NEG
Notes
The Coes card in the 1NC is an internal link to South China Sea conflict, Indo-Pak war,
Iran prolif, and Russian expansionism – so there is no need to read a different internal
link
For Venezuela, you can read the Christy link card and then read the impact modules
from the Maduro cred DA – that allows you access to those other impacts
The weakest part of the DA is the spillover argument – answering the question “why
does Obama appeasing one Latin American country kill his overall credibility and let
other countries act the same?” The answer is the Krauthammer card – it says that
other countries perceive Obama weakness in one region and take advantage of it
If you don’t want to read the whole DA shell/don’t have time, you can just read the
cards under the solvency takeouts section as case turns
1NC Shell
1NC Appeasement
Obama is taking a hard line stance against Latin American countries now
Baverstock 5-17 - foreign correspondent based in Venezuela (Alasdair, “Venezuela's Maduro still
waiting on Washington's recognition”, May 17 of 2013, CSM,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0517/Venezuela-s-Maduro-still-waiting-onWashington-s-recognition)
More than a month after Venezuela’s contested presidential election, President Nicolás Maduro’s narrow victory has yet to be
recognized by the United States . Refusing to legitimize the new premier while a partial recount of the
vote is underway, the US position has led to further political tensions in a relationship historically
stressed under the leadership of former President Hugo Chávez. ¶ A handful of countries, including Chile, Peru, and
the US, have expressed concern over the democratic standards of the election, which Maduro won by a little
more than 1 percent of the vote. Venezuela’s opposition party is calling for the results to be annulled, citing over 3,000 instances of election
fraud, ranging from alleged multiple-voting in chavista-strongholds to polling booth intimidation.¶ “Obviously, if
there are huge
irregularities we are going to have serious questions about the viability of that government,” said
Secretary of State John Kerry during a hearing of the US Foreign Affairs Committee following the announcement of President Maduro’s
victory in April.¶ While the US has pledged not to interfere with Venezuelan politics, the refusal to recognize Maduro's
presidency has left many to question what message the US is trying to send, and how – if at all – it will
impact Venezuela post-Chávez.¶ “[The US isn’t] recognizing or failing to recognize,” says David Smilde, professor of sociology at the
University of Georgia. “They’re just waiting. But here in Venezuela that’s seen as an act of belligerence.”¶ 'Symbolic'¶
The US’s reluctance to accept the new leader affects little in economic terms; the heavy crude is still flowing
steadily from the Venezuelan oil fields into US refineries, a trading relationship upon which Venezuela relies heavily, particularly following the
recent slump in global oil prices. In fact, many believe the US’s reluctance to legitimize Maduro amounts to little more than a message to other
regional observers. ¶ “Maduro is certainly now the president of Venezuela,” says Mark Jones, professor of political science at Rice University in
Texas. “ The
US’s refusal to recognize him is more symbolic than anything else . Ignoring Maduro’s win
sends a signal to other Latin American countries that these elections didn’t meet minimum
democratic standards .”¶ Other observers cite the socialist leader’s continued belligerence toward Washington – Maduro blames the
US government’s “dark forces” for the death of Mr. Chávez and has pursued the provocative rhetoric of his predecessor – as a factor in the US’s
reluctance to recognize Maduro as president.
INSERT LINK
Appeasement kills credibility – it shows countries that the US isn’t hard line - playing a
weak hand doesn’t work
Weissberg 10 - Professor of Political Science-Emeritus, University of Illinois-Urbana (Robert,
“President Obama's Compulsive Appeasement Disorder”, August 27 of 2010, American Thinker,
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/president_obamas_compulsive_ap.html)
There's a simple explanation: we are no longer feared. Superpowers of yesteryear, going back to the Greeks
and Romans, were feared for a reason -- they leveled a city to make an example . Today, by contrast, Uncle
Sam relies on cajoling, bribery (think North Korea), entreating puny leaders of inchoate states (special envoys to
the PLO's Mahmoud Abbas) and otherwise playing weak hands . We have gone from resolve to U.N. resolution. We've forgotten
Machiavelli's sage advice: since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than
loved.¶ Being feared does not require bombing Iran into the Stone Age, though that would certainly terrify North Korea and even slow down
the Somali pirates. Being
feared is when your enemy believes that you are willing to use overwhelming,
deadly force, and this need not require nuking anybody. The trick is creating a credible, threatening
persona -- convincing your enemy that while you may speak softly, you also carry a big stick and are
willing to use it. Israel long ago learned this lesson, regardless of world outrage.
Obama’s credibility is uniquely key to solve conflict
Ben Coes 11, a former speechwriter in the George H.W. Bush administration, managed Mitt Romney’s
successful campaign for Massachusetts Governor in 2002 & author, “The disease of a weak president”,
The Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/30/the-disease-of-a-weak-president/
The disease of a weak president usually begins with the Achilles’ heel all politicians are born with — the desire to be popular. It leads to pandering to different audiences,
people and countries and creates a sloppy, incoherent set of policies. Ironically, it ultimately results in that very politician losing the trust and
respect of friends and foes alike.¶ In the case of Israel, those of us who are strong supporters can at least take comfort in the knowledge that Tel Aviv will do
whatever is necessary to protect itself from potential threats from its unfriendly neighbors. While it would be preferable for the Israelis to be able to count on the United States, in both
word and deed, the fact is right now they stand alone. Obama and his foreign policy team have undercut the Israelis in a multitude of ways. Despite this, I wouldn’t bet against the
Obama’s weakness could — in other places — have
implications far, far worse than anything that might ultimately occur in Israel. The triangular plot
of land that connects Pakistan, India and China is held together with much more fragility and is
built upon a truly foreboding foundation of religious hatreds, radicalism, resource envy and
nuclear weapons.¶ If you can only worry about preventing one foreign policy disaster, worry about
this one.¶ Here are a few unsettling facts to think about:¶ First, Pakistan and India have fought three wars since the British de-colonized and left the region in
1947. All three wars occurred before the two countries had nuclear weapons. Both countries now possess hundreds of nuclear weapons, enough
to wipe each other off the map many times over.¶ Second, Pakistan is 97% Muslim. It is a question of
when — not if — Pakistan elects a radical Islamist in the mold of Ayatollah Khomeini as its
president. Make no mistake, it will happen, and when it does the world will have a far greater concern than Ali Khamenei or Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and a single nuclear device.¶ Third, China sits at the northern border of both India and
Pakistan. China is strategically aligned with Pakistan. Most concerning, China covets India’s natural
resources. Over the years, it has slowly inched its way into the northern tier of India-controlled Kashmir
Territory, appropriating land and resources and drawing little notice from the outside world.¶ In my book, Coup
D’Etat, I consider this tinderbox of colliding forces in Pakistan, India and China as a thriller writer. But thriller writers have the luxury of solving problems by imagining
solutions on the page. In my book, when Pakistan elects a radical Islamist who then starts a war with India and
introduces nuclear weapons to the theater, America steps in and removes the Pakistani leader
through a coup d’état.¶ I wish it was that simple.¶ The more complicated and difficult truth is that we, as Americans, must take sides. We
must be willing to be unpopular in certain places. Most important, we must be ready and willing to threaten our military might on
behalf of our allies. And our allies are Israel and India.¶ There are many threats out there — Islamic
radicalism, Chinese technology espionage, global debt and half a dozen other things that smarter
people than me are no doubt worrying about. But the single greatest threat to America is none of these. The single greatest
threat facing America and our allies is a weak U.S. president. It doesn’t have to be this way. President Obama could —
if he chose — develop a backbone and lead. Alternatively, America could elect a new president. It has to be one or the other. The status
quo is simply not an option.
soldiers of Shin Bet, Shayetet 13 and the Israeli Defense Forces.¶ But
Iran prolif causes nuclear war
Jeffrey Goldberg 12, Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic, January
23, 2012, “How Iran Could Trigger Accidental Armageddon,” online:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/how-iran-may-trigger-accidental-armageddoncommentary-by-jeffrey-goldberg.html
The experts who study this depressing issue seem to agree that a Middle East in which Iran has four or five nuclear
weapons would be dangerously unstable and prone to warp-speed escalation .¶ Here’s one possible scenario for
the not-so-distant future: Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, launches a cross-border attack into Israel, or kills a sizable number of Israeli civilians with
conventional rockets. Israel responds by invading southern Lebanon, and promises, as it has in the past, to destroy Hezbollah. Iran, coming to the defense of its
proxy, warns Israel to cease hostilities, and leaves open the question of what it will do if Israel refuses to heed its demand.¶ Dennis Ross, who until recently
served as President Barack Obama’s Iran point man on the National Security Council, notes Hezbollah’s political importance to Tehran. “The only place to
which the Iranian government successfully exported the revolution is to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Ross told me. “If it looks as if the Israelis are going to destroy
Hezbollah, you can see Iran threatening Israel, and they begin to change the readiness of their forces. This could set in motion a chain of events that would be
like ‘Guns of August’ on steroids.”¶ Imagine that Israel detects a mobilization of Iran’s rocket force or the sudden movement of mobile missile launchers. Does
Israel assume the Iranians are bluffing, or that they are not? And would Israel have time to figure this out? Or imagine the opposite: Might Iran, which will have
no second-strike capability for many years -- that is, no reserve of nuclear weapons to respond with in an exchange -- feel compelled to attack Israel first,
knowing that it has no second chance?¶ Bruce Blair, the co-founder of the nuclear disarmament group Global Zero and an
expert on nuclear
strategy, told me that in a sudden crisis Iran and Israel might each abandon traditional peacetime
safeguards, making an accidental exchange more likely.¶ “A confrontation that brings the two nuclear-armed states
to a boiling point would likely lead them to raise the launch- readiness of their forces -- mating warheads to delivery
vehicles and preparing to fire on short notice,” he said. “Missiles put on hair-trigger alert also obviously increase the danger of
their launch and release on false warning of attack -- false indications that the other side has initiated an attack.” ¶ Then comes the
problem of misinterpreted data, Blair said. “Intelligence failures in the midst of a nuclear crisis could readily lead to a false impression that
the other side has decided to attack, and induce the other side to launch a preemptive strike.” ¶ ‘Cognitive Bias’¶ Blair notes that in a crisis it isn’t
irrational to expect an attack, and this expectation makes it more likely that a leader will read the worst into
incomplete intelligence. “This predisposition is a cognitive bias that increases the danger that one side will jump the
gun on the basis of incorrect information,” he said.¶ Ross told me that Iran’s relative proximity to Israel and the total absence of
ties between the two countries -- the thought of Iran agreeing to maintain a hot line with a country whose existence it doesn’t recognize is far-fetched -make the situation even more hazardous. “This is not the Cold War,” he said. “In this situation we don’t have any
communications channels. Iran and Israel have zero communications. And even in the Cold War we nearly had a nuclear war. We were much
closer than we realized.Ӧ The answer to this predicament is to deny Iran nuclear weapons, but not through an attack
on its nuclear facilities, at least not now. “The liabilities of preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program vastly outweigh the benefits,” Blair said. “But certainly
Iran’s program must be stopped before it reaches fruition with a nuclear weapons delivery capability.”
2NC Link
Venezuela
The plan appeases Maduro – provides political cover to pursue his agenda
Christy 6-13 - Senior Policy Analyst, Foreign Policy Initiative, experience in foreign policy and politics,
previously the Senior Policy Analyst for the Republican National Committee (RNC), focusing on energy,
foreign affairs, and national security issues, worked at the National Republican Congressional
Committee as an Analyst (Patrick, “U.S. Overtures to Maduro Hurt Venezuela’s Democratic Opposition,”
June 13 of 2013, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/06/13/us-overtures-tochavez-successor-maduro-hurt-venezuelas-opposition)
While Secretary Kerry said that his meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart included discussion of human rights and democracy issues, the
Obama administration's overall track record in the region gives reason for concern. President Obama failed to mention Venezuela or Chavez's
abuse of power during his weeklong trip to the region in 2011. And while Obama refused at first to acknowledge the April election results, the
State Department has since sent very different signals. Indeed, Secretary Kerry declined even to mention Venezuela directly during his near 30minute address to the plenary session of the Organization of American States in Guatemala last week.¶ ¶ For Venezuela's opposition, the
Obama administration's eagerness to revive relations with Maduro is a punch to the gut. Pro-Maduro legislators in the National Assembly have
banned opposition lawmakers from committee hearings and speaking on the assembly floor. Other outspoken critics of the regime face
criminal charges, and government officials repeatedly vilify and slander Capriles. What's worse, if
the United States grants or is
perceived to grant legitimacy to the Maduro government, that could give further cover to the regime
as it systematically undermines Venezuela's remaining institutions. ¶ ¶ The Obama administration's overtures to
Maduro's government come as the region is increasingly skeptical of the Chavez successor's reign . Last month,
Capriles met with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in Bogota. Chile's Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging a total audit of all
polling stations. And in recent weeks, opposition lawmakers led by María Corina Machado, a representative from the National Assembly of
Venezuela, have held meetings in capitals around the region to educate foreign leaders about Maduro's illegitimate hold on power.¶ ¶ Rather
than accept Maduro's strongman tactics, the Obama administration should take a firm stand and
make clear to Caracas that any steps to undermine the country's constitution or threaten the
opposition will be detrimental to bilateral ties with the United States. The fact is that Washington holds all the
cards. Venezuela's economy is in a free-fall, Maduro's popularity is plummeting, and various public scandals – especially those related to
institutional corruption – could further erode public confidence in the current government. ¶ ¶
By resetting relations with the
Maduro government now, the United States risks legitimizing the Chavez protégé's ill-gotten hold
on power and undercutting the Venezuelan democratic opposition efforts to sustain and expand its
popular support. It's time the Obama administration rethink this hasty reset with Maduro.
Venezuelan policy is appeasement – helps Chavez and hurts the US
Harper 10 – writer for Americasquarterly.org (Liz, “Venezuela’s Formal Rejection of AmbassadorDesignate Larry Palmer”, December 21 of 2012, http://americasquarterly.org/node/2058
On one side, you have those espousing "strategic engagement," keeping in line with the Obama administration's
stated foreign policy and national security objectives. In short and broadly speaking, these proponents might argue, with an irrational state, you
shouldn't turn your back. Look where that got us with North Korea, Iran and Syria. Instead you
want a seat at the table to start a
dialogue based on mutual respect and to build on areas of mutual interest. You raise concerns discretely and
express disapproval quietly or through third parties. As one person said, engagement should be “subversive," because you seek to assert
positive influence by being present and through cooperation on areas such as business development, financial opportunities, or culture and
sports. Indeed, Palmer was the right guy to carry out this mission.¶ But,
the engagement policy, as it is practiced with
Venezuela, seems more like "appeasement ," say people clamoring for a tougher approach. After all, for years now, we
have witnessed a democracy's death by a thousand cuts. This past week, Hugo Chávez got one of his
Christmas wishes with the approval of new decree powers, thereby further eroding the country's once
well-established institutional checks and balances . Chávez threatens more than human rights and
democratic norms; the U.S. has legitimate national security concerns, such as nuclear proliferation,
terrorism and narcotrafficking. Yet, as Chávez runs roughshod over international norms, is the U.S. working to halt the downward
spiral?¶ Those are the broad brush strokes of the debate into which Palmer was tossed.
Cuba
Cuban policy is appeasement – it pleases Castro
Walser 12 – Ph.D. and a Senior Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation (Ray, “Cuban-American
Leaders: “No Substitute for Freedom” in Cuba”, June 25 of 2012,
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/06/25/cuban-american-leaders-no-substitute-for-freedom-in-cuba/)
However, these pleasing liberal assumptions are negated on a daily basis by hard-headed facts on the
ground in Cuba. With each new step lifting restrictions on travel and remittances have come more
demands for additional actions— not a reciprocal loosening of the regime’s grip on its citizens.¶ A one-of
a-kind letter entitled “Commitment to Freedom,” signed by a distinguished battery of Cuban-American former senior executives for Fortune
500 companies and released on June 25, advises
Washington and the Obama Administration to curb its
enthusiasm for a policy of appeasement and concessions. It warns against falling for the Castro regime’s deceptive
campaign to secure U.S. capital infusion and bank credits and lure some Cuban-American businessmen without ushering in a true economic and
political opening.¶ The former CEOs argue that recent economic reforms heralded as game-changing are, in fact, “mostly cosmetic, heavilytaxed and revocable, and offer no legal protection or investment return.” The letter’s signatories further warn that the
Castro regime
“is seeking to divide and neutralize the Cuban-American community, and lure some of its
businessmen, by selling the fallacious concept that there is no solution to Cuba’s predicament other
than supporting cosmetic reforms without liberty and democracy.”¶ They are correct when they say the future “lies
not with the current failed, octogenarian rulers, but with the leaders of the growing pro-democracy movement.Ӧ The Obama Administration
policy aimed at easing travel and remittances to Cuba has
visibly failed to advance genuine economic or political
freedom . With the unjust detention of American Alan Gross and the continual crackdown on dissent and protest, the regime cannot hide
its iron fist of political repression.¶ It is time to take a tougher look at the shortcomings of U.S. Cuba policy and remind ourselves, as these
former CEOs do, that when it comes to ending the tyranny of the Castro regime, there is “no substitute for freedom.”
Embargo
Lifting the embargo is appeasement – Castro takes advantage of it
Calzon 7 – Executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C. (Frank, “Appeasing the
Castro’s will backfire - keep the Embargo – Calzon”, October 3 of 2007, Havana Journal,
http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/appeasing-the-castros-will-backfire-keep-the-embargo-calzon/)
Castro’s abuse—his ability to order windows smashed or call out street demonstrations—becomes
‘‘revenge’’ for inviting unapproved Cuban guests to the embassy, for reaching out to engage ordinary Cubans in ways
not preapproved by Castro’s government.¶ Foreign observers in Cuba seem to have great difficulty imagining what the regime will do next. One
reason why is that they keep looking for logical reasons to explain the regime’s actions. Yet the reality is that much of what has happened in
Cuba over the last 50 years cannot be explained, except as the whim of a man whose only goal is to be in control of everything Cuban. Castro
has a lot in common with Stalin.¶ The Castro regime simply deems any independent action—however
small—to be a challenge to its totalitarian control. Thus, inviting Cuba’s political dissidents to an
embassy event is ‘‘a hostile act.’’ To give a short-wave radio to a Cuban national is, curiously enough, ‘‘a violation of human rights.’’
Any Cuban daring to voice support for change in Cuba is ‘‘a paid agent’’ of the United States.¶ What to do
in a situation such as this? The principle that should guide foreign governments is that they should show
Cubans that they have friends on the outside .¶ Foreign governments can start by, at the very least, always
insisting on reciprocity in the freedom allowed Castro’s diplomats and embassies to operate in their
capitals. This is not what happened. Foreign missions—America’s among them—accede to Castro’s restrictions on how
their diplomats and embassies function in Cuba.¶ Cuba’s diplomats take full advantage of their
freedoms in the U.S. capital. They attend congressional hearings, have access to the American media,
develop relationships with businessmen and ‘‘progressive’’ activists, host student groups, speak at
universities and enjoy tax-exempt status. Yet U.S. diplomats in Cuba have no similar privileges in
Havana . They are subject to petty harassments. The Cuban government goes so far as to detain shipping containers of
supplies sent to the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba and has broken into the U.S. diplomatic pouch.¶ Attempting to appease Cuba’s
kidnappers will backfire, as it always has. It is instructive that the refugee crises in 1980 and 1994, which
involved 125,000 and 30,000 Cubans respectively, and the 1996 murder of Brothers to the Rescue crews over the Florida
Straits occurred at times when Washington actually was trying to improve relations.¶ Eventually, Cuba’s long
nightmare will end. If governments around the world would also shake free of ‘‘the Havana Syndrome,’’
they might hasten Cuba’s democratic awakening.
Generic
Engagement is INHERENTLY appeasement
Rock 2000 - Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University, works at Vassar College in Political Science
(Stephen, “Appeasement in International Politics”, 2000, pg 23-24)
Critics of engagement—and there are many—consider it “ a modern form of appeasement .”8’ Their
insinuation that engagement is there¶ fore doomed to fail can be disputed, but as a matter of
definition they¶ have a point. Appeasement and engagement share a number of attributes .¶ Both are
nonconfrontational approaches to dealing with an adversary.¶ Each hopes eventually to produce a
relaxation of tensions with the opponent and some modification of its internal and/or external behavior. Each¶ relies, in part, on
the offering of inducements. Each sets sonic role for¶ socialization or learning on the part of the
adversary, as well as the potential value of reassurance.¶ Appeasement and engagement are not identical. Appeasement can¶ be a strategy
with short-run aims, while engagement almost necessarily¶ implies a lengthy process and a distant time horizon. More importantly,
engagement is a broader, more wide-ranging approach to dealing with an¶ opponent. It places greater emphasis on cooperation on matters of
mutual interest, enmeshing the adversary in a web of commercial connections, rules, and institutions, on the development of increased
leverage,¶ and on shaping the long-term evolution of the adversary’s economic and!¶ or political system. Appeasement
tends to be
somewhat narrower in scope,¶ relying more heavily on inducements to remove the causes of conflict¶
and reduce tensions.¶ Nevertheless, appeasement and engagement are similar, and the two¶ strategies
overlap in certain respects.
Several of the cases of appeasement¶ examined in this volume contained elements of engagement and
could¶ perhaps be interpreted by some as examples of the latter rather than of¶ the former. It
may, in fact, be appropriate to think
of appeasement as a¶ subcategory of engagement. For these reasons, this work on appeasement¶ is intended to be of
interest to scholars who study engagement and of¶ relevance to practitioners of foreign policy who must decide whether¶ and how to pursue
such a strategy.
The plan appeases Latin American leaders
Jacobson 11 – President of New Horizons Economic Research and writer for Politifact (Louis, “The U.S.
gives foreign aid to Cuba and Venezuela, even though those countries are our enemies”, February 9 of
2011, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/mar/23/ted-poe/ted-poe-decries-usaid-venezuela-cuba/)
Critics of Venezuela’s leader, Hugo Chavez, call him a dictator. Meanwhile, Cuba has been a communist country
for decades, led by Fidel Castro and now his brother Raul. In its widely followed rankings, the group Freedom House rates Venezuela
toward the bottom of the nations it classifies as "partly free," while Cuba sits at the lower end of its "not free" scale. And both nations have
strained relations with the United States.¶ So Poe
suggested these as two examples of what’s wrong with U.S.
foreign aid.¶ "We give money to Venezuela. Why do we give money to Chavez and Venezuela? He hates
the United States. He defies our president, makes fun of our nation . We don’t need to give him any foreign aid. We
give $20 million to Cuba. Why do we give money to Cuba? Americans can’t even go to Cuba. It’s offlimits. It’s a communist country. But we’re dumping money over there."¶ We looked at budget documents for
foreign aid and talked to experts in the field, and here’s what we found.¶ Poe is correct that U.S. foreign aid flows into both
countries. In fiscal year 2010, the Venezuela account showed $6 million, while the Cuba account showed $20 million. For
fiscal year 2012, the administration has requested a little less for Venezuela -- $5 million -- and the same
$20 million amount for Cuba.
2NC Uniqueness
2NC Uniqueness
Obama is a hard liner – new cabinet
Gray 13 – Managing Editor of Air Force Times at Army Times Publishing (Mel, “Senate Republicans:
Obama's Nominees Too Hard-Line”, January 28 of 2013, Newsmax,
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/obama-liberal-cabinet-nominations/2013/01/28/id/487676)
¶ The GOP lawmakers, who play key roles in the confirmation process, contend the new team Obama is putting
together is supremely suited to carry out his agenda, but are all hard-liners better at alienation than
conciliation , the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. ¶ ¶ Perhaps the best example of what Republicans are
complaining about is the president's appointment Friday of longtime aide Denis McDonough to be chief of staff. McDonough has a
reputation for being personable but has no strong ties to Republicans or their constituencies , which is a
sharp contrast to William Daley, who served as Obama's top aide during a portion of his first term.¶ ¶ Daley's appointment was viewed as an
overture at the time to Republicans, who liked Daley's corporate connections as a former commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton and
his position as an executive committee member of JP Morgan Chase. ¶ ¶ John Podesta, who was Clinton's last chief of staff, told the
Journal that it's important for a president to surround himself in a second term with people he knows
"can execute his strategy."¶ ¶ "Execution is everything in a second term," he said. ¶ ¶ But former Ronald Reagan chief of staff Ken
Duberstein told the Journal Obama might have an easier second term if he reaches out to Republicans with some of his nominations.¶ ¶ "He has
to do it if he is to accomplish his broad agenda," he said. "You can't just do it by sticking your finger in people's eyes."¶ ¶ So far, Obama has
made six nominations that require Senate approval and only one, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for secretary of state, has wide support on
both sides of the aisle. ¶ ¶ Even former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican, is
getting tough scrutiny from his old
colleagues as the nominee for defense secretary, especially Arizona Sen. John McCain. Republicans are concerned
about his past statements and positions regarding Israel and Iran, not to mention the fact that he endorsed Obama
over McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama is hard-lining now – AFF uniqueness is factually incorrect
Mataconis 12 – B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason
University School of Law (Doug, “The GOP’s Ridiculous Appeasement Argument”, January 3 of 2012,
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-gops-ridiculous-appeasement-argument/)
This isn’t really entirely new, of course. For three years now, Republicans have been accusing the President of
“apologizing for America,” even though it’s a manifestly untrue assertion . More recently, many on the
right have engaged in the ridiculous task of accusing the President of abandoning Hosni Mubarak last
February during the height of the protests in Tahrir Square, thus “losing” Egypt. Much of it is partisan nonsense, of
course, but the idea has become such an article of faith among conservatives that it’s pretty clear that people have a hard
time differentiating between facts and partisan rhetoric.¶ As Ted Galen Carpenter notes in a piece that appeared last
week, though, the facts simply don’t support the argument that Republicans are making:¶ The
appeasement allegations directed against Obama, though, border on bizarre. And the president fired back at his
opponents, suggesting that they ask Osama Bin Laden and the twenty-two other high-level al-Qaeda operatives who have been killed since
Obama took office whether he is an appeaser. Fox News host Sean Hannity
immediately sneered that Obama merely
cited “his one foreign policy success.” By success, Hannity implicitly meant an uncompromising, hardline policy.¶ But even by that dubious standard, the Republican appeasement charge is misguided. The current bastardized
definition of appeasement implies a weak-kneed willingness to make far-reaching, unwise
concessions to aggressors . That certainly does not describe the current occupant of the Oval Office.
After all, Obama sharply escalated the war in Afghanistan, has led efforts to impose harsher economic
sanctions on Iran, adopted a hostile stance regarding China’s ambitious territorial claims in the South
China Sea and served as the godfather of NATO’s military campaign to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.
That’s not exactly a record reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain.
Obama's a hardliner on foreign policy
Chapman 12 – contributed articles to Slate and the National Review, Harvard graduate (Steve,
“Appease This!”, February 9 of 2012, http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/09/appease-this)
Yes, Obama. The same president who ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, ordered a military
surge in Afghanistan, took out dozens of jihadists in Pakistan with drone missiles, used American air
power to topple Moammar Gadhafi and stuck to the Iraq timetable set by his predecessor. Rick Santorum
agrees with Romney on Obama, saying that “for every thug and hooligan, for every radical Islamist, he has had nothing but appeasement.”
Newt Gingrich accuses the president of “weakness, appeasement and timidity.” The problem with Romney and other Republican leaders is not
so much that they are wrong but that they have taken up residence in a bizarre fantasy world where concepts like “true” and “false” have no
meaning. They operate on the model suggested by Bush political adviser Karl Rove, who famously ridiculed those in “the reality-based
community.” Reality,
however, has a way of trumping delusions. Calling Obama an appeaser is like calling
Eli Manning a klutz. The only thing odder than saying it is expecting anyone to believe it. But the appeasement line is a
treasured and durable GOP theme. Republicans used it successfully in the 1970s against George McGovern and Jimmy Carter.
They revived it to pummel Democrats who opposed aid to the Nicaraguan rebels in the 1980s, the first war with Iraq in 1991 and the second
war with Iraq in 2003. Whenever Democrats resisted military action favored by Republicans, they got painted bright yellow. The Republicans
tried it again in 2008, accusing Obama of pathetic naivete in offering to talk with North Korea and Iran without preconditions. But the tactic
didn’t have its intended effect. Obama
was the guy who said he would go into Pakistan if necessary to get bin
Laden -- while GOP nominee John McCain was preaching the need to get along with Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf. It’s a mystery why
they expect this claim to work in 2012. In his approach to foreign policy and national security, Obama has done
many things that, if President McCain had done them, would evoke thunderous ovations at this year’s
Republican convention. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. policy under Obama is not much, if any, different from
what we would have expected had Bush stayed for a third term. Even when Obama has diverged from
previous policy on other issues, the change cannot be detected without a microscope.
2NC Uniqueness – Cuba
Hardline against Cuba now – terror list
Kasperowicz 13 [Pete, Staff Writer for the Hill, "State keeps Cuba on terror sponsors list", 5/30/13,
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/americas/302609-cuba-remains-a-state-sponsor-of-terrordespite-some-improvements, Accessed July 6,]
As expected, the State Department on Thursday released a report that keeps Cuba on the list of state
sponsors of terrorism, even as it acknowledged that some conditions on the island were improving. State's Country Reports on
Terrorism for 2012 was widely expected to keep Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, despite some
reports that incorrectly suggested that it might be used by Secretary of State John Kerry to shift policy
on Cuba. In the case of Cuba, State listed three primary reasons for keeping the island nation on the list. First, it noted that Cuba
continued to provide a safe haven for about two dozens members of Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA), a group
charged with terrorism in Spain. State's report, though, seemed to give Cuba some credit for hosting
peace talks between the government of Colombia and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The report notes that Cuba offered aid to FARC members "in past years," and indicates that Havana is no longer supporting the
rebel group. A second major reason for listing Cuba was that the government "continued to harbor fugitives wanted in
the United States." That language is unchanged from last year's report. And thirdly, State said Cuba has deficiencies in the
area of anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism, just as it did in last year’s report. This
year, however, State also noted that Cuba has become a member of the Financial Action Task Force of South America, which requires Havana to
adopt anti-money laundering recommendations. But still, this improvement and the hosting of peace talks between FARC and Colombia
were not enough to remove Cuba from the list.
Obama is taking a hard line stance against Cuba now
Forero 13 - NPR's South America correspondent and The Washington Post's correspondent for
Colombia and Venezuela (Juan, “Obama's Unfinished Business: Latin America”, January 22 of 2013, NPR,
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/22/169980241/obamas-unfinished-business-latin-america)
FORERO: Well, I think there's two policy shifts in Cuba that are super significant . I think one of them is what you just
mentioned, you know, this visa policy. And the other one is that the Cuban government has also been moving to permit
small-scale private enterprise on the island. Things are so bad there that the state has been releasing workers - in other
words, laying people off. And those people are supposed to try to find jobs and get things rolling with their own little businesses. That's going to
be very tough in a country like that. And these are big changes. And of
course there's talk about whether the United
States would ever move on any significant change such as ending its economic embargo of the island. ¶
And I don't see that that is going to happen. I mean, the U.S. has long said that the Castros - that is Raul, the president, and his brother Fidel have to be gone before the U.S. engages Cuba. And I think it's important to note that American diplomats, I think, would love to see an end to
the embargo.¶ Because it's
very damaging to the U.S. It permits the Cubans to claim it's being bullied by a
superpower. And the embargo just hasn't worked. You know, it hasn't ousted the communist government there. But the Obama
administration, I think, faces domestic issues here . First of all, most Americans simply don't care about Cuba. And I think that
the Cuban-American community, which does, has a leadership which continues to support a hard line against
Cuba .¶ And Obama knows full well that that community, the Cuban-American community, particularly in Florida, does vote.
2NC AT: Iran Appeasement Thumps
Obama is a hard liner on Iran
Carpenter 11 - Senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute (Ted Galen,
“The GOP’s Allegations of Appeasement Against Obama”, December 28 of 2011, Cato,
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/gops-allegations-appeasement-against-obama)
The appeasement allegations directed against Obama, though, border on bizarre. And the president fired back at
his opponents, suggesting that they ask Osama Bin Laden and the twenty-two other high-level al-Qaeda operatives who have been killed since
Obama took office whether he is an appeaser. Fox News host Sean Hannity immediately sneered that Obama merely cited “his one foreign
policy success.” By success, Hannity implicitly meant an uncompromising, hard-line policy.¶ But even by that dubious standard, the
Republican appeasement charge is misguided. The current bastardized definition of appeasement
implies a weak-kneed willingness to make far-reaching, unwise concessions to aggressors. That certainly
does not describe the current occupant of the Oval Office. After all, Obama sharply escalated the war in Afghanistan , has
led efforts to impose harsher economic sanctions on Iran , adopted a hostile stance regarding China’s
ambitious territorial claims in the South China Sea and served as the godfather of NATO’s military
campaign to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi . That’s not exactly a record reminiscent of Neville
Chamberlain.
2NC Impact Modules
2NC Latin American Stability
Hardlining key to Iran
Berman 12 [December 4th, 2012, Ilan, Vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council,
Associated Faculty at Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. He also
serves as a columnist for Forbes.com, and as Editor of The Journal of International Security Affairs. Mr.
Berman is the author of Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States (Rowman & Littlefield,
2005), co-editor, with J. Michael Waller, ofDismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian
Regimes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and editor of Taking on Tehran: Strategies for Confronting the
Islamic Republic (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). His latest book, Winning the Long War: Retaking the
Offensive Against Radical Islam, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in July 2009, “Confronting Iran’s
Latin American Ambitions”, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilanberman/2012/12/04/confrontingirans-latin-american-ambitions/]
To the contrary, America’s strategic profile in Latin America is now poised to constrict
precipitously. As a result of looming defense cuts, and with the specter of additional, and ruinous,
“sequester” provisions on the horizon, the Pentagon is now actively planning a more modest global
profile. To that end, back in May, General Douglas Fraser, the outgoing head of U.S. Southern Command,
the combatant command responsible for the Americas, told lawmakers that it plans to retract to Central
America and focus predominantly on the threats posed by the region’s rampant drug and arms trades.
In other words, the United States is getting out of the business of competing for strategic
influence in Latin America, and doing so at precisely the time that Iran is getting serious about
it. That could end up being a costly mistake. As the findings of the Homeland Security
Committee’s study indicate, Iran’s presence south of the U.S. border represents more than a
mere annoyance. It is, rather, a potential front for Iranian action against the United States—one
that could well be activated if and when the current cold war between Iran and the West
over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program heats up in earnest. Washington needs to be
prepared should that happen. Better yet, it needs to craft a proactive approach to confronting Iran
influence and activity south of our border. That, after all, is the surest way for us to avoid having to
face Iran and its proxies here at home.
Iran influence destabilizes Latin America—turns the aff
Berman ’12 [Summer 2012, Ilan, Vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, Associated
Faculty at Missouri State University's Department of Defense and Strategic Studies. He also serves as a
columnist for Forbes.com, and as Editor of The Journal of International Security Affairs. Mr. Berman is
the author of Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), coeditor, with J. Michael Waller, ofDismantling Tyranny: Transitioning Beyond Totalitarian
Regimes (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), and editor of Taking on Tehran: Strategies for Confronting the
Islamic Republic (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). His latest book, Winning the Long War: Retaking the
Offensive Against Radical Islam, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in July 2009 “Iran Courts Latin
America”, Middle East Quarterly, http://www.meforum.org/meq/pdfs/3297.pdf]
¶ Conventional
wisdom in Washington has long held that Tehran’s activism in the America is opportunistic—rather than operational. Yet
Iran’s growing asymmetric capabilities throughout the region have the potential to be directed against
the U.S. homeland. This was hammered home by the foiled October 2011 plot, an attack which—had it been successful—would
potentially have killed scores of U.S. citizens in the nation’s capital in the most significant terrorist event since 9/11. The incident represents a
seismic shift in Tehran’s strategic calculations. As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper observed in his January 2012 testimony before
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in
response to mounting international pressure and asymmetric
activity against Tehran’s nuclear program, it appears that “Iranian officials—probably including Supreme
Leader Ali Khamene’i—have changed their calculus and are now willing to conduct an attack in the
United States.” Latin America figures prominently in this equation. The foiled October 2011 plot
suggests that Tehran increasingly deems the region an advantageous operational theater. More- over, as its
influence and activities there in- tensify, the Iranian regime will be able to field a progressively more robust
operational presence in the Americas. Clapper concluded his Senate testimony with an ominous warning: “The Iranian
regime has formed alliances with Chavez, Ortega, Castro, and Correa that many believe can destabilize
the hemisphere,” he noted. “These alliances can pose an immediate threat by giving Iran—directly through the
IRGC, the Qods force, or its prox- ies like Hezbollah—a platform in the region to carry out attacks against the United
States, our interests, and allies.Ӧ Understanding these motivations is essential to assessing the
significance of Latin America in Tehran’s strategic calculus and to determining whether its efforts there are successful.¶
For the moment, Iranian regional inroads represent a work in progress. The Islamist regime has
demonstrated a clear interest in Latin America over the past decade and is now striving to expand its
influence there. As of yet, however, it has not succeeded in solidifying this presence—or in fully
operationalizing its regional relationships and institutionalizing its influence. As experts have noted, despite
Tehran’s generous promises of economic engagement with regional states, precious little of this aid has actually materialized, save in the case
of Venezuela. Moreover, despite increasingly robust cooperation with regional states on mining and extraction, there is as yet no indication
that Latin America by itself can serve as the answer for Iran’s strategic resource needs.
2NC – Economy
Appeasement kills the economy and any chance of recovery
Morici 7-3 - American macroeconomist and Professor of International Business at the R.H. Smith
School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park (Peter, “Obama's Appeasement of China,
Japan Still Wrecking Recovery”, July 3 of 2013, MoneyNews, http://www.moneynews.com/PeterMorici/trade-deficit-energy-China/2013/07/03/id/513244)
Other Asian governments, most recently Japan, have adopted similar currency strategies to boost exports. For
example, the jump in the value of the dollar against the yen gives Toyota at least a $2,000 advantage pricing of the Camry against the Ford
Fusion. That may not show up in the list price, but it gives Toyota's importing arm in the United States the latitude to pack cars with better
features and more aggressively discount them. ¶ Economists
across the ideological and political spectrum have
offered strategies to combat predatory currency policy and force China and others to abandon
mercantilism. However, China, Japan and others, offering only token gestures and deflecting rhetoric,
exploit President Obama's weakness on economic issues — the Obama policy of appeasement
handicaps the U.S. recovery .¶ Cutting the annual trade deficit by $300 billion, through domestic energy
development and conservation and forcing China and others' hands on protectionism would increase gross domestic product (GDP) by
about $500 billion a year and create about 5 million jobs.
Global war
Royal 10 – Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of
Defense, 2010, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in
Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p.
213-215
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science
literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of
interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions
follow.¶ First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that rhythms
in
the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody
transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could
usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing
the risk of miscalculation (Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could
lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately,
Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and
small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown.¶ Second,
on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future
expectation of trade' is a
significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues
that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations.
However, if
the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources,
the likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those
resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it
triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4¶ Third, others have considered the link between economic
decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong
correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic
downturn. They write:¶ The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing.
Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession
tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each other.
(Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89)¶ Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of
terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions.¶
Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. “Diversionary
theory" suggests that, when facing
unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to
fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and
Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and
Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the
tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic
states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic
support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the U nited S tates, and
thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. ¶ In summary, recent
economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political
science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national
levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security
debate and deserves more attention.¶ This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link
economic interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such as those
mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those studies tend to focus on dyadic
interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically consider the
occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should
be considered ancillary to those views.
2NC – South China Sea Conflict
South China Sea conflicts cause extinction
Wittner 11 (Lawrence S. Wittner, Emeritus Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany, Wittner is the author of
eight books, the editor or co-editor of another four, and the author of over 250 published articles and book reviews. From 1984 to 1987, he
edited Peace & Change, a journal of peace research., 11/28/2011, "Is a Nuclear War With China Possible?", www.huntingtonnews.net/14446)
While nuclear weapons exist, there remains a danger that they will be used. After all, for centuries
national conflicts have led to wars, with nations employing their deadliest weapons. The current
deterioration of U.S. relations with China might end up providing us with yet another example of this
phenomenon. The gathering tension between the United States and China is clear enough. Disturbed by China’s growing
economic and military strength, the U.S. government recently challenged China’s claims in the South China Sea,
increased the U.S. military presence in Australia, and deepened U.S. military ties with other nations in the
Pacific region. According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States was “asserting our own position as a Pacific power.” But need this
lead to nuclear war? Not necessarily. And yet, there are signs that it could. After all, both the United States and
China possess large numbers of nuclear weapons. The U.S. government threatened to attack China with
nuclear weapons during the Korean War and, later, during the conflict over the future of China’s
offshore islands, Quemoy and Matsu. In the midst of the latter confrontation, President Dwight Eisenhower declared publicly, and chillingly,
that U.S. nuclear weapons would “be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.” Of course, China didn’t have nuclear weapons then. Now that it
does, perhaps the behavior of national leaders will be more temperate. But the loose nuclear threats of U.S. and Soviet government officials during the Cold War,
when both nations had vast nuclear arsenals, should convince us that, even as the military ante is raised, nuclear saber-rattling persists. Some
pundits
argue that nuclear weapons prevent wars between nuclear-armed nations; and, admittedly, there haven’t been very
many—at least not yet. But the Kargil War of 1999, between nuclear-armed India and nuclear-armed Pakistan, should convince
us that such wars can occur. Indeed, in that case, the conflict almost slipped into a nuclear war. Pakistan’s
foreign secretary threatened that, if the war escalated, his country felt free to use “any weapon” in its arsenal. During the conflict, Pakistan did move nuclear
weapons toward its border, while India, it is claimed, readied its own nuclear missiles for an attack on Pakistan. At the least, though, don’t
nuclear
weapons deter a nuclear attack? Do they? Obviously, NATO leaders didn’t feel deterred, for, throughout the
Cold War, NATO’s strategy was to respond to a Soviet conventional military attack on Western Europe
by launching a Western nuclear attack on the nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Furthermore, if U.S. government
officials really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they would not have resorted to championing
“Star Wars” and its modern variant, national missile defense. Why are these vastly expensive—and probably unworkable—military
defense systems needed if other nuclear powers are deterred from attacking by U.S. nuclear might? Of
course, the bottom line for those Americans convinced that nuclear weapons safeguard them from a
Chinese nuclear attack might be that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is far greater than its Chinese
counterpart. Today, it is estimated that the U.S. government possesses over five thousand nuclear warheads, while the Chinese government has a total
inventory of roughly three hundred. Moreover, only about forty of these Chinese nuclear weapons can reach the United States. Surely the United States would
“win” any nuclear war with China. But what would that “victory” entail? A
nuclear attack by China would immediately slaughter
at least 10 million Americans in a great storm of blast and fire, while leaving many more dying horribly of sickness and radiation poisoning. The
Chinese death toll in a nuclear war would be far higher. Both nations would be reduced to smoldering,
radioactive wastelands. Also, radioactive debris sent aloft by the nuclear explosions would blot out the sun and
bring on a “nuclear winter” around the globe—destroying agriculture, creating worldwide famine, and
generating chaos and destruction.
2NC – Russian Expansionism
Russia expansionism causes nuclear war
Blank 9 (Dr. Stephen, Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War
College, March, “Russia And Arms Control: Are There Opportunities For The Obama Administration?,”
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub908.pdf)
Proliferators or nuclear states like China and Russia can then deter regional or intercontinental attacks either by denial or by threat of retaliation.168 Given a
multipolar world structure with
little ideological rivalry among major powers, it is unlikely that they will go to
war with each other. Rather, like Russia, they will strive for exclusive hegemony in their own “sphere of
influence” and use nuclear instruments towards that end. However, wars may well break out between major
powers and weaker “peripheral” states or between peripheral and semiperipheral states given their lack of domestic legitimacy, the absence of the means of
crisis prevention, the visible absence of crisis management mechanisms, and their strategic calculation that asymmetric wars might give them the victory or
respite they need.169 Simultaneously,¶ The states of periphery and semiperiphery have far more opportunities for political maneuvering. Since war remains a
political option, these states may find it convenient to exercise their military power as a means for achieving political objectives. Thus international
crises may increase in number. This has two important implications for the use of WMD. First, they may be
used deliberately to offer a decisive victory (or in Russia’s case, to achieve “intra-war escalation
control ”—author170) to the striker, or for defensive purposes when imbalances in military capabilities are significant; and second, crises
increase the possibilities of inadvertent or accidental wars involving WMD.171¶ Obviously nuclear proliferators or
states that are expanding their nuclear arsenals like Russia can exercise a great influence upon
world politics if they chose to defy the prevailing consensus and use their weapons not as
defensive weapons, as has been commonly thought, but as offensive weapons to threaten other
states and deter nuclear powers. Their decision to go either for cooperative security and strengthened international militarypolitical norms of action, or for individual national “egotism” will critically affect world politics. For, as Roberts observes,¶ But if they drift away from those
efforts [to bring about more cooperative security], the consequences could be profound. At the very least, the effective functioning of
inherited mechanisms of world order, such as the special responsibility of the “great powers” in the management of the interstate system, especially problems
of armed aggression, under the aegis of collective security, could
be significantly impaired. Armed with the ability to defeat an intervention,
or impose substantial costs in blood or money on an intervening force or the populaces of the nations marshaling that force, the newly
empowered tier could bring an end to collective security operations, undermine the credibility of
alliance commitments by the great powers, [undermine guarantees of extended deterrence by them to threatened nations and
states] extend alliances of their own, and perhaps make wars of aggression on their neighbors or their own people.172
2NC – Indo-Pak War
Indo-Pak war escalates quickly to extinction---no checks
Greg Chaffin 11, Research Assistant at Foreign Policy in Focus, July 8, 2011, “Reorienting U.S. Security
Strategy in South Asia,” online:
http://www.fpif.org/articles/reorienting_us_security_strategy_in_south_asia
The greatest threat to regional security (although curiously not at the top of most lists of U.S. regional concerns) is the possibility that
increased India-Pakistan tension will erupt into all-out war that could quickly escalate into a nuclear
exchange. Indeed, in just the past two decades, the two neighbors have come perilously close to war on several occasions. India and
Pakistan remain the most likely belligerents in the world to engage in nuclear war. ¶ Due to an Indian
preponderance of conventional forces, Pakistan would have a strong incentive to use its nuclear
arsenal very early on before a routing of its military installations and weaker conventional forces. In the event of conflict, Pakistan’s only
chance of survival would be the early use of its nuclear arsenal to inflict unacceptable damage to Indian military and (much more likely) civilian
targets. By raising the stakes to unacceptable levels, Pakistan would hope that India would step away from the brink. However, it is equally
likely that India
would respond in kind, with escalation ensuing. Neither state possesses tactical nuclear
weapons, but both possess scores of city-sized bombs like those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ¶ Furthermore, as more
damage was inflicted (or as the result of a decapitating strike), command and control elements would be disabled, leaving
individual commanders to respond in an environment increasingly clouded by the fog of war and
decreasing the likelihood that either government (what would be left of them) would be able to guarantee that their forces
would follow a negotiated settlement or phased reduction in hostilities. As a result any such conflict would
likely continue to escalate until one side incurred an unacceptable or wholly debilitating level of injury or exhausted its
nuclear arsenal. ¶ A nuclear conflict in the subcontinent would have disastrous effects on the world as a
whole. In a January 2010 paper published in Scientific American, climatology professors Alan Robock and Owen Brian Toon
forecast the global repercussions of a regional nuclear war. Their results are strikingly similar to those of studies
conducted in 1980 that conclude that a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union would
result in a catastrophic and prolonged nuclear winter, which could very well place the survival of the human
race in jeopardy . In their study, Robock and Toon use computer models to simulate the effect of a nuclear exchange between India and
Pakistan in which each were to use roughly half their existing arsenals (50 apiece). Since Indian and Pakistani nuclear devices are strategic
rather than tactical, the likely targets would be major population centers. Owing to the population densities of urban centers
in both nations, the number of direct casualties could climb as high as 20 million. ¶ The fallout of such an exchange would not merely be limited
to the immediate area. First, the detonation of a large number of nuclear devices would
propel as much as seven million
metric tons of ash, soot, smoke, and debris as high as the lower stratosphere. Owing to their small size (less than
a tenth of a micron) and a lack of precipitation at this altitude, ash particles would remain aloft for as long as a decade,
during which time the world would remain perpetually overcast. Furthermore, these particles would soak up heat
from the sun, generating intense heat in the upper atmosphere that would severely damage the earth’s ozone layer. The
inability of sunlight to penetrate through the smoke and dust would lead to global cooling by as much as 2.3 degrees
Fahrenheit. This shift in global temperature would lead to more drought, worldwide food shortages, and
widespread political upheaval.¶ Although the likelihood of this doomsday scenario remains relatively low, the consequences are
dire enough to warrant greater U.S. and international attention. Furthermore, due to the ongoing conflict over Kashmir and the deep
animus held between India and Pakistan, it might not take much to set them off . Indeed, following the
successful U.S. raid on bin Laden’s compound, several members of India’s security apparatus along with conservative politicians have argued
that India should emulate the SEAL Team Six raid and launch their own cross-border incursions to nab or kill anti-Indian terrorists, either
preemptively or after the fact. Such provocative action could very well lead to all-out
escalate.
war between the two that could quickly
2NC – Hegemony
The perception of lack of credibility results in a loss of military strength
Tunc 8 – Professor of Political Science at Carleton University (Hakan, “Reputation and U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq”, Science Direct, page 667679)
Reputation can be defined as a judgment about an actor’s past behavior and character that is used to predict future behavior. In
international politics, a major component of building or maintaining a country’s reputation involves
resolve.5 Policy makers may believe that a lack of resolve in one military confrontation will be seen as an
indication of general weakness .6 According to Shiping Tang, this concern frequently amounts to ‘‘a cult of
reputation’’ among foreign policy makers, which he defines as ‘‘a belief system holding as its central premise a conviction (or
fear) that backing down in a crisis will lead one’s adversaries or allies to underestimate one’s resolve in the next crisis.’’7 Of particular
importance to the cult of reputation is concern about the consequences of withdrawal from a theater of war. The major dictate of the cult of
reputation is that a country should stand firm and refuse to withdraw from a theater of war. The
underlying belief is that a
withdrawal would inflict a severe blow to a country’s reputation and thus ‘‘embolden’’ the
adversaries by boosting commitment and recruitment to their cause.8 Since the end of World War II, a cult of
reputation has evolved among certain American policy makers who maintain that being a global power means being able to convey the image
of strength and resolve.9 According to this perspective, a reputation for firmness and resoluteness deters adversaries and reassures allies about
U.S. commitments. Conversely,
being perceived as weak and irresolute encourages adversaries to be more
aggressive and results in allies being less supportive . This logic has had two general consequences for America’s use of
force abroad: First, exhibiting resolve has been deemed necessary even in small and distant countries. This is
because the mere perception of power generates tangible power, thereby reducing the need to use
actual physical force against every adversary.10 In the 1950s and 1960s, this logic translated into military interventions in
several places, notably in Korea and Vietnam, countries whose strategic value to the United States appeared questionable to some.
US primacy prevents global conflict – withdrawal causes a power vacuum that causes
transition wars in multiple places
Brooks et al 13 [Stephen G. Brooks is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.G.
John Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs. He is also a Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University.William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel
Webster Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. “Don't Come Home,
America: The Case against Retrenchment”, Winter 2013, Vol. 37, No. 3, Pages 751,http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00107]
engagement is that it prevents the emergence of a far more dangerous global security environment. For
one thing, as noted above, the United States’ overseas presence gives it the leverage to restrain partners from
taking provocative action. Perhaps more important, its core alliance commitments also deter states with aspirations to regional
A core premise of deep
hegemony from contemplating expansion and make its partners more secure, reducing their incentive to adopt solutions to their security problems that threaten others and thus stoke security
dilemmas. The contention that engaged U.S. power dampens the baleful effects of anarchy is consistent with influential variants of realist theory. Indeed, arguably the scariest portrayal
of the war-prone world that would emerge absent the “American Pacifier” is provided in the works of John Mearsheimer, who forecasts dangerous multipolar regions replete with security
competition, arms races, nuclear proliferation and associated preventive wartemptations, regional rivalries, and even runs at regional hegemony and full-scale great power war. 72 How
do retrenchment advocates, the bulk of whom are realists, discount this benefit? Their arguments are complicated, but two capture most of the variation: (1) U.S. security guarantees are not
necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries and conflict in Eurasia; or (2) prevention of rivalry and conflict in Eurasia is not a U.S. interest. Each response is connected to a different theory or set
of theories, which makes sense given that the whole debate hinges on a complex future counterfactual (what would happen to Eurasia’s security setting if the United States truly disengaged?).
Although a certain answer is impossible, each of these responses is nonetheless a weaker argument for retrenchment than advocates acknowledge. The first response flows from defensive
realism as well as other international relations theories that discount the conflict-generating potential of anarchy under contemporary conditions. 73 Defensive realists maintain that
the high expected costs of territorial conquest, defense dominance, and an array of policies and practices that can be used credibly to signal benign intent, mean that Eurasia’s major states
could manage regional multipolarity peacefully without theAmerican pacifier. Retrenchment would be a bet on this scholarship, particularly in regions where the kinds of stabilizers that
nonrealist theories point to—such as democratic governance or dense institutional linkages—are either absent or weakly present. There are three other major bodies of scholarship, however,
that might give decisionmakers pause before making this bet. First is regional expertise. Needless to say, there is no consensus on the net security effects of U.S. withdrawal. Regarding each
region, there are optimists and pessimists. Few experts expect a return of intense great power competition in a post-American Europe, but many doubt European governments will pay the
political costs of increased EU defense cooperation and the budgetary costs of increasing military outlays. 74 The result might be a
Europe that is incapable of
securing itself from various threats that could be destabilizing within the region and beyond (e.g., a regional
conflict akin to the 1990s Balkan wars), lacks capacity for global security missions in which U.S. leaders might want European participation, and is vulnerable to the influence of outside rising
What about the other parts of Eurasia where the United States has a substantial military
presence? Regarding the Middle East, the balance begins toswing toward pessimists concerned that
states currently backed by Washington— notably Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—might take actions upon
U.S. retrenchment that would intensify security dilemmas. And concerning East Asia, pessimismregarding the
region’s prospects without the American pacifier is pronounced. Arguably the principal concern expressed by area experts is
that Japan and South Korea are likely to obtain a nuclear capacity and increase their military commitments, which could stoke
powers.
a destabilizing reaction from China . It is notable that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan moved to obtain a nuclear weapons capacity
and were only constrained from doing so by astill-engaged United States. 75 The second body of scholarship casting doubt on the bet on defensive realism’s sanguine portrayal is all of the
research that undermines its conception of state preferences. Defensive realism’s optimism about what would happen if the United States retrenched is very much dependent
on itsparticular—and highly restrictive—assumption about state preferences; once we relax this assumption, then much of its basis for optimism vanishes. Specifically, the prediction of postAmerican tranquility throughout Eurasia rests on the assumption that security is the only relevant state preference, with security defined narrowly in terms of protection from violent external
attacks on the homeland. Under that assumption, the security problem is largely solved as soon as offense and defense are clearly distinguishable, and offense is extremely expensive relative
research across the social and other sciences, however,undermines that core assumption: states
have preferences not only for security but also for prestige, status, and other aims, and theyengage in trade-offs among the various
objectives. 76 In addition, they define security not just in terms of territorial protection but in view of many and varied milieu goals. It
follows that even states that are relatively secure may nevertheless engage in highly competitive behavior. Empirical
studies show that this is indeed sometimes the case. 77 In sum, a bet on a benign postretrenchment Eurasia is a bet that leaders of major countries will never allow
these nonsecurity preferences to influence their strategic choices. To the degree that these bodies of scholarly knowledge have predictive leverage, U.S. retrenchment
would result in a significant deterioration in the security environment in at least some of the world’s key regions. We
have already mentioned the third, even more alarming body of scholarship. Offensive realism predicts that the withdrawal of the American pacifier will
yield either a competitive regional multipolarity complete with associated insecurity, arms racing, crisis
instability, nuclear proliferation, and the like, or bids for regional hegemony, which may be beyond the capacity of
local great powers to contain (and which in any case would generate intensely competitive behavior, possibly including regional great power war).
to defense. Burgeoning
2NC Solvency Takeouts
Appeasement Emboldens Enemies
Appeasement emboldens the enemy – turns the case and makes all of their impacts
more likely
West 12 - former United States Congressman, Master’s degree in political science from Kansas State
University (Allen, “LOOKING THE OTHER WAY: PRESIDENT OBAMA’S DANGEROUS FOREIGN POLICY”,
October 9 of 2012, http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/09/allen-west-looking-the-other-waypresident-obamas-dangerous-foreign-policy/)
America’s enemies are emboldened¶ This president’s foreign policy failure has made America’s
enemies ever more emboldened and our allies feeling even more abandoned. In his recent speech to the U.N. General Assembly,
President Obama repeated six times that the recent attacks on Sovereign United States territories across the Islamic world were caused by a Youtube movie. He refused to use the words “terrorist attack” in referring to the events
He is either incapable or unwilling to
acknowledge a radical fundamental Islamist enemy that will stop at nothing to destroy our way of life .
¶ These statements, and others like them, p lay right into the hands of our enemies. When President Obama infers
in Benghazi. He also warned to the assembled nations “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
America deserves blame for unprovoked attacks, our enemies see their horrendous actions justified ,
making them ever move brazen.¶ The fact that a U.S. Ambassador was in such a thinly guarded, unsecure
facility on Sept. 11 demonstrates an administration completely disengaged from the reality of the world and his
own foreign policy. Several attacks leading up to this incident should have provided a last minute warning. Documented reports show Egypt knew an attack was being planned and alerted the Obama
Administration days before, yet this President ignored it and looked the other way. ¶ “Looking the other way” seems to be the cornerstone of
President Obama’s approach to foreign policy. Russia continues to grow its nuclear arsenal as the
president gives in to Moscow on missile defense and the Strategic Arms Treaty. The president has
offered a “reset” with Russia at a time when a Russian attack submarine was stationed in the Gulf of
Mexico, undetected for two months. President Obama’s response is to whisper to Russian President Medvedev that after his reelection he would have more “flexibility.”¶ Iran, a
sworn enemy to the United States and Israel, is on a path to developing a nuclear weapon. When the prodemocracy movement in Iran began to stir, the Obama Administration could have taken steps to help
ignite that spark. Instead, President Obama looked the other way. Now as a consequence, we see Iran funding the bloodshed
in Syria and continuing to support the growing radical terrorist organizations in Iraq and around the
Middle East, including Hamas, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, some of the very organizations that have been
responsible for killing Americans over and over again in terrorist attacks in America and around the globe.¶ Both Russia and
Iran have made it no secret they see America and Western democracy as their enemy, while President Obama has yet to outline any strategy to address this
obvious danger to the American way of life.
Appeasement Fails
Appeasement and engagement fail in the context of Cuba and Venezuela
Ros-Lehtinen 13 - Chairman Emeritus of the House Foreign Affairs [Ileana, “Failed Policies in LatAm
Emboldens Rogue Regimes”, January 16th of 2013,
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2013/01/16/ileana-ros-lehtinen-failed-policies-in-latamemboldens-rogue-regimes/]
The administration’s approach of appeasement and engagement with brutal dictatorships in Cuba and
Venezuela has only emboldened their abuse and suppression of democracy and human rights . In
Cuba, the administration has eased restrictions on travel and remittances as political detentions by
the Castro’s forces dramatically rose in 2012 and will likely increase again in 2013. The Castro regime’s thugs
have taken it a step further by brutally beating members of human rights opposition groups like the Ladies in White, and subjecting political
prisoners to the most inhumane and unsanitary conditions imaginable.¶ These
savage tactics have been the same playbook
for Fidel’s protégé in Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, where human rights and freedom of speech are under
siege. For example, a constitutional crisis has ensued due to Chávez remaining in a Cuban hospital and unable to attend the inauguration on
January 10 as mandated by the Venezuelan Constitution. The administration should seize this opportunity to demand
freedom and transparency for the Venezuelan people, and not succumb to Chávez’s ploys to maintain
power. It would be naïve to think that engaging a Chavista regime that openly facilitates the illicit narcotics trade, assists the Iranian and
Syrian regimes and is a gross human rights violator will yield positive results.¶ Another extremely troubling issue has been
the administration’s failure to adequately address Iran’s expansion into the Western Hemisphere. Over
the last few years Tehran has increased its subversive actions and diplomatic and economic relations with radical regimes in Latin America. Last
year, Ahmadinejad made two visits to the region in an attempt to gain support from like-minded tyrants, such as the Castros in Cuba, Daniel
Ortega in Nicaragua, Correa in Ecuador, Chávez in Venezuela, and Evo Morales in Bolivia. The
administration has failed to
produce sensible, effective policies to counter Iran’s influence in Latin America. We cannot allow the
Iranian regime to parade around the region in direct defiance of responsible democracies in the
region, exporting hate and violence to the brutal tyrannies of Venezuela, Cuba, and others in the
region who seeks to subvert American ideals and suppress their populations. ¶ However, these actions, or
inactions, are not limited to a few countries in the region. In Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia, the administration has extended the proverbial
olive branch only to see no forthcoming changes in these establishment’s repressive and coercive policies.
The harsh truth is that
these despots would do anything to maintain their grip on power and will use any means at their
disposal to do so. The administration must finally see the truth that these regimes will continue their nefarious ways as long as President
Obama and his advisors fail to stand up to these dictators.¶ These failures by the administration will not stay in the Western Hemisphere. For
every brutal act President Obama ignores, for every human right that is denied, the rest of the world
will be watching and taking note . The failure to address these very real issues in our region will only
embolden regimes elsewhere and diminish our standing abroad. It is our duty to provide strong leadership that will
support our allies, defend our interests, and ensure that human rights and freedom are being respected. These goals can only be
achieved through true democratic reforms and responsible rule of law and not through the
appeasement of sadistic power-hungry tyrants who have held their nations hostage for so long.
2NC Internal Link – Credibility
2NC AT: Appeasement in One Region Doesn’t Kill Overall Cred
Countries perceive Obama’s appeasement in one region as him being weak overall –
appeasement in one region spills over
Krauthammer 10 – American Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, political commentator,
Harvard graduate (Charles, “The fruits of weakness”, May 21 of 2010, Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052003885.html)
But the deeper meaning of the uranium-export stunt is the brazenness with which Brazil and Turkey
gave cover to the mullahs' nuclear ambitions and deliberately undermined U.S. efforts to curb Iran's
program.¶ The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America,
and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.¶ That picture -- a defiant,
triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam -- is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising
powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there's no cost in
lining up with America's enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies
and appeasement .¶ They've watched President Obama's humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every
rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that
the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy
demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the
potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.¶ They've watched
America acquiesce to Russia's re-exerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured by Russia last month
into extending for 25 years its lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and over Georgia (Russia's de facto annexation of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama "reset" policy). ¶ They've watched our appeasement of
Syria, Iran's agent in the Arab Levant -- sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it tightens its grip on Lebanon, supplies
Hezbollah with Scuds and intensifies its role as the pivot of the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance. The price
for this ostentatious flouting of the United States and its interests? Ever more eager U.S. "engagement."¶ They've observed the
administration's gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of
the Czech Republic and Poland, and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see not just U.S.
passivity as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez organizes his anti-American "Bolivarian" coalition while
deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active U.S. support in
Honduras for a pro-Chávez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the
democratic institutions of that country.¶ This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in
retreat -- accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.
Appeasing in one region emboldens others to rise up – it is only a question of
perception
Hanson 9 - American military historian, columnist and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at
Stanford University's Hoover Institution (Victor, “Change, Weakness, Disaster, Obama: Answers from
Victor Davis Hanson”, December 7 of 2009, Interview between Bernard Chapin and Hanson,
http://pjmedia.com/blog/change-weakness-disaster-obama-answers-from-victor-davis-hanson/)
BC: Are we currently sending a message of weakness to our foes and allies ? Can anything good result from
President Obama’s marked submissiveness before the world?¶ Dr. Hanson: Obama is one bow and one apology away from
a circus . The world can understand a kowtow gaffe to some Saudi royals, but not as part of a deliberate pattern. Ditto the mea culpas.
Much of diplomacy rests on public perceptions , however trivial. We are now in a great waiting game, as
regional hegemons, wishing to redraw the existing landscape — whether China, Venezuela, Iran,
North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, etc. — are just waiting to see who’s going to be the first to try Obama —
and whether Obama really will be as tenuous as they expect. If he slips once, it will be 1979 redux ,
when we saw the rise of radical Islam, the Iranian hostage mess, the communist inroads in Central
America, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, etc.¶ BC: With what country then — Venezuela, Russia,
Iran, etc. — do you believe his global repositioning will cause the most damage?¶ Dr. Hanson: I think all
three. I would expect, in the next three years, Iran to get the bomb and begin to threaten ever so insidiously its Gulf neighborhood;
Venezuela will probably cook up some scheme to do a punitive border raid into Colombia to apprise
South America that U.S. friendship and values are liabilities; and Russia will continue its energy
bullying of Eastern Europe, while insidiously pressuring autonomous former republics to get back in
line with some sort of new Russian autocratic commonwealth. There’s an outside shot that North Korea might do
something really stupid near the 38th parallel and China will ratchet up the pressure on Taiwan. India’s borders with both Pakistan and China
will heat up. I think we got off the back of the tiger and now no one quite knows whom it will bite or when.
2NC AT: Cred Not Key
Credibility is key to Obama’s power – it’s reverse causal
Posner et al 7 - Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and editor
of The Journal of Legal Studies (Eric, Adrian Vermuele is an American legal scholar and graduate from
Harvard Law School, “The Credible Executive”, August 29 of 2007,
https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/74.3/74_3_Posner_Verme
ule.pdf)
For presidents, credibility is power . With credibility, the formal ¶ rules of the separation of powers
system can be bargained around or ¶ even defied, as Lincoln and FDR demonstrated. Without
credibility, a ¶ nominally all-powerful president is a helpless giant . Even if legal and ¶ institutional constraints are
loose and give the president broad powers, those powers cannot effectively be exercised if the public believes ¶
that the president lies or has nefarious motives. ¶ But presidential credibility can benefit all relevant
actors, not just ¶ presidents. The decline of congressional and judicial oversight has not ¶ merely increased
the power of ill-motivated executives, the typical ¶ worry of civil libertarians. It also threatens to diminish the
power of ¶ well-motivated presidents, with indirect harms to the public. Such presidents would, if credibly
identified, receive even broader legal delegations and greater informal trust—from legislators, judges, and the public—than presidents as a
class actually have. Absent
other credibilitygenerating mechanisms, such as effective congressional
oversight, presidents must bootstrap themselves into credibility through the use of signaling
mechanisms. In this Article, we suggest a range of such mechanisms, and suggest that under the conditions we have tried to identify, ¶
those mechanisms can make all concerned better off.
2NC AT: Appeasement Doesn’t Kill Cred
Appeasement kills Obama’s credibility – empirics
Morris 9 - former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott and President Bill Clinton (Dick, “Obama's Weakness Issue”, June 24 of 2009, Real
Clear Politics, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/24/obamas_weakness_issue_97145.html)
The transparent appeasement of Iran's government --
and its obvious lack of reciprocation -- make Obama look
ridiculous . Long after the mullahs have suppressed what limited democracy they once allowed, Obama's image problems will persist.¶
While Americans generally applaud Obama's outreach to the Muslims of the world and think highly of his
Cairo speech, they are very dissatisfied with his inadequate efforts to stop Iran from developing -- and
North Korea from using -- nuclear weapons. Clearly, his policies toward these two nations are a weak
spot in his reputation.¶ His failure to stand up to either aggressor is of a piece with his virtual
surrender in the war on terror. Documented in our new book, "Catastrophe," we show how he has disarmed the United
States and simply elected to stop battling against terrorists, freeing them from Guantanamo as he empowers them with
every manner of constitutional protection.¶ Obviously, the Iranian democracy demonstrators will not fare any better than their Chinese
brethren did in Tiananmen Square. But the
damage their brutal suppression will do to the Iranian government is
going to be huge. The ayatollahs of Tehran have always sold themselves to the world's Islamic faithful as the ultimate theocracy,
marrying traditional Muslim values with the needs of modern governance. But now, in the wake of the bloodshed, they are
revealed as nothing more than military dictators. All the romance is gone, just as it faded in the wake of the tanks in
Budapest and Prague. All that remains is power.
AFF
2AC – Uniqueness
Generic
Obama is appeasing – Iran proves
Mead 04/3/13 (James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College and
Editor-at-Large of The American Interest magazine. Until 2010, Mead was the Henry A. Kissinger Senior
Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.[1] He is a co-founder of the New
America Foundation, "AP: Obama an Appeaser on Iran?", http://blogs.the-americaninterest.com/wrm/2013/04/03/ap-obama-an-appeaser-on-iran/)
If this hopefully-misguided AP dispatch is right, and President Obama really is letting the mullahs use their nuclear
program as leverage to convince the US to stay out of Syria, the administration is inadvertently but
inescapably sending two unmistakable messages to Tehran. First, that the US is desperate, very desperate, to
avoid a war with Iran and will clutch at just about any straw to get out of the hole it’s dug for itself. Second,
even the threat of Iran developing a nuclear bomb is enough to get the US to humiliatingly climb
down the ladder and allow a blood-smeared dictatorship that the President has repeatedly said “must” go, to stay. The
mullahs would be much dumber than anybody thinks if they didn’t draw the obvious conclusions from this. They’re likely to conclude
that the administration will blink if push comes to shove over Iran’s nuclear program because it is more worried about
war than about anything else. They probably think that the administration doesn’t really want to intervene in
Syria anyway (and they’re almost certainly right), so they won’t see American abstention from Syria as a generous concession to Iran but
rather as a sign of the spinelessness and pessimism (call this ‘caution’ and ‘realism’ if you prefer but the result on Iranian thinking will be the
same) that will lead to more concessions on other issues. They’re
also likely to conclude that if the threat of acquiring
nuclear weapons gives Iran this much leverage with the most powerful country on earth, just think
what the possession of those weapons will do. This policy as reported by the AP would be such a mix of recklessness and
fecklessness that if the dispatch is accurate we should all begin bracing for some major setbacks and disasters in the Middle East. If this is a
policy the administration has only pursued in the last couple of weeks or months, there’s at least a
skeleton of a case that could be made for it: Assad is at this point so weak that the US can sell his
survival to the Iranians more than once. You can promise to stay out this week, but the mullahs will need to buy another stay of
execution next week. Moreover, there is nothing in principle wrong with holding out some kind of prospect of linkage between Syria and the
Iranian nuclear issue. But it would have to be structured very carefully: President Obama should at most be offering Iran the hope that if it
really does meet his bottom line on the nuclear issue, the US is ready to talk about some of the regional issues of great importance to Iran. But
to sell American inaction on Syria in exchange for minor progress in nuclear negotiations would be
one of the riskiest calls an American president could make. If Solana is right that this policy has been driving the White House all along,
this is Obama’s initial Iran failure—remaining silent during the 2009 Green Revolution—on steroids. Weakness doesn’t win you the friendship of
bullies. And if this dispatch is right, we should expect some ugly repercussions from the Sunni Arabs, the Israelis and the Turks. All these powers
want to see Iran’s claws clipped and they want Assad to go; all of these powers chiefly view the value of their US ties at the moment in the light
of the confrontation with Iran. If they come to feel that
the United States is willing to throw the Syrian lamb to the
Iranian tiger, their trust and confidence in the United States, and consequentially America’s power to get things done in the region, would
go into a deep eclipse. The White House has a lot of balls to juggle in its Middle East diplomacy and we hope that
even if some staffers have been tempted to use abstention in Syria as a bargaining chip with Iran, they will
reconsider on reflection. Iran is more likely to make a deal (and less able to resist military pressure effectively) if it loses its hold on Syria than if
it can protect its regional satraps. Insofar as Iran
dominates American thinking on Syria, that should cause us to toughen our
policy on Assad and step up help both for the rebels and for the forces seeking to limit the power of Hezbollah in Lebanon next door. Letting
someone have the Sudetenland almost never works; as Churchill said, Britain and France had to choose between dishonor
and war in the 1938 Czech crisis. They chose dishonor, he said, and will get war.
Hagel proves that appeasement inevitable
Timmerman 02/26/13 (Kenneth R. Timmerman is the founder and president of the Foundation for
Democracy in Iran and the author of “Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson.”, "Hagel the
appeaser", http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/26/hagel-the-appeaser/)
At a 2006 conference in Washington, D.C., then-Senator Chuck Hagel
laid out an appeasement policy that he claimed
was the only sane option for the United States. The conference, hosted by the New America Foundation, was
devoted primarily to Iran sanctions, which were coming before the U.S. Senate again the very next day for renewal. Sen.
Hagel’s entire presentation was devoted to blasting the notion of sanctions and economic pressure as
tools of diplomacy. “Great powers are secure enough to engage,” he said. “We need to engage Iran
and Syria, and find those common denominators.” Sen. Hagel claimed that U.S. sanctions on Cuba were
not isolating Cuba, but isolating the United States, and that the same was happening with Iran. Then he
made a historical analogy to the world wars that devastated Europe in the last century, and brought on Hitler’s genocide committed against the
Jewish people. But in Sen. Hagel’s
worldview, the problem was not Hitler. The problem was the United States
and bullying world powers. “When you isolate nations, only danger and disaster comes from this,”
Sen. Hagel said. “We should have learned that in the first 50 years of the last century.
The perception is that Obama is an appeaser
Jaffe 5/29/13 (She formerly reported on media issues and developments for the World Association of
Newspaper's Editor's Weblog, and on politics for the Washington Independent. A graduate of Allegheny
College in Meadville, Pa., Alexandra served as the editor-in-chief of her campus newspaper and
freelanced for the Meadville Tribune, "Santorum Calls Obama 'Appeaser-in-Chief'
", http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/santorum-calls-obama-appeaser-inchief-20120318)
Rick Santorum on Sunday doubled down on his claims that President Obama is an "appeaser-in-chief,"
saying that failed policies and the inability to act in Iran have exacerbated the conflict there . "That is
the principle problem that we're facing on the national security front right now—a nuclear Iran," he said
on CNN's State of the Union. His comments come as the GOP attempts to attack Obama on the issue of direct
intervention in Iran. Although Obama has increased economic sanctions on the country in an effort to disrupt its nuclear program,
critics say Obama has not provided a clear enough bright line for when it may be necessary to use force, and that he has not been supportive
enough of Israel's assertion that they will use military force against Iran if they feel threatened. "He
has repeatedly sided with the
government of Iran," rather than revolutionary forces there, Santorum said, adding that "[Obama]'s buying time. He's doing
exactly what the Iranians want him to do." Santorum also defended his claims that the Obama administration has
"favor[ed] pornographers." "[The Obama Administration has] not put a priority on prosecuting these cases and in doing so, they are
exposing children to an enormous amount of harm," Santorum said.
Obama is an appeaser – Iran proves
Cooper March 25, 2012 (Elise Cooper is a freelance author focusing on the conservative point of view
on issues such as national security. Her articles have been published by various conservative blogs and
Republican newsletters. Ms. Cooper is also a freelance assistant publicist, "Obama the Appeaser"
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/obama_the_appeaser.html
Although President Obama is not the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century, he is rapidly moving in
that direction. He is much too accommodating towards the U.S. 's adversaries. American Thinker asked some
national security experts how they would characterize the President's recent foreign policy towards North Korea, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, and
Russia. The
unanimous answer; he showed weakness, not strength. A few weeks ago North Korea and the US appeared
to have come to an agreement to exchange food for nuclear concessions. The problem is that the agreement was made without
the requirement that the North Koreans eliminate rather than suspend their program. Negotiations with the
Koreans have occurred over the last two decades, starting with the Clinton Administration's deal in 1994. Former Congressman and ranking
member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who is currently running for the Senate, does not want to
give anything to the Koreans until they provide complete access to their sites, especially "since they never deliver at the negotiations, and do
the same thing each time. These negotiations never work and are always violated. North Korea has fooled us four times now." This is no more
evident than when North Korea announced last Friday plans to blast a satellite into space on the back of a long range missile. Many intelligence
officials believe this is a test of an ICBM capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the US. What is a note of importance is that President
Obama had made agreements without definable concessions: as part of the deal North Korea had agreed to a
moratorium on long-range launches, something they obviously do not plan to honor. Iran also requested a new round of nuclear negotiations,
which was accepted by the global powers, including the US. President Obama
felt his policy of a diplomatic approach and
sanctions helped to get Iran to resume negotiations. Congressman Rooney (R-FLA) disagrees, stating, "This whole
philosophy of showing we are not hostile towards them is wrong. The Iranians look at it as a sign of
weakness and seize upon it." Since America has been talking to the Iranians about their nuclear program for over thirty years should
this administration still be engaging them? Former Ambassador and CIA Director James Woolsey pointed out that many of America's Presidents
have tried to engage the Iranians to stop their nuclear program; yet "it has been a total and complete failure each time. It will never succeed
with this government. By entering into formal negotiations we have given them status. Giving them status should be a no game.
There are ways to talk with them privately, without formal talks, such as talks through intermediaries like our intelligence service. The formal
talks will be to our disadvantage." Three months ago the Taliban announced they were ready to enter into negotiations with the US. However,
last week it announced that it was suspending the dialogue. The inference to these statements is that
the Taliban appeared to be
the ones in control, not the superpower, America. As the Taliban was suspending US talks, the President of Afghanistan was
demanding that NATO forces pull back from the villages over the issues of the Koran burning by US soldiers and the killings of civilians by a
deranged US soldier. All interviewed agreed that the President needed to speak to President Karzai and apologize for mistakes
made. However, regarding the Koran burnings President Obama neglected to point out that the Muslim holy book was defaced by radical
Islamists and therefore had to be burned. Congressman Rooney would have liked the President to say, at the same time, "our
soldiers
have sacrificed their blood and lives to try to make Afghanistan a better place. By apologizing the way
he did, he legitimized the riots. The only thing they respect is strength and by apologizing the way he did the President
showed weakness not strength." As the President was apologizing six American soldiers were killed. Did President Obama demand
an apology or answers from Karzai? There have been many instances over the years when Afghan soldiers and their police force
have fired upon American soldiers; yet, the President has never demanded an apology. There appears to be
a double standard where the President's policy, according to Hoekstra, is to have a "bandwagon of apologies. This is
the administration's new standard, an accommodating America where we appear humiliated." Egypt, America's staunch ally just thirteen
months ago, was accommodated through the payment of a ransom to get the American rights workers released. For each of the sixteen
Americans, $300,000 was paid. Is this setting a bad precedent, encouraging kidnappings for money all over the world? Ambassador Woolsey
would have advised the President to pay the bill to get the Americans out and then cut off a portion of the billion dollars of military aid to
Egypt. He feels that if the administration does nothing but pay the ransom, "we
are setting ourselves up for future hostage
takers. This is why countries like Egypt have to be shown we will not put up with this kind of behavior." Early in President Obama's
administration he showed these signs of weakness when during the arms control negotiations with
Russia he decided to unilaterally take out the missile defense programs in Eastern Europe and
received nothing in return. Woolsey sees missile defense as very important and feels "this administration has shown
weakness in dealing with the Russians. I am quite critical of the way this administration handled the
missile defense program." Fast forward to today when Russia has deployed an anti-terror squad in support of Syrian President Assad.
Woolsey could not understand "why this administration was tougher on former Egyptian President Mubarak and Libyan President Gaddafi, who
were terrible dictators but did not cause a lot of difficulty to the US, than we are on Assad. This is absolutely beyond me." Perhaps because the
President embodies a weak America where Russia is able to gain the upper hand. By constantly
conceding points and apologizing President Obama has shown weakness, not strength and engagement.
There appears to be the perception that America can be pushed around with no consequences. Pete Hoekstra summarized it best, "The
President thought by pressing the 're-set button' for foreign policy our enemies and adversaries would reciprocate. His offering of the Olive
Branch has not worked. The question that needs to be asked, 'does any American feel more comfortable today about the Middle East and other
areas of the world than 3 1/2 years ago?'" The answer is an obvious no.
Cuba
Obama administration appeasing Castro
USAT 06/19/13 (USA Today, "The United States and Cuba have agreed to resume talks in immigration
issues next month.", http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/06/19/cuba-immigrationtalks/2439915/ )
HAVANA (AP) — The United States and Cuba have agreed to resume bilateral talks on migration issues next
month, a State Department official said Wednesday, the latest evidence of a thaw in chilly relations between the Cold
War enemies. Havana and Washington just wrapped up a round of separate negotiations aimed at
restarting direct mail service, which has been suspended since 1963. Both sets of talks have been on hold in recent years in a dispute over the
fate of U.S. government subcontractor Alan Gross, who is serving a 15-year jail sentence in Havana after he was caught bringing
communications equipment onto the island illegally. The migration talks will be held in Washington on July 17. The State Department official,
who was not authorized to discuss the matter publically, spoke on condition of anonymity. "Representatives from the Department of State are
scheduled to meet with representatives of the Cuban government to discuss migration issues ," the official
said, adding that the talks were "consistent with our interest in promoting greater freedoms and respect for human rights in Cuba." Word of
the jump-started talks sparked an angry reaction from Cuban-American Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, who
blasted the
Obama administration for what she saw as a policy of appeasement. "First we get news that the Obama State
Department is speaking with a top Castro regime diplomat. Then comes the announcement that the administration is restarting talks with the
dictatorship regarding direct mail between both countries," Ros-Lehtinen said. "Now we hear that migration talks will be restarted. It's
concession after concession from the Obama administration." Since taking office, Obama has relaxed travel
and remittance rules for Cuban Americans and made it far easier for others to visit the island for
cultural, educational and religious reasons. But Obama has continued to criticize the government of President Raul Castro for
repression of basic civil and human rights, and his senior aides have offered little praise for a series of economic and social reforms the Cuban
leader has instituted in recent years. A
nascent effort at rapprochement between Washington and Havana has
stalled since Gross's arrest, and the resumption of the two sets of bilateral talks is sure to raise speculation that
there could be movement on his case. Gross was working on a USAID democracy building program at the time of his arrest in December 2009.
Washington has said repeatedly that no major improvement in relations can occur until he is released. His family has complained that he has
lost a lot of weight in jail and suffers from various ailments. Cuba reportedly has agreed to allow a U.S. doctor to visit him in detention, and has
also granted him conjugal visits and made him available to high-level American delegations. Cuba, for its part, is demanding the release of four
of its intelligence agents serving long sentences in the United States. A fifth agent, Rene Gonzalez, returned home to Havana earlier this year
after completing his sentence and agreeing to renounce his U.S. citizenship.
Obama is appeasing Cuba
Mario Diaz-Balart 2012: Obama Has Policy of Appeasement Toward Castro Regime, "Mario DiazBalart: Obama Has Policy of Appeasement Toward Castro Regime",
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/08/21/mario-diaz-balart-obama-has-pursued-policyappeasement-toward-castro-regime/
In July, Hugo Chavez commented on the United States presidential election, saying that he thought
Barack Obama was “deep down a good guy.” Earlier this summer, Mariela Castro, daughter of titular Cuban dictator Raul
Castro, who taunts Cuba’s brave pro-democracy activists as “despicable parasites,” also praised President Obama after his
administration allowed her to enter the United States to give a series of lectures and tour various U.S.
cities. These compliments – and the fact that they were not disavowed by the White House – come as no surprise, given President
Obama’s appeasing stance regarding anti-American totalitarian regimes. Since he took office in January
2009, President Obama has pursued a policy of appeasement toward the totalitarian Cuban
dictatorship. Despite the Castro brothers’ harboring of international terrorists and their increasingly relentless oppression of the Cuban
people, President Obama weakened U.S. sanctions and has increased the flow of dollars to the
dictatorship. In response, the Castro brothers amped up their repression of the Cuban people and
imprisoned American humanitarian aid worker Alan Gross for the “crime” of taking humanitarian aide to Cuba’s small
Jewish community. Clearly, President Obama is not concerned about the threat posed by the Cuban dictatorship, nor has he
manifested genuine solidarity with the pro-democracy aspirations of the Cuban people. Despite the Castro brothers’ harboring of international
terrorists and their increasingly relentless oppression of the Cuban people, President
Obama weakened U.S. sanctions and
has increased the flow of dollars to the dictatorship. - U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla. The Cuban people are protesting
in the streets and demanding freedom. But rather than supporting the growing, courageous pro-democracy
movement, President Obama instead has chosen to appease their oppressors. While President Obama claims
that his policies aim to assist the oppressed Cuban people, his actions betray that he is not on their side. You cannot credibly claim to care
about the oppressed while working out side deals with their oppressors and welcoming the oppressors’ elite into the United States with open
The failures of the
Obama administration in Cuba are not an isolated foreign policy failure. Around the world, President
Obama has taken an approach of appeasement when it comes to some of our most virulent enemies.
In addition to Cuba, from Iran to Syria to Venezuela, President Obama has shown an unwillingness to stand
firm when anti-American forces threaten our interests, and his weakness has emboldened America’s enemies. If we are going to reassert our
arms. And you cannot claim to support political prisoners while increasing the flow of dollars to their jailers.
position in the world, we need a change at the top. Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney has consistently vowed to take a firm stance against
the Castro regime and strongly support the growing pro-democracy movement in Cuba. That will start by tightening sanctions against the
brutal Castro dictatorship and fully funding Cuban pro-democracy assistance programs. Similarly, after thoroughly and seriously studying the
issue, Romney’s running mate, my friend Rep. Paul Ryan, fully understands that a policy of appeasement and accommodation only emboldens
the terrorist Castro regime. Seven or eight years ago, my brother Lincoln, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and I had long and thorough briefing sessions on
the issue of Cuba with Paul Ryan, and, since then, Rep. Ryan has not only supported a vigorous U.S. pro-democracy policy toward Cuba, he has
been one of the strongest supporters of a free Cuba in the U.S. Congress. The Romney-Ryan Administration will support pro-democracy
movements throughout our hemisphere, work with our allies to fight criminal gangs and terrorists, and oppose the dangerous incursion of
enemies such as Iran and Hezbollah into America’s backyard. The Castro brothers have oppressed the Cuban people and threatened U.S.
security interests for far too long. Mitt Romney will reaffirm America’s dedication to the freedom of the Cuban people and refuse to assist their
oppressors until the promise of a free, democratic Cuba is finally realized.
Obama already appeasing Latin America- increasing aid and trade
Diaz-Balart, 12 [Mario, Republican Party US Representative from Florida, August 21, " Mario DiazBalart: Obama Has Policy of Appeasement Toward Castro Regime",
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/08/21/mario-diaz-balart-obama-has-pursued-policyappeasement-toward-castro-regime/, Accessed July 6]
In July, Hugo Chavez commented on the United States presidential election, saying that he thought Barack Obama was
“deep down a good guy.” Earlier this summer, Mariela Castro, daughter of titular Cuban dictator Raul Castro, who taunts
Cuba’s brave pro-democracy activists as “despicable parasites,” also praised President Obama after his administration
allowed her to enter the United States to give a series of lectures and tour various U.S. cities. These
compliments – and the fact that they were not disavowed by the White House – come as no surprise, given President
Obama’s appeasing stance regarding anti-American totalitarian regimes. Since he took office in January 2009,
President Obama has pursued a policy of appeasement toward the totalitarian Cuban dictatorship.
Despite the Castro brothers’ harboring of international terrorists and their increasingly relentless
oppression of the Cuban people, President Obama weakened U.S. sanctions and has increased the
flow of dollars to the dictatorship. In response, the Castro brothers amped up their repression of the
Cuban people and imprisoned American humanitarian aid worker Alan Gross for the “crime” of taking
humanitarian aide to Cuba’s small Jewish community. Clearly, President Obama is not concerned about the threat posed by the Cuban
dictatorship, nor has he manifested genuine solidarity with the pro-democracy aspirations of the Cuban people. The Cuban
people are
protesting in the streets and demanding freedom. But rather than supporting the growing, courageous prodemocracy movement, President Obama instead has chosen to appease their oppressors. While President Obama claims
that his policies aim to assist the oppressed Cuban people, his actions betray that he is not on their side. You cannot credibly claim to care
about the oppressed while working out side deals with their oppressors and welcoming the oppressors’ elite into the United States with open
arms. And you cannot claim to support political prisoners while increasing the flow of dollars to their jailers. The failures of the Obama
administration in Cuba are not an isolated foreign policy failure. Around
the world, President Obama has taken an
approach of appeasement when it comes to some of our most virulent enemies. In addition to Cuba, from
Iran to Syria to Venezuela, President Obama has shown an unwillingness to stand firm when anti-American forces threaten our interests,
and his weakness has emboldened America’s enemies. If we are going to reassert our position in the world, we need a change at the top.
Venezuela
Obama is appeasing Venezuela – cooperation
Canto 06/15/13 (Host of Canto Talk, a radio show which discusses domestic and foreign policy issues.
Also is the author of the book "Cubanos in Wisconsin", "The Obama administration has a funny way of
rewarding those who call us 'imperialistas'",
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/the_obama_administration_has_a_funny_way_of_re
warding_those_who_call_us_imperialistas.html)
President Maduro of Venezuela has spent the last few months warning his people that "los imperialistas" (i.e.
US) are out to get him. He blamed the US for everything under the sun, from high inflation, shortages, imaginary invasions from
Colombia, and even an acute shortage of toilet paper. He also expelled US diplomats and jailed a US filmmaker. Does that sound like a
responsible friend of the US to you? So why is the
US throwing President Maduro a "lifeline"?The Washington Post reports
this: "Last week Secretary of State John F. Kerry took time to meet Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias
Jaua on the sidelines of an Organization of American States meeting, then announced that the Obama administration
would like to "find a new way forward" with the Maduro administration and "quickly move to the
appointment of ambassadors." Mr. Kerry even thanked Mr. Maduro for "taking steps toward this encounter" -- words that the
state-run media trumpeted." Sorry but I am a little confused, or "confundido" as so many in the democratic opposition must be saying. Is this
what they get for standing up to thugs who steal elections? Why are we giving President Maduro a
"lifeline" at a time when many Latin American countries are calling for an audit of the questionable elections?
Why are we rewarding Cuba by sitting down with Venezuela? Why is the US legitimizing an election
that so many inside and outside of Venezuela consider illegitimate? I am not against sitting down with those we
disagree with. However, the unconditional nature of these meetings with the Maduro regime is extremely
confusing. Also, the timing makes no sense!
Obama is appeasing Venezuela
BOOTHROYD, SEP 25TH 2012 (Rachael Boothroyd is a writer, freelance journalist and political
activist based in Caracas, Venezuela. She contributes to Venezuelanalysis, Pulsamerica and Correo del
Orinoco International, "Republicans Vow to Halt “Policy of Appeasement” in Venezuela"
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/7283)
Caracas, September 23 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Republican nominee for Vice-President of theU.S., Paul Ryan, has vowed that a
Romney administration would get “tough on Castro, tough on Chavez” and to end what he described as a “policy of
appeasement” applied by the Obama administration towards both Cuba and Venezuela. Ryan made the
comments from the Versailles Restaurant in Miami, Florida last Saturday, where he was accompanied by staunch members of the anti-Castro
lobby, including Republican Representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Ros-Lehtinen is a member of the Cuban-American Lobby and the
Congressional Cuban Democracy Caucus; organisations which claim to be aimed at speeding up Cuba’s “transition to democracy”. "In a Mitt
Romney administration, we will not keep practising this
policy of appeasement, we will be tough on this brutal dictator (Castro). All it
has done is reward more despotism... We will help those pro-democracy groups. We will be tough on Castro, tough on Chavez. And
it's because we know that's the right policy for our country,” said Ryan. The nominee had reportedly travelled to Florida in a bid to win over the
majority Latino vote two months ahead of the US elections. Florida is currently thought to be a “swing state” and could prove a determining
vote for the overall election results. Results of a recent voter intention poll in the state carried out by NBC news show that Obama currently has
a 5% lead over Romney, with a voting intention of 49% to 44%. ‘I learned from these friends, from Mario (Diaz-Balart), from Lincoln (DiazBalart), from Ileana (Ros-Lehtinen), just how brutal the Castro regime is, just how this
president's policy of appeasement is
not working. They've given me a great education, lots of us in Congress, about how we need to clamp down on the Castro regime,” said
Ryan. According to Ros-Lehtinen, Ryan is now a “loyal friend” to those who campaign on Cuba-related political issues. Ryan's statements have
caused some Democrats to accuse him of hypocrisy after he appears to have dramatically changed his stance on Cuba-US relations. Prior to
2007, the Republican had called for “free trade” between all nations, which included voting to lift the trade embargo on Cuba. "To paraphrase
President Clinton, it takes real brass to vote three times against economic sanctions on the Cuban regime and then come to Little Havana and
ask Cuban-Americans for their vote," said Giancarlo Sopo, a Cuban-American supporter who told the US' Sun Sentinel that he would vote for
Obama. "It's one thing to have a genuine disagreement with someone on a policy. It's something else to change your position from one day to
the next just to pander in order to win votes,” added Sopo. Recently leaked footage of a meeting between Romney and party donors also
showed the presidential hopeful lambasting Obama
for believing that “his magnetism and his charm, and his
persuasiveness is so compelling that he can sit down with people like Putin and Chávez and
Ahmadinejad, and that they'll find that we're such wonderful people that they'll go on with us, and
they'll stop doing bad things”. The leaked recording also shows Romney referring to Iranian President Ahmadinejad as a “crazed
fanatic” and Iranian mullahs as “crazy people”. He also commented that, in his view, the Palestinian people have “no interest whatsoever in
establishing peace”. With the presidential elections now drawing near, the Republican party is beginning to increasingly outline its prospective
domestic and foreign policy, which Romney has said would be principally based on an attempt to implement a neo-liberal “Reagan economic
zone” in Latin America and other regions, such as the Middle East. The
Republican presidential candidate has been
outspoken in his criticism of the “anti-American” views purported by the governments of Venezuela,
Cuba and Iran and has described them as one of the biggest threats to the United States today. Earlier in
July, Romney branded the Venezuelan government as a “threat to national security” and accused the country's
president, Hugo Chavez, of “spreading dictatorships and tyranny throughout Latin America”. The Republican National Committee also
circulated a video of Obama shaking hands with Chavez at the OAS “Summit of the Americas” in
Trinidad and Tobago 2009 at the same time. Romney has often claimed that the leader of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution has
links to “terrorist” organisations such as Hezbollah and has access to weapons that could “harm the US”. He has never presented any evidence
in support of these accusations.
2AC – Appeasement Solves
Generic
Appeasement solves
Hachigian et al 10 – Senior Fellow at American Progress (Nina, Samuel Charap is enior Fellow for
Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “Heritage Makes a Weak Case
Against Engagement”, September 9 of 2010,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2010/09/09/8413/heritage-makes-a-weakcase-against-engagement/)
This engagement critique is absurd for a variety of reasons. First, it equates diplomacy with “appeasement.” But
throughout its history the United States has shown itself fully capable of working with
nondemocracies like Russia and China on key national security priorities and at the same time pushing back on
disagreements. What’s more, over time engagement creates conditions that allow us to address our
concerns about these countries’ actions more effectively. In some cases it can also help open up
authoritarian political systems. It’s not capitulation to engage with countries that pose a threat in order to address that threat—like
the administration has tried to do with Iran. On the contrary, it is a tactic worth trying to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons
capability. And the effort had value even though it did not produce immediate results: It demonstrated to international partners that harsher
measures such as sanctions were necessary.
Appeasement works—empirics prove
Kupchan ’10 [March/April 2010, Charles, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University
and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from his book How
Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, “Enemies Into Friends: How the United States
Can Court Its Adversaries”, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65986/charles-a-kupchan/enemiesinto-friends?page=show]
These glimmers of progress notwithstanding, critics insist that trying to make deals with extremists is appeasement by another name. Drawing
on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's infamous capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938, opponents of engagement claim that it will
invite only intransigence and belligerence. As U.S. President George W. Bush
told the Knesset in 2008, negotiating with
radicals is simply "the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." Bush was
certainly correct that accommodation had no place in dealing with a Nazi regime bent on conquest and
genocide, but Chamberlain's fateful blunder should not tar all offers of accommodation as naive bouts
of appeasement.¶ On the contrary, the historical record reveals that the initial accommodation of an
adversary, far from being an invitation to aggression, is an essential start to rapprochement. Such opening bids are usually
the product of necessity rather than altruism: facing strategic overcommitment, a state seeks to reduce its burdens by befriending an
adversary. If the target country responds in kind, an exchange of concessions can follow, often setting the stage for the rivalry and mutual
suspicion to abate. In the final stage of rapprochement, top decision-makers bring around bureaucracies, legislative bodies, private interest
groups, and ordinary citizens through lobbying and public outreach. Broader societal engagement is needed to ensure that rapprochement
does not unravel when the leaders that brought it about leave office.¶ To be sure, offers
of accommodation may need to be
balanced with threats of confrontation. Nonetheless, the historical record confirms that accommodation,
not confrontation, is usually the essential ingredient of successful rapprochement. The United States
and Great Britain were antagonists for decades; after the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, their geopolitical rivalry
continued until the end of the nineteenth century. The turning point came during the 1890s, when the United Kingdom's imperial commitments
began to outstrip its resources. London made the opening move in
1896, acceding to Washington's blustery demand
that it submit to arbitration a dispute over the border between Venezuela and British Guiana -- an
issue the United States deemed within its sphere of influence. The United States responded in kind to
London's gesture, agreeing to bring to arbitration a disagreement over sealing rights in the Bering Sea.
Soon thereafter, the two countries amicably settled disputes over the construction of the Panama Canal
and the border between Alaska and Canada. The United Kingdom was the only European power to support the United States
in the 1898 Spanish-American War, and it went on to welcome U.S. expansion into the Pacific.¶ As diplomacy dampened the rivalry, elites on
both sides of the Atlantic sought to recast popular attitudes through ambitious public relations campaigns. Arthur Balfour, leader of the House
of Commons, proclaimed in 1896 that "the idea of war with the United States of America carries with it something of the unnatural horror of a
civil war." In a speech at Harvard in
1898, Richard Olney, U.S. secretary of state from 1895 to 1897, referred to the United
Kingdom as the United States' "best friend" and noted "the close community . . . in the kind and degree
of the civilization enjoyed by both [countries]." With the help of lobbying groups such as the Anglo-American Committee,
these changes in the public discourse ensured that by the early 1900s the United Kingdom had succeeded in befriending the United States. In
1905, President Theodore Roosevelt informed London, "You need not ever be troubled by the nightmare of a possible contest between the two
great English-speaking peoples. I believe that is practically impossible now, and that it will grow entirely so as the years go by."¶ HOW PEACE
BREAKS OUT¶ Other instances of rapprochement followed a similar trajectory -- as was the case with rapprochement between Norway and
Sweden. As part of the territorial settlement at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark ceded control over Norway to Sweden in 1814. The
Swedes promptly invaded Norway to put down a revolt against their rule, and the resulting union between Norway and Sweden that formed in
1815 led to decades of Norwegian estrangement from the Swedish. Rivalry between the two parties began to abate in 1905, when Sweden,
confronted with resource constraints and pressure from Europe's great powers, accepted Norway's unilateral secession from the union.
Norway reciprocated by dismantling its border defenses, and the two countries proceeded to resolve their outstanding territorial disputes.
Their cooperation during World War I consolidated rapprochement, setting the stage for the eventual consolidation of peace throughout
Scandinavia after World War II.¶ Peace came to Southeast Asia in a comparable fashion. A
militarized rivalry between Indonesia
and Malaysia began in 1963, when Jakarta opposed the formation of Malaysia -- a federation among Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and
Singapore. In 1966, General Suharto took power in Indonesia and proceeded to back away from
confrontation with Malaysia, primarily to redress the deteriorating economic conditions brought on by Jakarta's refusal to trade
with Malaysia and by the international sanctions imposed in response to Indonesian belligerence. The two countries then
exchanged concessions on a number of issues and teamed up with their neighbors to form the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations in 1967, which has helped preserve peace in Southeast Asia ever since.¶ Rapprochement
between Argentina and Brazil followed a similar pattern. After decades of rivalry that had begun in the colonial era,
mutual accommodation started to clear the way for reconciliation in the late 1970s. Argentina faced the prospect of a war with Chile and
needed to reduce its other strategic commitments, and Brazil's more moderate leaders viewed rapprochement with Argentina as a way of
undercutting the growing power of hard-liners in Brazil's security and intelligence apparatus. Argentina made the opening move in 1979 by
finally reaching an accord with Brazil and Paraguay on the construction of a hydroelectric dam across the Paraná River, which flows through the
three countries. During the 1980s, Argentina and Brazil exchanged concessions, cooperated on their nuclear programs, and deepened their
political, scientific, and cultural ties. In 1991, they launched a regional trade pact -- Mercosur -- and soon thereafter engaged in joint military
exercises, which brought Brazilian troops to Argentine territory for the first time since the 1860s.
Fear of appeasement strategies are overblown
McCollam ‘6 [October 13th, 2006, Douglas, Writer for Foreign Policy, “The Umbrella's Shadow”,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2006/10/12/the_umbrellas_shadow]
In this age of American hyperpower, cant we agree that the oversized fear of appeasement a doctrine, after all,
born of military weakness does more harm than good? After all, the United States has never been stronger. If
some of our adversaries fail to understand that, they will learn the hard truth, just as adherents to other -isms
that now reside in the dustbin of history have learned. It is well past time we let go of outdated bromides from the
greatest generation and stepped out from underneath the umbrellas shadow.
Cuba
Engagement with Cuba works—containment fails
Kupchan ’10 [March/April 2010, Charles, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University
and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from his book How
Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, “Enemies Into Friends: How the United States
Can Court Its Adversaries”, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65986/charles-a-kupchan/enemiesinto-friends?page=show]
The historical record, however, makes clear that such skepticism is misplaced and that Obama is on the
right track in reaching out to adversaries. Long-standing rivalries tend to thaw as a result of mutual
accommodation, not coercive intimidation. Of course, offers of reconciliation are sometimes rebuffed, requiring that they be revoked. But
under the appropriate conditions, reciprocal concessions are bold and courageous investments in peace. Obama is
also right to ease off on democracy promotion as he engages adversaries; even states that are repressive at home can be cooperative abroad.
Moreover, contrary to conventional wisdom, diplomacy, not trade, is the currency of peace; economic interdependence is a consequence more
than a cause of rapprochement.¶ If tentative engagement with U.S. adversaries is to grow into lasting rapprochement, Obama
will need
to secure from them not just concessions on isolated issues but also their willingness to pursue
sustained cooperation. Doing so will require Washington to make its own compromises without dangerously dropping its guard.
Obama must also manage the domestic political perils that will inevitably accompany such diplomacy. Not only will he have to weather
Republican complaints about his "apology tours" abroad, but Obama will need to make sure that Congress is ready to support any deals that
result from his diplomatic efforts. Should foreign governments take up Washington's offers of cooperation, they, too, will face dangers at home.
In fact, Obama is in the difficult position of seeking peace with regimes whose viability may well be undermined if they reciprocate the United
States' overtures. Washington is off to a good start in seeking to turn enemies into friends, but the task at hand requires exceptional diplomacy
both abroad and at home.¶ DIPLOMATIC COURTSHIP¶ Some
of the recalcitrant regimes Obama is seeking to engage
will surely refuse to reciprocate. With such states, Washington, after a decent interval, should suspend the
offer of accommodation in favor of a strategy of isolation and containment. But other regimes are likely to take
up the offer. Thus far, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Myanmar have all demonstrated at least a modicum of interest in
engagement with the United States. Russia has worked with the United States on arms control, stepped up its effort to contain
Iran's nuclear program, and expanded access to Russian territory and airspace for military supplies headed to Afghanistan. Enveloped in
domestic turmoil since its June 2009 election, Iran has taken an on-again, if mostly off-again approach to negotiations with the United States. It
is clearly tempted by the offer to compromise on the scope of its nuclear program as a means of avoiding -- or at least delaying -- a
confrontation with the West. North Korea has been similarly tentative in engaging with Washington over its nuclear program. Meanwhile,
Cuba has been expanding its diplomatic dialogue with the United States, and last fall Myanmar welcomed a visit
from a high-ranking U.S. diplomat and allowed him to meet with the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
2AC – Link Turn
2AC – Link Turn
Negotiations aren't appeasement – they check back for miscalc – empirically proven
Mataconis 12 (Doug is an attorney in private practice in Northern Virginia. He holds a B.A. in Political
Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law., "The GOP’s
Ridiculous Appeasement Argument" http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/the-gops-ridiculousappeasement-argument/)
This harkens back, of course, to the argument that many on the right made during the 2008 campaign that then-candidate Obama would,
if elected, immediately begin to negotiate personally, as opposed to formal and informal discussions via diplomats, with
adversaries like the Iranians and North Koreans “without preconditions.” Throughout the 2008 campaign, both John McCain
and Sarah Palin said repeatedly that Senator Obama would meet personally with the President of Iran without any preconditions. In fact what
the Obama had said is that he favored direct talks between representatives of the U.S. and Iran regarding the nuclear program, a position that
was supported at the time by several former Secretaries of State who had severed in Republican Administrations. That
was just one
example, though, of this odd idea that Republicans seem to have developed that there’s something
wrong with diplomacy, at least when the other guy does it. If anything, it’s more important that we have
open lines of communication with our adversaries than our friends, if only to prevent
misunderstandings and mistakes that could lead to a crisis that doesn’t need to happen. More broadly,
though, the suggestion that being willing to talk to ones adversaries under the right conditions is in and
of itself appeasement is simply absurd. History is full of examples where that precise thing occurred,
to the benefit of all parties involved. Kennedy met with Kruschev. Nixon met with Mao. Reagan met
with Gorbachev (and said he would have met with Brezhnev, Andropov, or Chernenko if Russian leaders in
the early 1980s hadn’t developed the inconvenient habit of dying every 18 months). Heck, we’ve sent Secretaries of State to
North Korea and have diplomatic relations with the Vietnamese now. For years, we didn’t have diplomatic relations
with the Libyans and yet the Bush Administration made contact with them and successfully negotiated the dismantling of the Libyan chemical
weapons program. And
before all that happened there were lower-level meetings going on for years
between the United States and regimes that posed a far greater threat to our security, and their own
citizens, than a mad-man like Ahmenijad does today. And that’s the part of this that Republicans can’t explain — if it’s okay to talk to the
Soviets, the Red Chinese, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and the Libyans then what’s so bad about suggesting the possibility
of diplomatic contact with Iran ? Diplomacy is a good thing, as Winston Churchill himself recognized. Since Sir
Winston seems to be the only European that conservatives like, perhaps they’d listen to what he has to say about the matter.
Engagement is not appeasement – it's an effective foreign policy leverage tool
Rogin 12 (A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh
Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column
appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. "Chuck Hagel does not like sanctions",
Monday, December 17, 2012,
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/12/17/chuck_hagel_does_not_like_sanctions)
Hagel, who serves as co-chair of President Barack Obama's intelligence advisory board, throughout his career has publicly
supported the idea of engaging with rogue regimes and focusing on diplomacy before punitive
measures. While in Congress, he voted against several sanctions measures and argued vociferously against
their effectiveness. "Engagement is not appeasement. Diplomacy is not appeasement. Great nations engage.
Powerful nations must be the adults in world affairs. Anything less will result in disastrous, useless,
preventable global conflict," Hagel said in a Brookings Institution speech in 2008. In 2008, Hagel was blamed for blocking an Iran
sanctions bill that Senate Democrats supported. That same year, he gave a speech calling for the opening of a U.S. diplomatic post in Tehran. As
early as 2001, Hagel said that sanctions on Iran and Libya were ineffective. He was one of only two senators that year to vote against
renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, along with Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN). In his 2008 book, America: Our Next Chapter, Hagel wrote,
"America's refusal to recognize Iran's status as a legitimate power does not decrease Iran's influence, but rather increases it." That same year,
Hagel praised the George W. Bush administration's deal with North Korea, which included lifting some sanctions on Pyongyang and removing
North Korea from the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism in exchange for greater transparency into North Korea's nuclear
program. North Korea later reneged on its side of that bargain. "The last thing we want to do or should do in my opinion is try to isolate North
Korea," Hagel said in 2003. "They are very dangerous, they're unpredictable, and they have a past behavior pattern that's a bit erratic. That is
not good news for any of us. So I think we keep the emotions down and keep working the channels." On Syria, Hagel
was a longtime supporter of engagement with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Hafez al-Assad. After meeting
with Assad the elder in 1998, Hagel said, "Peace comes through dealing with people. Peace doesn't come at the end of a bayonet or the end of
a gun. In 2008, Hagel co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with prospective secretary of state nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), entitled,
"It's time to talk to Syria." "Syria's leaders have always made cold calculations in the name of self-preservation, and history shows that
intensive diplomacy can pay off," Hagel and Kerry wrote. Hagel has long been a critic of the multi-decade U.S.
embargo on Cuba. He has said the trade embargo on Cuba "isolates us, not Cuba," and voted several times to ease
parts of it. "On Cuba, I've said that we have an outdated, unrealistic, irrelevant policy," he said in 2008. "It's always been nonsensical to me
about this argument, 'Well, it's a communist country, it's a communist regime.' What
do people think Vietnam is? Or the
People's Republic of China? Both those countries are WTO members. We trade with them. We have
relations. Great powers engage... Great powers are not afraid. Great powers trade." That same year, Hagel
signed onto a letter to Secretary State Condoleezza Rice urging her to alter U.S.-Cuba policy. In 2002, Hagel called then leader Fidel Castro a
"toothless old dinosaur" and said he agreed with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter on Cuba. "What Jimmy Carter's saying ... is exactly right:
Our 40-year policy toward Cuba is senseless," Hagel said.
2AC – Link Defense
Link D – Generic EE
Engagement is not appeasement
Kupchan 10 [March/April 2010, Charles, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University
and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from his book How
Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, “Enemies Into Friends: How the United States
Can Court Its Adversaries”, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65986/charles-a-kupchan/enemiesinto-friends?page=show]
To complicate matters further, Obama has to worry about domestic obstacles to rapprochement in other countries as well. From Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Russian leaders Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin to Cuban
President Raúl Castro, Obama's
negotiating partners as a matter of course play the anti-American card to bolster their rule. Even if they want to
compromise with the United States, they might find themselves hemmed in by the popular
resentment of Washington that they have already stirred up. Obama can lend a hand by using public diplomacy to
lessen popular animosity toward the United States. His superb oratorical skills are an important asset: his frequent efforts at public outreach -such as his speeches in Ankara, Cairo, and Moscow and his video greeting to the Iranians on their New Year -- may well help give foreign leaders
the room they need to reciprocate U.S. overtures. Far from showboating or squandering his presidential prestige, Obama is wisely deploying his
popularity in the service of peace.¶ MYTH BUSTING¶ Building congressional support for Obama's outreach to adversaries will mean
debunking three myths that often distort public debate about strategies of engagement. The first is the
presumption that Washington compromises its values and power by seeking rapprochement with
autocratic regimes. U.S. officials and opinion-makers on both sides of the aisle share a commitment to
democratization for both principled reasons (democracies respect the rights of their citizens) and pragmatic ones
(democracies are peaceful and cooperative, whereas autocracies are presumably belligerent and unreliable partners). Accordingly, even if the
United States succeeded in striking a deal with the Iranian, the Russian, or the Syrian government, critics would charge that Washington's
behavior was morally tainted (for rewarding and strengthening autocrats) and naive (because such governments cannot be trusted to keep
their commitments).¶ But Obama
is fully justified in putting the democratization agenda on the back burner
and basing U.S. diplomacy toward other states on their external behavior, not their regime type. Even
repressive regimes can be reliably cooperative when it comes to their conduct of foreign policy. Argentina and Brazil embarked on the path of
rapprochement when they were both ruled by military juntas. Suharto oversaw a campaign of brutal repression at home but nonetheless
ended Indonesia's belligerent stance toward Malaysia and helped found the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a pact to preserve
regional peace.¶ Striking bargains
with repressive regimes does require making moral compromises. Doing
so is justified, however, by the concrete contributions to international stability that can result.
Washington should speak out against violations of human rights and support political liberalization
around the world. But when nuclear weapons, terrorism, and matters of war and peace are on the line,
responsible statecraft requires pragmatic compromise, not ideological intransigence. ¶ A second
misconception, often affirmed by opponents of engagement, is that pursuing rapprochement with an adversary
means abandoning hope that its government will change. On the contrary, doing business with autocracies
has the potential to bring about regime change through the backdoor by weakening hard-liners and
empowering reformers. Engagement with Iran, for example, could undermine a government that relies on confrontation with the
United States to rally popular support and disarm the opposition.¶ Belligerent governments have frequently been the
victims of rapprochement. Sweden's aristocracy and military lost power to the country's liberals as
rapprochement with Norway advanced. Military juntas governed Argentina and Brazil when their
reconciliation began in 1979; by 1985, both countries were democracies. In none of these cases was
rapprochement the only factor that helped bring about regime change, but the more benign strategic environment that accompanied
reconciliation certainly strengthened the hand of reformers.¶ Should Obama's outreach succeed in winning over adversaries, the
antiAmerican pedigree of such leaders as Ahmadinejad, Castro, and Putin may well do more to compromise their
credibility than to enhance their popularity. Over the long run, working with recalcitrant autocrats
may undermine them far more effectively than containment and confrontation.¶ DIPLOMACY BEFORE
DOLLARS¶ A final misconception is that economic interdependence is usually a precursor to rapprochement. Proponents of a "commercial
peace" contend that trade and investment encourage amity between rivals by bringing their economic and political interests into alignment.
By trading with China, Cuba, and other autocracies, the United States can pursue joint gains and advance
political liberalization, which will in turn promote peaceful relations. Supporters of this view call for economic
integration not only between the United States and its rivals but also between China and Japan, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and Bosnian
Serbs and Bosnian Muslims.
Diplomatic engagement is appeasement – not economic
Kupchan 10 [March/April 2010, Charles, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University
and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. This essay is adapted from his book How
Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace, “Enemies Into Friends: How the United States
Can Court Its Adversaries”, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65986/charles-a-kupchan/enemiesinto-friends?page=show]
Rapprochement, however, is the product of diplomacy, not commerce. Although commercial integration can help
deepen reconciliation, primarily by enlisting the support of industrialists and financiers, the diplomats must first lay the political
foundation. Anglo-American trade declined in relative terms between 1895 and 1906, the critical
decade of rapprochement. Big business on both sides of the Atlantic did help improve relations, but only after
the key diplomatic breakthroughs that occurred between 1896 and 1898. Argentina and Brazil
enjoyed minimal bilateral commerce during the 1980s -- their era of reconciliation. Only after the founding of
Mercosur in 1991 did commercial integration take off.¶ Moreover, strong commercial ties by no means guarantee comity. By 1959, after a
decade of economic integration, 50 percent of China's exports were going to the Soviet Union, and China had become the Soviet Union's top
trading partner. But this extraordinary
level of commercial interdependence did nothing to prevent the
return of geopolitical rivalry after the break between Beijing and Moscow. By 1962, bilateral
commerce had dropped by 40 percent. Politics was in command.¶ The lesson for the Obama administration is to
keep its eye on the fundamentals. Under pressure from its critics, the White House might be tempted to sidestep the core
security issues at stake and seek to pursue reconciliation with adversaries primarily through economic
means. But as the Sino-Soviet case illustrates, unless commercial integration is pursued within the
context of a consensus on major geopolitical issues, it will be a distraction at best. To be sure, Washington can
wield important leverage by loosening economic sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Syria. The main benefit of such action, however, would be
the political signal it sends, not the purportedly pacifying effects of commercial integration. Growing economic ties can help lock in
rapprochement, but only after a political settlement is at hand.
Link D – Mexico
Economic engagement with Mexico is not appeasement- it would get Mexico on board
with our interests
Reyes 13 [Raul A, attorney and columist for NBC Latino, April 29, " Opinion: President Obama has the
chance to improve US/Mexico relations", http://nbclatino.com/2013/04/29/opinion-president-obamahas-the-chance-to-improve-usmexico-relations/, Accessed July 6]
However, Obama would be wise to recognize that relations with Mexico should not center on these issues alone. As president-elect, Peña
Nieto wrote in The Washington Post that, “It is a mistake to limit our bilateral relationship to drugs and
security concerns. Our mutual interests are too vast and complex to be restricted in this short-sighted way.” He wants a deeper
relationship, one that is defined by shared economic goals.¶ That’s the smart way forward. Since 2008, Mexico has
seen steady economic growth, which has been a net benefit to the U.S. The U.S. exports more to Mexico than to
China and Japan combined, and U.S./Mexico trade hit almost $500 billion in 2012. Obama should build on these ties to create
greater economic integration. If he and Peña Nieto were to collaborate on ways of matching Mexico’s young labor force with
American technology and training, it would be a recipe for a regional economic boom. Greater U.S. investment in Mexico will
make the country safer, as the cartels generally leave multinational operations alone. Politically, Obama cannot afford
to take Mexico for granted. Consider that Mexico has been fully engaged with Cuba since the revolution in 1959
(which was launched from Mexico). And although the U.S. has not recognized Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro as successor to Hugo
Chavez, Mexico recognized his election on April 19. So Mexico is not an ally that automatically falls in
lockstep with American interests. Perhaps with more attention from the Obama administration, Peña
Nieto could be persuaded to be more supportive of U.S. policies for the region. True, there are legitimate
reasons why Mexico has been viewed warily by past administrations. Mexico has historically been the largest source of our undocumented
population. Border towns have long feared spillover violence from the drug cartels. But illegal immigration is at net zero, and the fears of
violence on the U.S. side of the border have proved largely unfounded. Obama
should take the lead in encouraging more
communication and cooperation with Mexico. Already, Peña Nieto favors opening Mexico’s energy sector to private
investment, and he may even allow foreign investment in its state oil company. President Obama has the chance to turn a
page in U.S./Mexico relations, and he should not miss it. It’s time for a foreign policy with Mexico
based on its potential, not on its problems.
2AC – Internal Link D
Internal Link D – Cred
No impact to cred
Miller ‘10 [February 3rd, 2010, Aaron David, public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, Princeton University, Foreign Policy, “The End of Diplomacy?”
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/03/the_end_of_diplomacy?page=full]
Back in the day, there was a time when American diplomacy did big and important things. No more, it seems.
The world's gotten complicated, America is a good deal weaker, and the U.S. administration is handicapping itself with a
dysfunctional bureaucratic setup that makes it harder to focus and find its footing. Effective American
diplomacy may well be going the way of the dodo, and the sad fact is there may be little Barack Obama can do about it. Lamenting
the absence of great men years before his own shining moment, Winston Churchill wrote that in England, once upon a time, "there were
wonderful giants of old." There's always a danger in idealizing what once was or seemed to be in order to make a point about the present. Still,
looking back over the last 60 years, you really do have to wonder whether America's best diplomacy and foreign policy are behind it. America
never ran the world (an illusion the left, right, and much of the third and fourth worlds believe; but there were moments (1945-1950, the early
1970s, 1988-1991) when the United States marshaled its military, political, and economic power toward impressive ends. There were, or
course, disasters and plenty of dysfunction during these years, including the Vietnam War and out-of-control CIA operations. But there were
also brilliant achievements: the Marshall Plan, NATO, effective Arab-Israeli diplomacy, détente with the Russians, opening to China, a
competent American role in the acceleration and management of the end of the Cold War, and the first Gulf War. For most of the last 16 years,
however -- under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- America has been in a diplomatic dry patch. In
the face of terrorism, nuclear
proliferation, wars of choice, and nasty regional conflicts, conventional diplomacy has either not been
tried or not been very successful. The image of the shuttling secretary of state pre-empting crises or
exploiting them to broker agreements, doggedly pursuing Middle East peace, achieving dramatic
breakthroughs with spectacular secret diplomacy seems a world away. The Obama administration wants to do this
kind of stuff. And it has done pretty well in managing the big relationships with Russia and Europe, though it has had its share of problems with
China. But frankly, these are the easy ones. It's not from the big that the president's problems come; it's from the small. In
garden spots
like Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia, the problems are four parts military, five parts
nation-building, and maybe one part diplomacy. And America is unlikely to prevail in any meaningful
sense of the word where corrupt, extractive regimes are unable to control their own territory and cut
deals with anti-American elements and place their security and political concerns first. Even in areas where
diplomacy might seem to work on paper -- Kashmir, Arab-Israeli peacemaking -- the United States is hampered by conflicts
driven by deep ethnic and religious hostility and by internal politics in which its own allies (Israel, Pakistan,
and India) can't be of much help. And in one of the cruelest ironies of all, the U.S. president who has gone further to engage Iran than
any of his predecessors is watching any hope for diplomacy being ground up by a regime under siege in Tehran. What's more, the power
of the small is being matched by the weakening of the big. You don't have to be a declinist (I'm not) to
see how far the image of American power has fallen. Forget the economic meltdown, which has much of
the world wondering about what kind of great power the United States really is. America's currently fighting
two wars where the standard for victory is not whether it can win but when it can leave. Whether it's an inability to get tough sanctions from
the international community against Iran, bring Tehran to heel, make North Korea play ball, get the Arabs and the Israelis to cooperate, or push
the Pakistanis to hit the Taliban and al Qaeda in a sustained way, the world has gotten used to saying no to America without cost or
consequence. And that's very bad for a great power. Finally, there's the issue of how the country organizes itself. A new bureaucratic flowchart
won't replace skill and luck, better marshal American power, or create genuine opportunities for success abroad. But if you don't have the right
structure, it makes success all that much harder. And the
United States has departed from the one model that has
proven successful: the strong foreign-policy president empowering the strong secretary of state who
rides herd over subcabinet-level envoys in real time and in close coordination with the president on
strategy. Instead, the Obama administration has created an empire of envoys with power concentrated
in the White House but without real purpose or strategy. The nation's top diplomat (the secretary of state)
seems to be everywhere and nowhere in terms of owning issues and finding a way to take on some of
the nastiest challenges, which is what secretaries of state are supposed to do. It's still early, and maybe the Obama administration will
get lucky. Perhaps the Iranian regime will collapse or the Arabs and Israelis will do something good by themselves. But the next several years
are more likely to be tough ones for American diplomacy. And the image that comes to mind isn't a terribly kind one: America as a kind of
modern-day Gulliver tied up by tiny tribes abroad and hobbled by its inability to organize its own house at home.
Previous credibility crisis disproves the impact and makes decline inev
Rothkopf ’10 [January 22nd, 2010, David, CEO and Editor-at-Large of Foreign Policy, author of
Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, now available in over two dozen
editions worldwide, and Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the
Architects of American Power, hailed by the New York Times as "the definitive history of the National
Security Council." visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where he chairs
the Carnegie Economic Strategy Roundtable. He was formerly chief executive of Intellibridge
Corporation, managing director of Kissinger Associates and U.S. Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce
for International Trade Policy, taught international affairs and national security studies at Columbia
University's School of International and Public Affairs and Georgetown's School of Foreign Service,
“America's credibility takes another blow”,
http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/22/americas_credibility_takes_another_blow]
In fact now, following an era that might well be defined by America's twin credibility crises of the past decade,
another looms.¶ The first two blows -- blows that have left America's standing in the world weaker today
than it has been at any time in the past half century, even with the many steps President Obama has taken to reverse the
missteps of the Bush era -- undercut two of what might be seen as the three pillars of American
standing on the planet.¶ The initial credibility crisis was triggered by the Bush administration's reckless
disregard for the values upon which the republic was founded. From Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, from the
illegal invasion of Iraq to the rendition and torture of prisoners, America's role as a leader by virtue of
our moral standing was called into question. The champions of the rule of law were now seen, rightfully, as one of its
enemies, arguing as we were that there were two standards: that to which we held the rest of the world and that we chose for ourselves.¶
Next, America's
role as an economic model for the world, champion of free markets and opportunity for
all came under fire. In the run up to the economic crisis of 2008-2009, growing inequality in the United
States was leading many critics to question our "leave it to the markets" approach. But then came the
crisis and once again, the United States demonstrated that the doctrine we had preached worldwide
were not going to be applied at home and moreover, that our system was deeply and fundamentally
flawed. Doubt about "American capitalism" were only amplified in the aftermath of the crisis, in which middle class victims of the crisis were
hardly helped and many were hurt but in which Wall Street fat cats called the tune, reaped the rewards of government intervention and then
flouted their power by shrugging off the government when it was no longer necessary to their business plans.¶ What was left for Americans to
cling to? Our moral standing and our fundamental message to the world had been built on the ideas of respect for the rule of law and free
markets. And now the world was left to wonder, if not America, then to whom do we turn? Should we embrace other models?¶ Admittedly,
the Chinese model, which might have had a shot at greater influence given the damage done to the U.S. brand, wasn't doing itself any
favors with its attempt to deny its people both basic rights of all international citizens of the 21st Century
... which would also have the effect of making Chinese workers less competitive in the global
economy. Hillary Clinton's speech attacking this was forceful and utterly appropriate. The Chinese whining in response to it was a sign of
weakness and with some luck, the Obama administration will ignore it, shrug off the Chinese threats of consequences in other areas of the
bilateral relationship, and continue to press home this essential point.¶ But the
argument on behalf of the American way
was made immeasurably harder yesterday by the Supreme Court's devastating blow to several of the
most fundamental precepts of American society -- equal rights, for example, or truly free speech (which is to
say the right speak and be heard, without having to pay for it).¶ By a 5-4 vote the justices of the court, with the
Republican right in the majority, struck down limits on corporate campaign spending. Further building
on the dangerous fiction in American law that corporations ought to have rights akin to those of
individuals, the decision effectively unleashes the floodgates of corporate and union money into the
political arena.¶ This is certainly a more powerful threat to democracy than terrorism. It may well be a
more powerful threat to democracy than was the fatally-flawed Soviet Union. Because to the extent
to which politicians depend on donations to remain in power, they are inevitably influenced by those
who have the most money. Not surprisingly, corporate entities, representing many people and often vast
economic enterprises, have vastly more financial resources than individuals. Arguing, as American right wingers
do, that campaign donations are form of free speech and thus cannot be constrained, ignores the reality that by equating money with free
speech we effectively say that those with more money have more free speech, are entitled to greater influence within our society.¶ The
implications are stark. Should this
decision go unreversed by subsequent action of the Congress, a future court or a future constitutional
balance of power in the United States even farther away from average people and
in the direction of elites. Since campaign donations do not flow from companies primarily for
ideological reasons but rather to advance narrow self-interests, the business of U.S. political class will
necessarily be driven by the politics of the business class.¶ In a nutshell, yesterday's Supreme Court
decision made it very likely that America will not be an effective leader in combating global warming
or preserving global resources, it will not be able to effectively resolve the internal threats to its own
society like a failing health care system, and it will pursue international policies that are driven less by
the broad national interest and more by the agenda of companies that in fact, have increasingly little
national identity.¶ In this respect, this compromise of the third and most important pillar of U.S.
international leadership-democracy, may be the most damaging of all. We can repair, as the Obama administration
has attempted to do, the abuses of the Bush years. But if the court's action does in effect institutionalize Calvin
Coolidge's old idea that "the business of America is business" it will be impossible to either effectively
redress the flaws in the American economic model or for us to continue to argue that the nation that
was the most important pioneer of representative democracy will continue to be able to play that
role.
amendment, it tips the
2AC – Evidence Indict
Prefer Our Authors
Prefer our authors – theirs are Conservative hacks – empirics flow AFF
Logevall et al 10 – professor at Cornell University and coauthor of America’s Cold War: The Politics of
Insecurity (Frederik, KENNETH OSGOOD is a professor at Florida Atlantic University and author of Total
Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad, “The Ghost of Munich:
America's Appeasement Complex”, July/August of 2010,
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/ghost-munich-americas-appeasement-complex)
As the debate over Obama’s foreign policy continues, we would do well to remember that those who scream
“appeasement” the loudest are those that understand its meaning the least . MSNBC’s Hardball
offered a taste of this two years ago when Chris Matthews hosted conservative radio personality Kevin James for a
discussion about Bush’s “appeasement” remark before the Knesset. As James echoed this charge, angrily
denouncing Obama’s foreign policy platform as tantamount to appeasement, Matthews interrupted
to ask, “I want you to tell me now, as an expert, what did Chamberlain do wrong?” For almost five full
minutes, James dodged the question, unable to articulate anything that happened at Munich in 1938
beyond that “Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser.” Finally, Matthews got James to admit the sad
reality: “I don’t know.” Matthews then answered his own question: “What Neville Chamberlain did wrong, most people would say, is
not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia in ’38.”¶ Matthews got it right. And it’s a simple history lesson we
should keep in mind should the debate about U.S. foreign policy continue to revolve around a shaky
understanding of what actually happened in 1938: Chamberlain’s mistake was not in going to Munich;
it was what he agreed to when he got there.