a hub for money laundering, specifically FARC
funds
INCSR 14 (International Narcotics Control Strategy Report- US gov report, so calm down this is qual’d,
March, “International Narcotics Control Strategy Report Volume II Money Laundering and Financial
Crimes”, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/222880.pdf, RTFD)
Transnational criminal organizations increasingly favor Costa Rica as a base to commit financial crimes,
including money laundering. This trend raises serious concerns about the Costa Rican government’s
ability to prevent these organizations from infiltrating the country. Proceeds from international cocaine trafficking represent a
significant source of assets laundered in Costa Rica. Sizeable Costa Rica-based online gaming operations also launder
millions of dollars in illicit proceeds through the country and offshore centers annually. Criminals
launder other proceeds through Costa Rica from activities that include financial fraud, human trafficking,
corruption, and contraband smuggling. Criminal organizations use financial institutions, licensed and
unlicensed money transfer businesses, bulk cash smuggling and the free trade zones to launder the
proceeds of their illicit activities. Money services businesses are a significant risk for money laundering
and a potential mechanism for terrorist financing . Trade-based money laundering, while used, is not detected with the same frequency as
the above typologies. While there is no recent investigation related to terrorism financing,
recent investigations in Costa Rica detected
narcotics and arms trafficking linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ( FARC ).
Preventing FARC from accessing funds in the short-term is key to the success of recent
peace talks- new profits lead to FARC circumvention
Peralta 9/26 (Adriana- freedom advocate from El Salvador and a @CREO_org board member. She is a
PanAm Post reporter and blogger, a 2005 Ruta Quetzal scholar, a trained engineer, and an SMC
University masters student in political economy, 2014, “FARC Negotiators Lay Resolution Strategy on the
Table Agrarian Reform, Democratic Openness Dominate Lengthy Agreement”,
http://panampost.com/adriana-peralta/2014/09/26/farc-negotiators-lay-resolution-strategy-on-thetable/, RTFD)
The cultivation of illegal drugs is one of the principal forms of subsistence in Colombia, and a key
revenue stream for the guerrilla. To address this contentious issue, negotiators propose the creation of a
program to substitute legal commodities for the illegal ones. De la Calle emphasizes that, rather than wipe out
the plantations, the communities are going to be transformed. The FARC have also asserted they will
cut any relationship they have had with organized crime and drug trafficking. For Reisbeck, however, the
proposed line of action ignores the immense allure and will do nothing to stop the harvesting of illegal
substances: “In Colombia, the war on drugs is caused by its prohibition.… This treaty leaves intact the
drug-trafficking structures, because drugs remain illegal.” The released agreements identify drug abuse as a “public issue
that requires priority treatment,” with intervention targeted towards regulated consumption. If implemented, the Colombian
government would also increase its confrontation with organized crime linked to drug trafficking. “How
will the FARC and Juan Manuel Santos ever dismantle the value chain of drug trafficking, when this starts
with the price that consumers pay in the United States and other countries?” Raisbeck remarks. He contends
that this agreement does not offer any solution to the fundamental germ of the war on drugs: “Those
who see this agreement as hope for real peace in Colombia are victims of optimism not sustained in
reality.” Professor Ugarriza has a slightly different take, that the agreements are an opportunity to bring alternative strategies to the table,
which in and of itself is progress: “I don’t expect that this will ends the problem of drug trafficking, but it might have positive results in some
territories. The legalization debate will march on alongside these negotiations.”
Successful peace talks makes deforestation zero by 2020
Soendergaard 13 12/31 so basically 14… (Maren- journalist, Colombia Reports Staff Writer, and
Public Relations graduate, “ Colombia to bring Amazon deforestation rate to zero by 2020 ”,
http://colombiareports.co/colombian-program-save-amazon/, RTFD)
The Colombian government has developed a program to reduce the deforestation rate in the Amazon
region, which will be implemented if a peace agreement is reached with the FARC during the
negotiations in Havana, Cuba, reported RCN Radio Monday. The program, called Vision Amazon, aims to provide resource
programs for environmental conservation of forest affected by illicit crops. Additionally, it seeks to
reduce the rate of deforestation to zero by 2020, the Minister of the Environment Luz Sermiento. “We intend in six years to
have a zero deforestation in the Amazon region of Colombia,” said the minister. The government and the FARC, Colombia’s largest
guerrilla group, are negotiating an agreement to end half a century of armed conflict in Havana. Negotiators
have reached two preliminary agreements on land and political participation. Currently, the negotiations are
addressing the issue of illicit crops, which has been part of the cause of deforestation in the Amazon due
to the cultivation of coca , authorities told local media. Deforestation has reached 69,500 hectares, spread across the southern states of Caqueta,
been affected by high rates of armed attacks by guerrilla groups . The
program has received international support from European nations, accounting for $125 million donated by Germany, Norway and the UK. “We believe this is an
opportunity for post-conflict,” said Sermiento and added that these “are issues that may be discussed at the table” of
negotiations in Havana.
Guaviare and Putumayo in Colombia. These regions have also
Extinction
David Takacs 96, Professor of Environmental Humanities @ the Institute for Earth Systems Science and Policy @ California State University-Monterey Bay,
The Idea of Biodiversity: Philosophies of Paradise, p. 200-1, http://www.dhushara.com/book/diversit/restor/takacs.htm, ACC: 2.15.08, p. online
"Habitat
destruction and conversion are eliminating species at such a frightening pace that extinction of many contemporary species and the systems
lead to ecological disaster and severe alteration of the evolutionary process," Terry Erwin writes." And E. 0. Wilson
notes: "The question I am asked most frequently about the diversity of life: if enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystem collapse, and
will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out,
however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment."" So biodiversity keeps the world running. It has value in and for itself, as well as for
they live in and support ... may
us. Raven, Erwin, and Wilson oblige us to think about the value of biodiversity for our own lives. The Ehrlichs' rivet-popper trope makes this same point; by
eliminating rivets, we
play Russian roulette with global ecology and human futures: "It is likely that destruction
of the rich complex of species in the Amazon basin could trigger rapid changes in global climate
patterns. Agriculture remains heavily dependent on stable climate, and human beings remain heavily
dependent on food. By the end of the century the extinction of perhaps a million species in the Amazon
basin could have entrained famines in which a billion human beings perished. And if our species is very
unlucky, the famines could lead to a thermonuclear war, which could extinguish civilization.""
Specifically- the next wave of zoonotic diseases will come from the tropics as a result
of deforestation
Mongabay 8 (Mongabay is a leading provider of environmental science and conservation newsquotes citing Kate Jones, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Zoology and her coauthor Marc Levy
of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), an affiliate of Columbia
University's Earth Institute, February 22, “Deforestation, wildlife conflict will be the source of emerging
diseases”,
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0222-disease.html#dfuOPt1B10c5YzC6.99, RTFD)
Due to habitat destruction and human-wildlife conflict, the tropics will likely be the next hotspot for emerging
infectious diseases , report researchers who have developed the first map of new pathogens. ¶ The results
— based on correlation of 335 emerging diseases from 1940 to 2004 to maps showing human population density, population changes, latitude,
rainfall and wildlife biodiversity — are published in the journal Nature. The authors showed that disease outbreaks have roughly quadrupled
over the past 50 years, with 60 percent of "disease emergencies" originating in animals and traveling to humans. Most
of these
"zoonotic" diseases came from wild animals, suggesting that increased fragmentation and destruction
will bring humans in contact will more pathogens, especially in biodiverse regions like the tropics. ¶ "We
are crowding wildlife into ever-smaller areas, and human population is increasing," said coauthor Marc
Levy of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), an affiliate of Columbia University's Earth Institute. "The
meeting of these two things is a recipe for something crossing over." ¶ "Emerging disease hotspots are
more common in areas rich in wildlife, so protecting these regions from development may have added
value in preventing future disease emergence," said coauthor Kate Jones, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute
of Zoology. "It
turns out that conservation may be an important means of preventing new diseases."
Zoonotic diseases lead to extinction
*Madagascar isn’t surviving these…
Casadevall 12 – Prof @ Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Division of Infectious Diseases of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Arturo. (“The future of biological warfare,” Microbial Biotechnology, p. 584-5)
In considering the importance of biological warfare as a subject for concern it is worthwhile to review the known existential threats. At this time this writer can
identify at three major existential threats to humanity: (i) large-scale thermonuclear war followed by a nuclear winter, (ii) a planet killing asteroid impact and (iii)
infectious disease. To this trio might be added climate change making the planet uninhabitable. Of the three existential threats the first is deduced from the inferred
cataclysmic effects of nuclear war. For the second there is geological evidence for the association of asteroid impacts with massive extinction (Alvarez, 1987). As to
an existential threat from microbes recent
decades have provided unequivocal evidence for the ability of certain
pathogens to cause the extinction of entire species. Although infectious disease has traditionally not been associated with extinction this view has
changed by the finding that a single chytrid fungus was responsible for the extinction of numerous amphibian species (Daszak
et al., 1999; Mendelson et al., 2006). Previously, the
view that infectious diseases were not a cause of extinction was
predicated on the notion that many pathogens required their hosts and that some proportion of the host
population was naturally resistant. However, that calculation does not apply to microbes that are acquired
directly from the environment and have no need for a host , such as the majority of fungal pathogens. For those
types of host–microbe interactions it is possible for the pathogen to kill off every last member of a species without harm to itself,
since it would return to its natural habitat upon killing its last host. Hence, from the viewpoint of existential threats
environmental microbes could potentially pose a much greater threat to humanity than the known pathogenic microbes, which number somewhere near 1500
species (Cleaveland et al., 2001; Tayloret al., 2001), especially if some of these species acquired the capacity for pathogenicity as a consequence of natural evolution
or bioengineering.
Intervening actors don’t solve- countries won’t allow medical intervention
Weber 06 – Steven Weber is a Professor of Political Science at UC-Berkeley and Director of the Institute of International Studies. (“How Globalization Went
Bad”, Foreign Policy, December 27, 2006, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2006/12/27/how_globalization_went_bad?page=0,2)
The same is true for global public health. Globalization
is turning the world into an enormous petri dish for the incubation of
infectious disease. Humans cannot outsmart disease, because it just evolves too quickly. Bacteria can reproduce a new generation in less
than 30 minutes, while it takes us decades to come up with a new generation of antibiotics. Solutions are only possible when and where we get the upper
hand. Poor countries where humans live in close proximity to farm animals are the best place to breed extremely dangerous zoonotic
disease. These are often the same countries, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, that feel threatened by American power. Establishing an early
warning system for these diseases -- exactly what we lacked in the case of SARS a few years ago and exactly what we lack for avian flu today -will require a significant level of intervention into the very places that don't want it. That will be true as long as
international intervention means American interference. The most likely sources of the next ebola or HIV-like pandemic are the
countries that simply won't let U.S. or other Western agencies in, including the World Health Organization. Yet the threat is too arcane and
not immediate enough for the West to force the issue. What's needed is another great power to take over a piece of the work, a power that has more immediate
interests in the countries where diseases incubate and one that is seen as less of a threat. As long as the United States remains the world's lone superpower, we're
not likely to get any help. Even after HIV, SARS, and several years of mounting hysteria about avian flu, the world is still not ready for a viral pandemic in Southeast
Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. America can't change that alone.
Contention 3 is No War
No scenario for great power war – laundry list
Deudney and Ikenberry ‘9 (Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins AND Albert G. Milbank
Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University (Jan/Feb, 2009, Daniel Deudney
and John Ikenberry, “The Myth of the Autocratic Revival: Why Liberal Democracy Will Prevail,” Foreign
Affairs)
This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and ignores powerful countervailing factors and forces. Indeed, contrary to what the
revivalists describe, the
most striking features of the contemporary international landscape are the
intensification of economic globalization, thickening institutions, and shared problems of
interdependence. The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike that of the nineteenth
century. Compared to older orders, the contemporary liberal-centered international order provides
a set of constraints and opportunities-of pushes and pulls-that reduce the likelihood of severe
conflict while creating strong imperatives for cooperative problem solving. Those invoking the nineteenth
century as a model for the twenty-first also fail to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to conflict resolution and greatpower expansion has become largely obsolete. Most important, nuclear weapons have transformed
great-power war from a routine feature of international politics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the
great powers possessing nuclear weapons and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare among
these states has truly become an option of last resort. The prospect of such great losses has
instilled in the great powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes major
revisionist efforts. Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism
have severely limited the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resisting
populations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days of empire building in the nineteenth century,
states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective territorial control; at most, they
can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that require them to give something in return. Also unlike in the nineteenth century, today the density
of trade, investment, and production networks across international borders raises even more the
costs of war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take one of the most plausible cases of a future
interstate war, would pose for the Chinese communist regime daunting economic costs, both
domestic and international. Taken together, these changes in the economy of violence mean that the
international system is far more primed for peace than the autocratic revivalists acknowledge.
Cognitive bias to prefer their impacts, but they’re just byproducts of the security
apparatus- our scenarios are the real threat
Cohen and Zenko 12—senior fellow at the New America Foundation where he helms the Privatization of Foreign Policy Initiative
and an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs—AND—worked for five years at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government, and at the Brookings Institution, Congressional Research Service, and State Department's Office of Policy
Planning. (Michael and Micah, Clear and Present Safety, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137279/micah-zenko-and-michael-a-cohen/clear-andpresent-safety?page=show)
Romney performed what has become a quadrennial rite of passage in American
presidential politics: he delivered a speech to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. His message was rooted in another grand American
tradition: hyping foreign threats to the United States. It is “wishful thinking,” Romney declared, “that the world is
becoming a safer place. The opposite is true. Consider simply the jihadists, a near-nuclear Iran, a turbulent Middle East, an unstable Pakistan, a delusional
North Korea, an assertive Russia, and an emerging global power called China. No, the world is not becoming safer.”¶ Not long after, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta echoed Romney’s
statement. In a lecture last October, Panetta warned of threats arising “from terrorism to nuclear proliferation; from rogue states to cyber attacks;
from revolutions in the Middle East, to economic crisis in Europe, to the rise of new powers such as China and India. All of these changes represent security, geopolitical,
economic, and demographic shifts in the international order that make the world more unpredictable, more volatile and, yes, more dangerous.” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint
Last August, the Republican presidential contender Mitt
Chiefs of Staff, concurred in a recent speech, arguing that “the number and kinds of threats we face have increased significantly.” And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reinforced the point by claiming that America resides
there exists a pervasive belief that the post–Cold War world is a
treacherous place, full of great uncertainty and grave risks. A 2009 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 69
today in a “very complex, dangerous world.”¶ Within the foreign policy elite,
percent of members of the Council on Foreign Relations believed that for the United States at that moment, the world was either as dangerous as or more dangerous than it was during the Cold War. Similarly, in 2008, the Center
for American Progress surveyed more than 100 foreign policy experts and found that 70 percent of them believed that the world was becoming more dangerous. Perhaps more than any other idea, this belief shapes debates on
There is just one problem. It is simply wrong. The world that the United
States inhabits today is a remarkably safe and secure place. It is a world with fewer violent conflicts and greater political freedom than at virtually any other
point in human history. All over the world, people enjoy longer life expectancy and greater economic opportunity than ever before. The United States faces no plausible existential
threats, no great-power rival, and no near-term competition for the role of global hegemon. The U.S. military is the
world’s most powerful, and even in the middle of a sustained downturn, the U.S. economy remains among one of the world’s
most vibrant and adaptive. Although the United States faces a host of international challenges, they pose little risk to the overwhelming majority of American citizens and
can be managed with existing diplomatic, economic, and, to a much lesser extent, military tools. ¶ This reality is barely
reflected in U.S. national security strategy or in American foreign policy debates. President Barack Obama’s most recent National Security Strategy aspires to “a
world in which America is stronger, more secure, and is able to overcome our challenges while appealing to the aspirations of
people around the world.” Yet that is basically the world that exists today. The United States is the world’s most powerful
nation, unchallenged and secure. But the country’s political and policy elite seems unwilling to recognize
this fact, much less integrate it into foreign policy and national security decision-making.¶ The disparity between
U.S. foreign policy and frames the public’s understanding of international affairs. ¶
foreign threats and domestic threat-mongering results from a confluence of factors . The most obvious and important is
electoral politics. Hyping dangers serves the interests of both political parties. For Republicans, who have long benefited
from attacking Democrats for their alleged weakness in the face of foreign threats, there is little incentive to tone down the
rhetoric; the notion of a dangerous world plays to perhaps their greatest political advantage. For Democrats, who are fearful of being cast as feckless, acting and sounding tough is
a shield against GOP attacks and an insurance policy in case a challenge to the United States materializes into a genuine
threat. Warnings about a dangerous world also benefit powerful bureaucratic interests . The specter of
looming dangers sustains and justifies the massive budgets of the military and the intelligence agencies,
along with the national security infrastructure that exists outside government -- defense contractors, lobbying groups,
think tanks, and academic departments. ¶ There is also a pernicious feedback loop at work . Because of
the chronic exaggeration of the threats facing the United States, Washington overemphasizes military approaches
to problems (including many that could best be solved by nonmilitary means). The militarization of foreign policy leads, in turn, to further dark
warnings about the potentially harmful effects of any effort to rebalance U.S. national security spending
or trim the massive military budget -- warnings that are inevitably bolstered by more threat exaggeration. Last
fall, General Norton Schwartz, the U.S. Air Force chief of staff, said that defense cuts that would return military spending to its 2007 level would undermine the military’s “ability to protect the nation” and could create “dire
consequences.” Along the same lines, Panetta warned that the same reductions would “invite aggression” from enemies. These are
a puzzling statements given that the U.S. defense budget is larger than the next 14 countries’ defense
budgets combined and that the U nited S tates still maintains weapons systems designed to fight an
enemy that disappeared 20 years ago.¶ Of course, threat inflation is not new. During the Cold War, although the United States faced genuine existential threats, American political
leaders nevertheless hyped smaller threats or conflated them with larger ones. Today, there are no dangers to the United States remotely resembling those of the Cold
War era, yet policymakers routinely talk in the alarmist terms once used to describe superpower conflict.
Indeed, the mindset of the United States in the post-9/11 world was best (albeit crudely) captured by former Vice President Dick Cheney. While in office, Cheney promoted the idea that the United States must prepare for even the
most remote threat as though it were certain to occur. The journalist Ron Suskind termed this belief “
the one percent doctrine,” a reference to what Cheney called the “one percent chance that
Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon.” According to Suskind, Cheney insisted that the United States must treat such a remote potential threat “as a certainty in terms of our response.” ¶ Such
is rarely replicated outside the realm of national security , even when the government
confronts problems that cause Americans far more harm than any foreign threat . According to an analysis by the budget expert
Linda Bilmes and the economist Joseph Stiglitz, in the ten years since 9/11, the combined direct and indirect costs of the U.S. response to the murder of almost
3,000 of its citizens have totaled more than $3 trillion. A study by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated that during an
overlapping period, from 2000 to 2006, 137,000 Americans died prematurely because they lacked health
hair-trigger responsiveness
insurance . Although the federal government maintains robust health insurance programs for older and poor Americans, its response to a national crisis in health care during that time paled in comparison to its
what the U nited S tates actually needs is a 99 percent doctrine : a
national security strategy based on the fact that the United States is a safe and well-protected country and grounded in the reality that the opportunities for furthering
U.S. interests far exceed the threats to them. Fully comprehending the world as it is today is the best way to keep the United States secure and
resistant to the overreactions that have defined its foreign policy for far too long.¶ BETTER THAN EVER¶ The United States, along with the rest of the
response to the far less deadly terrorist attacks.¶ Rather than Cheney’s one percent doctrine,
world, currently faces a period of economic and political uncertainty. But
consider four long-term
global trends that
underscore just how misguided the constant fear-mongering in U.S. politics is: the falling prevalence
of violent conflict, the declining incidence of terrorism, the spread of political freedom and prosperity, and
the global improvement in public health. In 1992, there were 53 armed conflicts raging in 39 countries around the world; in 2010, there were 30 armed conflicts in 25 countries. Of
the latter, only four have resulted in at least 1,000 battle-related deaths and can therefore be classified as wars, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program: the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia, two of
which were started by the United States. ¶ Today,
wars tend to be low-intensity conflicts that, on average, kill about 90 percent fewer
people than did violent struggles in the 1950s. Indeed, the first decade of this century witnessed fewer deaths from war than any decade in the last century. Meanwhile, the
world’s great powers have not fought a direct conflict in more than 60 years -- “the longest period of major power peace in centuries,” as the Human Security Report Project puts it. Nor is there much reason for the United States to
fear such a war in the near future: no state currently has the capabilities or the inclination to confront the United States militarily. ¶ Much of the fear that suffuses U.S. foreign policy stems from the trauma of 9/11. Yet although
the tactic of terrorism remains a scourge in localized conflicts, between 2006 and 2010,
the total number of terrorist attacks declined by almost 20 percent, and the number of
deaths caused by terrorism fell by 35 percent, according to the U.S. State Department. In 2010, more than three-quarters of all victims of terrorism -- meaning deliberate, politically motivated violence by nonstate groups against
noncombatant targets -- were injured or killed in the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia. Of the 13,186 people killed by terrorist attacks in 2010, only 15, or 0.1 percent, were U.S. citizens. In most places today --
freedom and democratic
governance have made great gains. According to Freedom House, there were 69 electoral democracies at the end of the Cold War; today, there are 117. And during that time, the number
of autocracies declined from 62 to 48. To be sure, in the process of democratizing, states with weak political institutions can be more prone to near-term instability, civil wars, and
interstate conflict. Nevertheless, over time, democracies tend to have healthier and better-educated citizens,
Alan Robock’s contention that there has been no real scientific debate about the ‘ nuclear winter’ almost never go to war with other democracies, and are less
likely to fight nondemocracies.¶ Economic bonds among states are also accelerating, even in the face of a
and especially in the United States -- the chances of dying from a terrorist attack or in a military conflict have fallen almost to zero. ¶ As violence and war have abated,
sustained global economic downturn . Today, 153 countries belong to the World Trade Organization and are bound by
its dispute-resolution mechanisms. Thanks to lowered trade barriers, exports now make up more than 30 percent
of gross world product , a proportion that has tripled in the past 40 years. The United States has seen its
exports to the world’s fastest-growing economies increase by approximately 500 percent over the past decade. Currency
flows have exploded as well, with $4 trillion moving around the world in foreign exchange markets every day. Remittances, an essential instrument for reducing poverty in developing countries, have more
than tripled in the past decade, to more than $440 billion each year. Partly as a result of these trends, poverty is on the decline: in 1981, half the people living in the developing world survived on less than $1.25 a day; today, that
figure is about one-sixth. Like democratization, economic development occasionally brings with it significant costs. In particular, economic liberalization can strain the social safety net that supports a society’s most vulnerable
increasing economic interdependence is a net positive because trade
and foreign direct investment between countries generally correlate with long-term economic growth and a reduced likelihood of war.
populations and can exacerbate inequalities. Still, from the perspective of the United States,
¶ A final trend contributing to the relative security of the United States is the improvement in global health
and well-being. People in virtually all countries, and certainly in the United States, are living longer and healthier lives. In 2010, the number of people who died from AIDS-related causes declined for the third year in a row. Tuberculosis rates continue to fall, as do the rates of polio and malaria. Child mortality has plummeted worldwide, thanks in part to expanded access to health care, sanitation, and vaccines. In 1970, the global child mortality rate (deaths of children under five per 1,000) was 141; in 2010, it was 57. In 1970, global average life expectancy was 59, and U.S.
life expectancy was 70. Today, the global figure is just under 70, and the U.S. figure is 79. These vast improvements in health and well-being contribute to the global trend toward security and safety because countries with poor human development are more war-prone.¶ PHANTOM MENACE¶ None of this is meant to suggest that the United States faces no major challenges today. Rather, the point is that the problems confronting the country are manageable and pose minimal risks to the lives of the overwhelming majority of Americans. None of them -- separately or in
combination -- justifies the alarmist rhetoric of policymakers and politicians or should lead to the conclusion that Americans live in a dangerous world.¶ Take terrorism. Since 9/11, no security threat has been hyped more. Considering the horrors of that day, that is not surprising. But the result has been a level of fear that is completely out of proportion to both the capabilities of terrorist organizations and the United States’ vulnerability. On 9/11, al Qaeda got tragically lucky. Since then, the United States has been preparing for the one percent chance (and likely even less)
that it might get lucky again. But al Qaeda lost its safe haven after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, and further military, diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement efforts have decimated the organization, which has essentially lost whatever ability it once had to seriously threaten the United States. ¶ According to U.S. officials, al Qaeda’s leadership has been reduced to two top lieutenants: Ayman al-Zawahiri and his second-in-command, Abu Yahya al-Libi. Panetta has even said that the defeat of al Qaeda is “within reach.” The near collapse of the original al
Qaeda organization is one reason why, in the decade since 9/11, the U.S. homeland has not suffered any large-scale terrorist assaults. All subsequent attempts have failed or been thwarted, owing in part to the incompetence of their perpetrators. Although there are undoubtedly still some terrorists who wish to kill Americans, their dreams will likely continue to be frustrated by their own limitations and by the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the United States and its allies.¶ As the threat from transnational terrorist groups dwindles, the United States also
faces few risks from other states. China is the most obvious potential rival to the United States, and there is little doubt that China’s rise will pose a challenge to U.S. economic interests. Moreover, there is an unresolved debate among Chinese political and military leaders about China’s proper global role, and the lack of transparency from China’s senior leadership about its long-term foreign policy objectives is a cause for concern. However, the present security threat to the U.S. mainland is practically nonexistent and will remain so. Even as China tries to modernize its
military, its defense spending is still approximately one-ninth that of the United States. In 2012, the Pentagon will spend roughly as much on military research and development alone as China will spend on its entire military. ¶ While China clumsily flexes its muscles in the Far East by threatening to deny access to disputed maritime resources, a recent Pentagon report noted that China’s military ambitions remain dominated by “regional contingencies” and that the People’s Liberation Army has made little progress in developing capabilities that “extend global reach or
power projection.” In the coming years, China will enlarge its regional role, but this growth will only threaten U.S. interests if Washington attempts to dominate East Asia and fails to consider China’s legitimate regional interests. It is true that China’s neighbors sometimes fear that China will not resolve its disputes peacefully, but this has compelled Asian countries to cooperate with the United States, maintaining bilateral alliances that together form a strong security architecture and limit China’s room to maneuver.¶ The strongest arguments made by those warning of
Chinese influence revolve around economic policy. The list of complaints includes a host of Chinese policies, from intellectual property theft and currency manipulation to economic espionage and domestic subsidies. Yet none of those is likely to lead to direct conflict with the United States beyond the competition inherent in international trade, which does not produce zero-sum outcomes and is constrained by dispute-resolution mechanisms, such as those of the World Trade Organization. If anything, China’s export-driven economic strategy, along with its large reserves
of U.S. Treasury bonds, suggests that Beijing will continue to prefer a strong United States to a weak one. ¶ NUCLEAR FEAR¶ It is a matter of faith among many American politicians that Iran is the greatest danger now facing the country. But if that is true, then the United States can breathe easy: Iran is a weak military power. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iran’s “military forces have almost no modern armor, artillery, aircraft or major combat ships, and UN sanctions will likely obstruct the purchase of high-technology weapons for the
foreseeable future.” ¶ Tehran’s stated intention to project its interests regionally through military or paramilitary forces has made Iran its own worst enemy. Iran’s neighbors are choosing to balance against the Islamic Republic rather than fall in line behind its leadership. In 2006, Iran’s favorability rating in Arab countries stood at nearly 80 percent; today, it is under 30 percent. Like China’s neighbors in East Asia, the Gulf states have responded to Iran’s belligerence by participating in an emerging regional security arrangement with the United States, which includes
advanced conventional weapons sales, missile defenses, intelligence sharing, and joint military exercises, all of which have further isolated Iran.¶ Of course, the gravest concerns about Iran focus on its nuclear activities. Those fears have led to som e of the most egregiously alarmist rhetoric: at a Republican national security debate in November, Romney claimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon is “the greatest threat the world faces.” But it remains unclear whether Tehran has even decided to pursue a bomb or has merely decided to develop a turnkey capability. Either way,
Iran’s leaders have been sufficiently warned that the United States would respond with overwhelming force to the use or transfer of nuclear weapons. Although a nuclear Iran would be troubling to the region, the United States and its allies would be able to contain Tehran and deter its aggression -- and the threat to the U.S. homeland would continue to be minimal.¶ Overblown fears of a nuclear Iran are part of a more generalized American anxiety about the continued potential of nuclear attacks. Obama’s National Security Strategy claims that “the American people face
no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.” According to the document, “international peace and security is threatened by proliferation that could lead to a nuclear exchange. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, the risk of a nuclear attack has increased.” ¶ If the context is a state-against-state nuclear conflict, the latter assertion is patently false. The demise of the Soviet Union ended the greatest potential for international nuclear conflict. China, with only 72 intercontinental nuclear missiles, is eminently deterrable and not a
credible nuclear threat; it has no answer for the United States’ second-strike capability and the more than 2,000 nuclear weapons with which the United States could strike China. ¶ In the past decade, Cheney and other one-percenters have frequently warned of the danger posed by loose nukes or uncontrolled fissile material. In fact, the threat of a nuclear device ending up in the hands of a terrorist group has diminished markedly since the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal was dispersed across all of Russia’s 11 time zones, all 15 former Soviet
republics, and much of eastern Europe. Since then, cooperative U.S.-Russian efforts have resulted in the substantial consolidation of those weapons at far fewer sites and in comprehensive security upgrades at almost all the facilities that still possess nuclear material or warheads, making the possibility of theft or diversion unlikely. Moreover, the lessons learned from securing Russia’s nuclear arsenal are now being applied in other countries, under the framework of Obama’s April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit, which produced a global plan to secure all nuclear materials
within four years. Since then, participants in the plan, including Chile, Mexico, Ukraine, and Vietnam, have fulfilled more than 70 percent of the commitments they made at the summit.¶ Pakis tan represents another potential source of loose nukes. The United States’ military strategy in Afghanistan, with its reliance on drone strikes and cross-border raids, has actually contributed to instability in Pakistan, worsened U.S. relations with Islamabad, and potentially increased the possibility of a weapon falling into the wrong hands. Indeed, Pakistani fears of a U.S. raid on its
nuclear arsenal have reportedly led Islamabad to disperse its weapons to multiple sites, transporting them in unsecured civilian vehicles. But even in Pakistan, the chances of a terrorist organization procuring a nuclear weapon are infinitesimally sm all. The U.S. Department of Energy has provided assistance to improve the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and successive senior U.S. government officials have repeated what former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in January 2010: that the United States is “very comfortable with the security of Pakistan’s nuclear
weapons.”¶ A more recent bogeyman in national security debates is the threat of so-called cyberwar. Policymakers and pundits have been warning for more than a decade about an imminent “cyber–Pearl Harbor” or “cyber-9/11.” In June 2011, then Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said that “bits and bytes can be as threatening as bullets and bombs.” And in September 2011, Admiral Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described cyberattacks as an “existential” threat that “actually can bring us to our knees.” ¶ Although the potential
vulnerability of private businesses and government agencies to cyberattacks has increased, the alleged threat of cyberwarfare crumbles under scrutiny. No cyberattack has resulted in the loss of a single U.S. citizen’s life. Reports of “kinetic-like” cyberattacks, such as one on an Illinois water plant and a North Korean attack on U.S. government servers, have proved baseless. Pentagon networks are attacked thousands of times a day by individuals and foreign intelligence agencies; so, too, are servers in the private sector. But the vast majority of these attacks fail wherever
adequate safeguards have been put in place. Certainly, none is even vaguely comparable to Pearl Harbor or 9/11, and most can be offset by commonsense prevention and mitigation efforts. ¶ A NEW APPROACH¶
Defenders of the status quo might contend that chronic threat
inflation and an overmilitarized foreign policy have not prevented the United States from preserving a high degree of safety and security
and therefore are not pressing problems. Others might argue that although the world might not be dangerous now, it could quickly become so if the United States grows too sanguine about
global risks and reduces its military strength. Both positions underestimate the costs and risks of the status quo and overestimate the need for the United States to rely on an aggressive military posture driven by outsized fears. ¶
Since the end of the Cold War, most improvements in U.S. security have not depended primarily on the country’s
massive military, nor have they resulted from the constantly expanding definition of U.S. national security interests. The United States deserves praise for promoting
greater international economic interdependence and open markets and, along with a host of international and regional
organizations and private actors, more limited credit for improving global public health and assisting in the development of democratic governance. But although U.S. military strength has occasionally contributed
to creating a conducive environment for positive change, those improvements were achieved mostly through the work of civilian agencies and
nongovernmental actors in the private and nonprofit sectors. The record of an overgrown post–Cold War U.S. military is far more mixed. Although some U.S.-led military efforts, such as the NATO
intervention in the Balkans, have contributed to safer regional environments, the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have weakened regional and global security, leading to hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugee crises
(according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 45 percent of all refugees today are fleeing the violence provoked by those two wars). Indeed, overreactions to perceived security threats, mainly from terrorism,
have done significant damage to U.S. interests and threaten to weaken the global norms and institutions that helped create and sustain the current era of peace and security. None of this is to suggest that the United States should
the
most lamentable cost of unceasing threat exaggeration and a focus on military force is that the
stop playing a global role; rather, it should play a different role, one that emphasizes soft power over hard power and inexpensive diplomacy and development assistance over expensive military buildups.¶ Indeed,
main global challenges facing the U nited S tates today are poorly resourced and given far less attention
than “sexier” problems, such as war and terrorism. These include climate change, pandemic diseases ,
global economic instability, and transnational criminal networks -- all of which could serve as catalysts to severe and direct challenges to U.S. security
interests. But these concerns are less visceral than alleged threats from terrorism and rogue nuclear
states. They require long-term planning and occasionally painful solutions, and they are not
constantly hyped by well-financed interest groups . As a result, they are given short shrift in national security discourse and policymaking.
U.S nuclear primacy solves all conflict- superior capabilities to both Russia and China
are only increasing
Engdahl ’14 (William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant
whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages, “US
missile shield: ‘Russian Bear sleeping with one eye open’”, http://rt.com/op-edge/us-missile-shieldrussia-361/, February 17, 2014)
US nuclear primacy In a 2006 interview with London’s Financial Times, then US Ambassador to NATO, former Cheney advisor Victoria Nuland— the same person today
disgraced by a video of her phone discussion with US Ukraine Ambassador Pyatt on changing the Kiev government (“Fuck the EU”) — declared that the US wanted a “globally deployable
military force” that would operate everywhere – from Africa to the Middle East and beyond—“all across our planet.” Nuland then declared that it would include Japan and Australia as well as
As nuclear strategy experts warned at
that time, more than eight years ago, deployment of even a minimal missile defense , under the
the NATO nations. She added, “It’s a totally different animal.” She was referring to BMD plans of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.
Pentagon’s then-new CONPLAN 8022, would give the US what the military called, “ Escalation
Dominance ”—the ability to win a war at any level of violence, including nuclear war. As the authors of a seminal
Foreign Affairs article back in April 2006 noted: “Washington's continued refusal to eschew a first strike and the country's development of a limited missile-defense capability take on a new,
and possibly more menacing, look… A nuclear war-fighting capability remains a key component of the United States' military doctrine and nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States.”
.
.[T]he sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily
in an offensive context, not a defensive one—as an adjunct to a US First Strike capability, not as a standalone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted
country would be left with only a tiny surviving arsenal — if any at all. At that point, even a relatively
modest or inefficient missile defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory
strikes.” They concluded, “ Today , for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining
The two authors of the Foreign Affairs piece, Lieber and Press, went on to outline the real consequences of the current escalation of BMD in Europe (and as well against China in Japan): “.
nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range
nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power
stems from a series of improvements in the U nited S tates' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline
of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces.”
Even the newest scientific data doesn’t support nuclear winter
Seitz ‘11 (Russell, served as an Associate of The Center for International Affairs and a Fellow of the
Department of Physics at Harvard. He is presently chief scientist at Microbubbles LLC, Nuclear winter
was and is debatable, Nature, 7 J U LY 2011, vol 475)
concept is itself debatable (Nature 473, 275–276; 2011). This potential climate disaster, popularized in Science in 1983, rested on the output of a
one- dimensional model that was later shown to overestimate the smoke a nuclear holocaust might engender. More
refined estimates, combined with advanced three-dimensional models (see go.nature.com/ kss8te), have
dramatically reduced the extent and severity of the projected cooling. Despite this, Carl Sagan, who coauthored the 1983 Science paper, went so far as to posit “the extinction of Homo sapiens” (C. Sagan Foreign Affairs 63,75-77; 1984).
Some regarded this apocalyptic prediction as an exercise in mythology. George Rathjens of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology protested: “Nuclear winter is the worst example of the
misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory,” (see go.nature.com/yujz84) and climatologist Kerry
Emanuel observed that the subject had “become notorious for its lack of scientific integrity” (Nature 319, 259;
1986). Robocks single-digit fall in temperature is at odds with the subzero (about -25°C) continental cooling
originally projected for a wide spectrum of nuclear wars. Whereas Sagan predicted darkness at noon
from a US-Soviet nuclear conflict, Robock projects global sunlight that is several orders of magnitude
brighter for a Pakistan-India conflict — literally the difference between night and day. Since 1983, the
projected worst-case cooling has fallen from a Siberian deep freeze spanning 11,000 degree- days
Celsius (a measure of the severity of winters) to numbers so unseasonably small as to call the very term
‘nuclear winter’ into question.
Counter-forcing solves escalation of wars
Mueller ‘9 (Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science at Ohio
State University (John, “Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda” p. 8, Google
Books)
To begin to approach a condition that can credibly justify applying such extreme characterizations as societal annihilation, a full-out attack with hundreds, probably
Even in such extreme cases, the area actually devastated by the bombs' blast
and thermal pulse effective would be limited: 2,000 1-MT explosions with a destructive radius of 5 miles each would directly demolish
less than 5 percent of the territory of the United States, for example. Obviously, if major population centers were targeted, this sort
of attack could inflict massive casualties. Back in cold war days, when such devastating events sometimes seemed uncomfortably likely, a number of studies
were conducted to estimate the consequences of massive thermonuclear attacks. One of the most prominent of
these considered several probabilities. The most likely scenario--one that could be perhaps considered at least to begin to approach the rational--was
a "counterforce" strike in which well over 1,000 thermonuclear weapons would be targeted at America's ballistic missile silos,
strategic airfields, and nuclear submarine bases in an effort to destroy the country’s strategic ability to retaliate. Since
the attack would not directly target population centers, most of the ensuing deaths would be from radioactive
fallout, and the study estimates that from 2 to 20 million, depending mostly on wind, weather, and sheltering, would perish during
thousands, of thermonuclear bombs would be required.
the first month.15
No miscalc or escalation or lose nukes—every crisis ever disproves and neither side
would escalate
Quinlan ‘9 (Michael, Former Permanent Under-Sec. State – UK Ministry of Defense, “Thinking about
Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects”, p. 63-69) *we don’t endorse gendered language
Even if initial nuclear use did not quickly end the fighting, the supposition of inexorable momentum in a developing
exchange, with each side rushing to overreaction amid confusion and uncertainty, is implausible. It fails to consider what the
situation of the decisionmakers would really be. Neither side could want escalation. Both would be appalled at what
was going on. Both would be desperately looking for signs that the other was ready to call a halt. Both, given the capacity
for evasion or concealment which modem delivery platforms and vehicles can possess, could have in reserve
significant forces invulnerable enough not to entail use-or-lose pressures. (It may be more open to question, as noted
earlier, whether newer nuclear-weapon possessors can be immediately in that position; but it is within reach of any substantial state with advanced technological
capabilities, and attaining it is certain to be a high priority in the development of forces.) As a result, neither
side can have any predisposition
to suppose, in an ambiguous situation of fearful risk, that the right course when in doubt is to go on copiously launching
weapons. And none of this analysis rests on any presumption of highly subtle or pre-concerted rationality . The rationality
required is plain. The argument is reinforced if we consider the possible reasoning of an aggressor at a more dispassionate level. Any substantial nuclear
armoury can inflict destruction outweighing any possible prize that aggression could hope to seize. A state attacking the
possessor of such an armoury must therefore be doing so (once given that it cannot count upon destroying the armoury pre-emptively)
on a judgement that the possessor would be found lacking in the will to use it. If the attacked possessor
used nuclear weapons, whether first or in response to the aggressor's own first use, this judgement would begin to look dangerously
precarious. There must be at least a substantial possibility of the aggressor leaders' concluding that their initial
judgement had been mistaken—that the risks were after all greater than whatever prize they had been seeking, and that for their own country's
survival they must call off the aggression. Deterrence planning such as that of NATO was directed in the first place to preventing the initial
misjudgement and in the second, if it were nevertheless made, to compelling such a reappraisal. The former aim had to have primacy, because it could not be taken
for granted that the latter was certain to work. But there was no ground for assuming in advance, for all possible scenarios, that the chance of its working must be
negligible. An
aggressor state would itself be at huge risk if nuclear war developed, as its leaders would
know. It may be argued that a policy which abandons hope of physically defeating the enemy and simply hopes to get him to desist is pure gamble, a matter of
who blinks first; and that the political and moral nature of most likely aggressors, almost ex hypothesi, makes them the less likely to blink. One response to this is to
ask what is the alternative—it can only be surrender. But a more positive and hopeful answer lies in the fact that the criticism is posed in a political vacuum. Real-life
conflict would have a political context. The context which concerned NATO during the cold war, for example, was one of defending vital interests against a
postulated aggressor whose own vital interests would not be engaged, or would be less engaged. Certainty is not possible, but a clear asymmetry of vital interest is
a legitimate basis for expecting an asymmetry, credible to both sides, of resolve in conflict. That places upon statesmen, as page 23 has noted, the key task in
deterrence of building up in advance a clear and shared grasp of where limits lie. That was plainly achieved in cold-war Europe. If vital interests have been defined in
a way that is dear, and also clearly not overlapping or incompatible with those of the adversary, a credible basis has been laid for the likelihood of greater resolve in
resistance. It was also sometimes suggested by critics that whatever might be indicated by theoretical discussion of political will and interests, the military
environment of nuclear warfare—particularly difficulties of communication and control—would drive escalation with overwhelming probability to the limit. But it is
obscure why matters should be regarded as inevitably .so for every possible level and setting of action. Even if the history of war suggested (as it scarcely does) that
military decision-makers are mostly apt to work on the principle 'When in doubt, lash out', the nuclear revolution creates an utterly new situation. The pervasive
reality, always plain to both sides during the cold war, is `If this goes on to the end, we are all ruined'. Given
that inexorable escalation would
mean catastrophe for both, it would be perverse to suppose them permanently incapable of framing
arrangements which avoid it. As page 16 has noted, NATO gave its military commanders no widespread delegated authority, in peace or war, to
launch nuclear weapons without specific political direction. Many types of weapon moreover had physical safeguards such as
PALs incorporated to reinforce organizational ones. There were multiple communication and control
systems for passing information, orders, and prohibitions. Such systems could not be totally guaranteed against disruption if at a
fairly intense level of strategic exchange—which was only one of many possible levels of conflict— an adversary judged it to be in his interest to weaken political
control. It was far from clear why he necessarily should so judge. Even then, however, it
remained possible to operate on a general failsafe presumption: no authorization, no use. That was the basis on which NATO operated. If it is feared that the arrangements which 1 a
nuclear-weapon possessor has in place do not meet such standards in some respects, the logical course is to continue to improve them rather than to assume
The likelihood of
escalation can never be 100 per cent, and never zero. Where between those two extremes it may lie can never
be precisely calculable in advance; and even were it so calculable, it would not be uniquely fixed—it would stand to vary hugely with
escalation to be certain and uncontrollable, with all the enormous inferences that would have to flow from such an assumption.
circumstances. That there should be any risk at all of escalation to widespread nuclear war must be deeply disturbing, and decision-makers would always have to
weigh it most anxiously. But a pair of key truths about it need to be recognized. The first is that the risk of escalation to large-scale nuclear war is inescapably
present in any significant armed conflict between nuclear-capable powers, whoever may have started the conflict and whoever may first have used any particular
category of weapon. The initiator of the conflict will always have physically available to him options for applying more force if he meets effective resistance. If the
risk of escalation, whatever its degree of probability, is to be regarded as absolutely unacceptable, the necessary inference is that a state attacked by a substantial
nuclear power must forgo military resistance. It must surrender, even if it has a nuclear armoury of its own. But the companion truth is that, as page 47 has noted,
the risk of escalation is an inescapable burden also upon the aggressor. The exploitation of that burden is the crucial route, if conflict does break out, for managing
it, to a tolerable outcome--the only route, indeed, intermediate between surrender and holocaust, and so the necessary basis for deterrence beforehand. The
working out of plans to exploit escalation risk most effectively in deterring potential aggression entails further and complex issues. It is for example plainly desirable,
wherever geography, politics, and available resources so permit without triggering arms races, to make provisions and dispositions that are likely to place the onus
of making the bigger, and more evidently dangerous steps in escalation upon the aggressor volib wishes to maintain his attack, rather than upon the defender. (The
customary shorthand for this desirable posture used to be 'escalation dominance'.) These issues are not further discussed here. But addressing them needs to start
from acknowledgement that there are in any event no certainties or absolutes available, no options guaranteed to be risk-free and cost-free. Deterrence is not
possible without escalation risk; and its presence can point to no automatic policy conclusion save for those who espouse outright pacifism and accept its
consequences. Accident and Miscalculation Ensuring
the safety and security of nuclear weapons plainly needs to be
taken most seriously. Detailed information is understandably not published, but such direct evidence as there is suggests that it
always has been so taken in every possessor state, with the inevitable occasional failures to follow strict
procedures dealt with rigorously. Critics have nevertheless from time to time argued that the possibility of accident involving nuclear weapons is
so substantial that it must weigh heavily in the entire evaluation of whether war-prevention structures entailing their existence should be tolerated at all. Two sorts
of scenario are usually in question. The first is that of a single grave event involving an unintended nuclear explosion—a technical disaster at a storage site, for
example, Dr the accidental or unauthorized launch of a delivery system with a live nuclear warhead. The second is that of some event—perhaps such an explosion
or launch, or some other mishap such as malfunction or misinterpretation of radar signals or computer systems—initiating a sequence of response and counterresponse that culminated in a nuclear exchange which no one had truly intended. No event that is physically possible can be said to be of absolutely zero probability
(just as at an opposite extreme it is absurd to claim, as has been heard from distinguished figures, that nuclear-weapon use can be guaranteed to happen within
some finite future span despite not having happened for over sixty years). But human affairs cannot be managed to the standard of either zero or total probability.
We have to assess levels between those theoretical limits and weigh their reality and implications against other factors, in security planning as in everyday life.
There have certainly been, across the decades since 1945, many known accidents involving nuclear weapons, from
transporters skidding off roads to bomber aircraft crashing with or accidentally dropping the weapons they carried ( in past days when such
carriage was a frequent feature of readiness arrangements----it no longer is). A few of these accidents may have released
into the nearby environment highly toxic material. None however has entailed a nuclear detonation. Some commentators suggest that
this reflects bizarrely good fortune amid such massive activity and deployment over so many years. A more rational deduction from the facts of this long experience
would however be that the
probability of any accident triggering a nuclear explosion is extremely low. It might be
further noted that the
mechanisms needed to set off such an explosion are technically demanding, and that in a
past sixty years have seen extensive improvements in safety arrangements for both
the design and the handling of weapons. It is undoubtedly possible to see respects in which, after the cold war, some of the factors bearing
upon risk may be new or more adverse; but some are now plainly less so. The years which the world has come through entirely without
accidental or unauthorized detonation have included early decades in which knowledge was sketchier, precautions
large number of ways the
were less developed, and weapon designs were less ultra-safe than they later became, as well as substantial
periods in which weapon numbers were larger, deployments more widespread and diverse, movements
more frequent, and several aspects of doctrine and readiness arrangements more tense. Similar considerations
apply to the hypothesis of nuclear war being mistakenly triggered by false alarm. Critics again point to the fact, as it is understood, of numerous occasions when
initial steps in alert sequences for US nuclear forces were embarked upon, or at least called for, by, indicators mistaken or misconstrued. In
none of these
instances, it is accepted, did matters get at all near to nuclear launch--extraordinary good fortune again, critics have
suggested. But the rival and more logical inference from hundreds of events stretching over sixty years of
experience presents itself once more: that the probability of initial misinterpretation leading far towards
mistaken launch is remote. Precisely because any nuclear-weapon possessor recognizes the vast gravity of
any launch, release sequences have many steps, and human decision is repeatedly interposed as well as
capping the sequences. To convey that because a first step was prompted the world somehow came close to accidental nuclear war is wild hyperbole,
rather like asserting, when a tennis champion has lost his opening service game, that he was nearly beaten in straight sets. History anyway scarcely
offers any ready example of major war started by accident even before the nuclear revolution imposed an
order-of-magnitude increase in caution. It was occasionally conjectured that nuclear war might be triggered by the real but accidental or
unauthorized launch of a strategic nuclear-weapon delivery system in the direction of a potential adversary. No such launch is known to have
occurred in over sixty years . The probability of it is therefore very low. But even if it did happen, the further hypothesis
of it initiating a general nuclear exchange is far-fetched. It fails to consider the real situation of decisionmakers as pages 63-4 have brought out. The notion that cosmic holocaust might be mistakenly precipitated in this way belongs to science
fiction.
Contention 4 is Solvency
Only federal action solves the precedent advantage- any alternative remedies the
WTO’s decision, but not the precedent we set
Jensen 08 (1/31/2008, Thomas Jensen: economics and pre-law University of Chicago; Quoting Nao
Matsukata: formerly Director of Policy Planning for USTR Robert Zoellick and now a Senior Advisor for
Alston and Bird LLP; Quoting Jeffrey Sandman: spokesperson for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling
Initiative "Costa Rica Files for Arbitration in WTO Internet Gambling Dispute" http://www.pointspreads.com/industry/013108-costa-rica-files-for-arbitration-in-wto-internet-gambling-dispute.html)
The international Internet gambling dispute, potentially valued at billions of dollars, continues. Costa
Rica and Antigua separately
filed for World Trade Organization (WTO) arbitration on January 28, seeking compensation from the United States as a
result of the U.S. withdrawal of its commitment on cross-border internet gambling services. The new arbitration requests could
potentially derail the settlement for compensation agreed to late last year by the U.S. and the E.U. The
arbitration filing makes it possible for the E.U. to reconsider its settlement with the U.S. and join the arbitration proceeding, opening up a new
phase in the Internet gambling trade dispute. “The decision by Antigua and Costa Rica to take the United States to arbitration will test the limits
of the WTO process and squarely challenge the U.S. resolve to withdraw its GATS commitments,” said Nao Matsukata, formerly Director of
Policy Planning for USTR Robert Zoellick and now a Senior Advisor for Alston and Bird LLP. “If
the U.S. finds the decision of the
WTO arbitrator unacceptable, under procedures outlined in the GATS, it could unilaterally withdraw,
creating an unprecedented crisis of confidence in the global trading system. The best solution remains
for Congress to pass legislation that would create a legal and regulated framework for online gaming in
the United States and for the United States to remain in the GATs schedule to provide all providers legal
protection under the WTO.” U.S. withdrawal from GATS following this new arbitration carries the risk of expensive new sanctions
levied against U.S. exports and intellectual property. “If the U.S. withdraws following another adverse arbitral decision,
the country would face potential retaliation from all WTO Members affected by the arbitration, a pool
of countries including the EU, Canada, and Japan,” added Matsukata. “Inviting sanctions at a time when both
the U.S. Administration and Congress are both striving to stimulate an economy on the edge of
recession seems foolhardy at best, especially when draft domestic legislation already exists that would
create a renewed flow of both business and tax revenues throughout the nation's gaming sectors.” Lode
Van Den Hende, a W.T.O. expert and trade attorney with Herbert Smith in Brussels said, “There is a real possibility that the arbitration body will
find that unless the U.S. provides commercially meaningful compensation to Costa Rica and Antigua, it cannot withdraw its commitment on
gambling, without risking trade sanctions from the affected parties.” Costa Rica’s action raises questions about what India and Macao might do
as the other nations that have yet to come to terms with the U.S. over the withdrawal of the Article XXI commitment related to cross-border
gambling services. Under the WTO’s GATS Article XXI rules, any country withdrawing its market access must provide compensation to affected
countries that maintains a general level of mutually advantageous commitments not less favorable to trade than that provided for in schedules
of specific commitments prior to the negotiations. The U.S. negotiated settlements with four of the eight nations seeking compensation – the
E.U., Japan, Canada, and Australia, providing compensation, in the form of markets access to U.S. domestic postal services, warehousing, R & D,
and technical testing sectors. Costa Rica, Macao, India and Antigua did not reach an agreement with the U.S. over the withdrawal of its
gambling commitment, as the above market sectors offered by the U.S. were of no commercial interest to those countries. After the WTO ruled
that the U.S. had violated trade rules in barring Antiguan online gaming operators from the U.S. market, the U.S. withdrew its WTO obligations
with regard to free trade in the gambling area. The U.S. decision to withdraw its market commitments, in order to comply with the WTO, is the
first instance of such an action by a WTO member. The action
by the U.S. sets a precedent that other WTO members
could copy in order to back out of their own commitments once they consider them inconvenient. In turn,
the Costa Rican and Antiguan arbitration requests are the first ever in response to a withdrawal of commitments. It is possible that these
arbitration requests will impact the way in which Antigua decides to implement the $21 million per year in trade sanctions it received as
compensation for U.S. noncompliance with WTO rulings in the gambling dispute. An option available is for the country to take the
“It is time for the U.S. to end its hypocritical practices that
discriminate against foreign online gambling operators, while allowing U.S. gambling operators to accept bets for certain
forms of gambling,” said Jeffrey Sandman, spokesperson for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative. “Regulation of Internet
gambling should be supported as a means to resolve this trade dispute.”
compensation in the form of intellectual property waivers.
Only federal legalization creates a profitable market
Reuters 13 (3/8/13 "Congress in a race with states to pass online gambling law"
www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/09/net-us-onlinepoker-federal-idUSBRE92800M20130309)
(Reuters) - States racing to legalize online gambling may soon be overtaken by the federal government, as efforts to pass a national bill begin to come together.
Legislation in the House is likely to be introduced this spring. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), whose long-advocated federal legislation never got
introduced last year, is working behind the scenes to form a coalition to support the measure. "I think the states' passage gives some incentive to the federal
government to act," said Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas), who introduced an online poker bill in 2011 that failed. He plans to introduce a bill this spring.
"Whether you're for or against Internet gambling," said Barton, "you don't want 50 sets of state laws.
You want uniformity ." Similar efforts by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and former Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), backed by the casino industry,
fizzled last year. The Reid-Kyl bill faced stiff opposition from Republicans and several states' governors and others who felt it unfairly favored Nevada by giving it too
much regulatory clout and a cut of the regulatory fees. Congressional efforts have picked up as more states move forward with their own bills. New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie signed legislation on February 27 authorizing online gambling in an attempt to help the state's struggling casino industry and generate casino tax
revenues. New Jersey is the most populous state to approve online gaming, following Delaware and Nevada. Many others are considering it. An Illinois senate
committee filed a bill earlier this week that could authorize online gambling there. Several states are also trying to figure out how to band together to attract more
gamblers. Proponents of a federal law say it would create uniformity and impose safeguards against fraud,
while opponents say it would usurp states' power and siphon off badly needed revenues. Prior federal efforts have also drawn steadfast opposition from religious
groups such as the National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention, which blasted the draft legislation circulated last year. That effort was
sidetracked as both parties concentrated on the election, gambling executives and political officials said. Reid and Senator Dean Heller (R-Nevada) say they intend to
try it again." We
should have done it on a federal level ... we are going to try to figure out a way forward,"
said Reid at a recent press conference. "Senator Heller believes federal legislation for online poker is
crucial, and will continue to work with Senator Reid and like-minded colleagues to get a bill passed," said Chandler Smith, Heller's communications director. To
date, proposed federal legislation has sought only to regulate Internet poker and prohibit other forms of online gambling. New Jersey's legislation allows for a broad
array of games, including online slots, blackjack and other table games. The state plans to take 15 percent of the amount won by online casinos from players within
its borders. Nevada intends to keep 6.7 percent. Nevada is expected to be the first state to go live with online gaming, likely by summer, according to regulatory and
industry experts. The state will only allow poker. Draft
federal legislation over the past few years would divide tax
revenue between the federal government and states where the bettors reside and the state where
the legal website is located. Some proposals allow the federal government to take 5 percent to 10
percent of the tax revenue. According to the American Gaming Association, about 85 countries have
legalized online gambling and an estimated $35 billion is being bet worldwide online each year,
including by millions of people in the United States. AGA projects the U.S. market to reach $10 billion a
year by 2017 from about $4 billion in unauthorized gambling in 2011. Caesars and other large casino
operators like MGM Resorts International Ltd have long promoted federal legislation, as it would offer
a larger, more uniform and liquid market.
"We will be prepared with our offerings for Nevada and hopefully New Jersey," said Seth
Palansky, a spokesperson for Caesars Interactive Entertainment. "But there is still time for Congress to step in and provide a federal solution."