Round 2 – Indiana
1AC
1AC – Plan
The United States should legalize nearly all marihuana in the United States. The
process of legalization should include at least the United States limiting the
United States Congress’ commerce clause authority to prohibit marihuana.
1AC Prohibition
Contention 1 is Prohibition
Scenario 1 is Harm Reduction:
The prohibitionist model remains the global norm for drug policy—this prevents
effective Federal legalization sends a global signal in favor of ending drug
prohibition—causes a shift in other countries towards harm reduction strategies
Joshua D. Wild 13, “The Uncomfortable Truth about the United States’ Role in the Failure of the Global War on Drugs and How It
is Going to Fix It,” SUFFOLK TRANSNATIONAL LAW REVIEW v. 36, Summer 2013, p. 437-446
The War on Drugs' demise started when the bellicose analogy was created. n77 The correct classification of the global drug
problem was and still is as a set of interlinked health and social challenges to be managed, not a war
to be won. n78 The U.S. has worked strenuously for the past fifty years to ensure that all countries
adopt its rigid, prohibitionist approach to drug policy, essentially repressing the potential for
alternative policy development and experimentation. n79 This was an expensive mistake that the U.S.
unfortunately cannot take back. n80 The current emergence from the economic recession of 2008-2009 has set the stage for a
generational, political and cultural shift, placing the U.S. in a unique moment in its history; the necessary sociopolitical context to
revoke its prohibitionist ideals and replace them with more modern policies grounded in health, science and humanity. n81 The
U.S. can remedy its mistake by using its considerable diplomatic influence and international
presence to foster reform in other countries. n82 One way to do this is by capitalizing [*438] on this unique moment
in its existence and experimenting with models of legal regulation, specifically with marijuana because nearly half
of U.S. citizens favor legalization of it. n83 This will help redeem our image internationally and help repair
foreign relations because the monumental scope of the international marijuana market is largely created by the exorbitant
U.S. demand for the drug which partially stems from the illegality of the market. n84 B. Step 1: Recognize the Ineffectiveness of The
Global War on Drugs and Consider Alternatives An objective way to gauge the effectiveness of a drug policy is to examine how the
policy manages the most toxic drugs and the problems associated with them. n85 With that in mind, at the global level,
having one in five intravenous drug users have HIV and one in every two users having Hepatitis C
is clearly an epidemic and not the result of effective drug control policies. n86 The threat of arrest and
punishment as a deterrent from people using drugs is sound in theory, but in practice this hypothesis is tenuous. n87 Countries
that have enacted harsh, punitive laws have higher levels of drug use and related problems than
countries with more tolerant approaches. n88 Additionally, the countries that have experimented with
forms of legal regulation outside of punitive approaches have not seen rises in drug use and
dependence [*439] rates. n89 Therefore, one sensible first step in placing this issue back into a manageable position is for
national governments to encourage other governments to experiment with models of legal regulation of
drugs which fit their context. n90 This will in turn, undermine the criminal market, enhance national security, and allow other
countries to learn from their application. n91 1. Easier to Say Than Do - A Suggestion for Overcoming Difficulties Associated With
Legal Regulation For this movement to be successful and effectively manage the epidemic at hand there must be a broad
consensus around the world that the current drug control policies are morally harmful. n92 This consensus however is precluded by
the stigma and fear associated with more toxic drugs such as heroin. n93 This note does not propose that heroin and other toxic
drugs should be legalized but instead suggests that society and drug policies tend to consolidate and classify all illicit drugs as
equally dangerous. n94 This in turn restrains any progressive debate about experimenting with the regulation of different drugs
under different standards. n95 [*440] Regardless of these false dichotomies, which often restrain progressive debate, it is difficult
not to give credence to the idea of marijuana being socially acceptable when it has been by far the most widely produced and
consumed illicit drug. n96 There is between 125 and 203 million users worldwide and no indication of that number declining. n97
With this many users, it is reasonable to conclude that if the international community could reach a consensus about the moral
noxiousness of any drug control policy, the repression of marijuana would likely be it. n98 Marijuana, arguably socially
acceptable, represents a simple mechanism to enter into the experimentation process with the
legal regulation of drugs. n99 Without advocating for the UN to adopt new commissions or encouraging drastic moves such
as the decriminalization of all illicit substances, the global decriminalization of marijuana would be a relatively minor adjustment
compared to the monumental impact. n100 If national governments were to decriminalize marijuana, the scope of this movement
would essentially eradicate the public health problem of marijuana abuse and the associated criminality because of its illegal status.
n101 Public health problems can be remedied because it will afford governments the ability to regulate the market and control the
quality and price of the drug, essentially removing toxic impurities and setting a price that will diminish an illegal market. n102 This
will in turn diminish the criminal market [*441] by eradicating the need for users to commit crimes to procure marijuana and removing
the economic incentive for other countries to get involved in the drug's market. n103 Without arguing that this is the panacea for the
global war on drugs, proponents of legalization can aptly point to the archaic drug control policies in place and this macro approach
as an effective way to tackle the problem now. n104 C. Step 2: Real Reform - the U.S. Needs to Stand at the Forefront
of Drug Policy Reformation The U.S. wields considerable influence over the rest of the world, so it
is no surprise that its call for the development and maintenance of prohibitive, punitive drug
policies resulted in a majority of the international community following. n105 Conversely, if the U.S.
leads the call for the development and maintenance of more tolerant drug policies grounded in
health, humanity and science, a majority of the international community will also follow. n106 Cultural
shifts do not take place overnight, and the idea of complete U.S. drug policy reformation is too aggressive and stark in contrast to
succeed against modern bureaucracy and political alliances. n107 On the other hand, a more moderate, piecemeal approach could
effectively act as a catalyst for this transformation while simultaneously serving as a case study for opponents of legal regulation.
n108 [*442] If the U.S. is serious about addressing the ineffectiveness of the War on Drugs, then the
federal government must remove marijuana from its list of criminally banned substances. n109 The
tone of the Obama administration is a significant step in this direction. n110 President Obama has explicitly acknowledged the need
to treat drugs as more of a public health problem, as well as the validity of debate on alternatives, but he does not favor drug
legalization. n111 This progressive rhetoric is a significant step in the right direction, but until there is
some real reform confronting the issue, reducing punitive measures and supporting other countries to develop drug
policies that suit their context, there is still an abdication of policy responsibility. n112 1. Starting Small - Potential
Positive Effects of Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana in the U.S. If marijuana was legal in the U.S., it would function similarly to
the market of legal substances such as liquor, coffee and tobacco. n113 Individual and corporate participants in the market would
pay taxes, increasing revenues and saving the government from the exorbitant cost of trying to enforce prohibition laws. n114
Consumers' human rights would be promoted through self-determination, autonomy and access to more accurate information about
the product they are consuming. n115 Additionally, case studies and research suggest that the decriminalization or legalization
[*443] of marijuana reduces the drugs' consumption and does not necessarily result in a more favorable attitude towards it. n116
The legal regulation of marijuana would relieve the current displaced burden the drug places on law enforcement, domestically and
internationally. n117 In the U.S., law enforcement could refocus their efforts away from reducing the marijuana market per se and
instead towards reducing harm to individuals, communities and national security. n118 Abroad, U.S. international
relations would improve because of the reduced levels of corruption and violence at home and
afar. n119 The precarious position repressive policies place on foreign governments when they have to destroy
the livelihoods of agricultural workers would be reduced. n120 Additionally, legalization and regulation
would provide assistance to governments in regaining some degree of control over the regions
dominated by drug dealers and terrorist groups because those groups would lose a major source
of funding for their organizations. n121 2. Health Concerns? - Marijuana in Comparison to Other Similar Legal
Substances The federal government, acknowledging the risks inherent in alcohol and tobacco, argues that adding a third substance
to that mix cannot be beneficial. n122 Adding anything to a class of [*444] dangerous substances is likely never going to be
beneficial; however marijuana would be incorrectly classified if it was equated with those two substances. n123 Marijuana is far less
toxic and addictive than alcohol and tobacco. n124 Long term use of marijuana is far less damaging than long term alcohol or
tobacco use. n125 Alcohol use contributes to aggressive and reckless behavior, acts of violence and serious injuries while
marijuana actually reduces likelihood of aggressive behavior or violence during intoxication and is seldom associated with
emergency room visits. n126 As with most things in life, there can be no guarantee that the legalization or decriminalization of
marijuana would lead the U.S. to a better socio-economical position in the future. n127 Two things however, are certain: that the
legalization of marijuana in the U.S. would dramatically reduce most of the costs associated with the current drug policies,
domestically and internationally, and [*445] if the U.S. is serious about its objective of considering the costs
of drug control measures, then it is vital and rational for the legalization option is considered . n128
D. Why the Time is Ripe for U.S. Drug Policy Reformation The political atmosphere at the end of
World War I and II was leverage for the U.S., emerging as the dominant political, economic and military
power. n129 This leverage allowed it to shape a prohibitive drug control regime that until now has
remained in perpetuity. n130 Today, we stand in a unique moment inside of U.S. history. n131 The
generational, political and cultural shifts that accompanied the U.S. emergence from the "Great
Recession" resulted in a sociopolitical climate that may be what is necessary for real reform. n132
Politically, marijuana has become a hot issue; economically, the marijuana industry is bolstering a faltering economy and socially,
marijuana is poised to transform the way we live and view medicine. n133 The public disdain for the widespread problems
prohibition caused in the early 20th century resulted in the end of alcohol prohibition during the Great Depression. n134 If history
does actually repeat itself than the Great recession may have been much more telling than expected. n135 V. Conclusion The U.S.
and its prohibitionist ideals exacerbated the failure of both the international and its own domestic drug policies. n136 As a result,
the U.S. should accept accountability for its mistakes by reforming its drug policies in a way that
will help [*446] place the global drug market back into a manageable position . n137 Marijuana is an
actionable, evidence based mechanism for constructive legal and policy reform that through a domino effect
can transform the global drug prohibition regime . n138 The generational, political and cultural shifts that accompanied
the U.S. emergence from the "Great Recession" have resulted in a sociopolitical climate ready for real reform. n139 The U.S.
will capitalize on this unique moment by removing marijuana from the list of federally banned substances, setting the
stage for future international and domestic drug policies that are actually effective. n140
Global prohibition has massively undermined public health efforts to deal with
the spread of diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis
Steven Rolles 12, senior policy analyst, George Murkin, Martin Powell, Danny Kushlick, founder, and Jane Slater, Transform
Drug Policy Foundation, THE ALTERNATIVE WORLD DRUG REPORT: COUNTING THE CSTS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS, 2012,
p. 9-12.
5. Threatening public health, spreading disease and death While the war on drugs has primarily been
promoted as a way of protecting health, it has in reality achieved the opposite. It has not only failed in its key aim of reducing or
increased risks and created new health harms – all while establishing political
obstacles to effective public health interventions that might reduce them. • Prevention
and harm reduction messages are undermined by criminalisation of target populations, leading to
distrust and stigmatisation • Criminalisation encourages high-risk behaviours, such as injecting in
unhygienic, unsupervised environments, poly-drug use and bingeing • Enforcement tilts the market towards more
potent but profitable drug products. It can also fuel the emergence of high-risk , new “designer” drugs, or domestically
manufactured drugs (“krokadil”, for instance) • Illegally produced and supplied drugs are of unknown strength and purity,
increasing the risk of overdose, poisoning and infection • The emotive politics of the drug war, and
stigmatisation of drug users, has created obstacles to provision of effective harm reduction, which despite
proven cost-effectiveness remains unavailable in many parts of the world. This contributes to increased overdose
deaths, and fuels the spread of HIV/ AIDS , hepatitis , and tuberculosis among people who inject drugs • The
growing population of people who use drugs in prisons has created a particularly acute health
crisis, as prisons are high-risk environments, inadequately equipped to deal with the challenges they face • The development
impacts of the war on drugs have had much wider negative impacts on health service provision • Drugwar politics have had a chilling effect on provision of opiates for pain control and palliative care,
with over five billion people having little or no access There is an absence of evidence that either
supply- or user-level enforcement interventions have reduced or eliminated use. Instead, drug-related risk is
eliminating drug use, but has
and practical
increased and new harms created – with the greatest burden carried by the most vulnerable populations.
Unchecked AIDS spread causes extinction
(WAIF) 4 Washington AIDS International Foundation, staff, 2004. Available from the World Wide Web at: www.waifaction.org/,
accessed 5-27-09.
Virtually every
nation in the world has been severely hit by the plague of AIDS; we are experiencing an
extinction-causing event. There are no vaccines, no cures, and no group that is not vulnerable .
And, because it is spread largely by sex and by mother-to-child contact, and to a smaller degree by blood contact, it is hitting those
of childbearing age the hardest. This is a silent killer. Without testing, it can go undetected for many years, even as the
carrier transmits it to others. Unfortunately, we know only the most advanced cases in most of the countries of the world. Many
millions of others may be infected, but in the latent stage. WAIF is committed to educate the public about the emergency of the AIDS
epidemic.
Tuberculosis causes extinction—mutations and empirics
Ethan Huff 2/3/14 “Sudden collapse of Harappan civilization may foreshadow superbug threat to modern humans”
http://www.naturalnews.com/043757_harappan_civilization_superbugs_antibiotic_resistance.html#
The mystery surrounding the sudden collapse of the ancient city of Harappa, a major urban center that was a prominent feature of
the now defunct Indus civilization, recently became a little bit less mysterious thanks to new research out of Appalachian State
University. An international team of climatologists, archaeologists and biologists found that rampant disease, among other things,
played a major role in the swift decline of this primordial people group -- and the same thing could happen to modern humanity as a
result of antibiotic-resistant "superbugs," believe some. What exists from the historical record shows that Harappa flourished even
before the Indus civilization as a whole reached its peak, spanning 1 million square kilometers in what is now Pakistan and India.
Scholars say the city thrived primarily between the years of 2600 and 1700 B.C. but suddenly collapsed for reasons that up until
now have remained elusive due to a lack of reliable records and other concrete evidence. But we now know that the
uncontrolled spread of disease played a significant role in the downfall of Harappa, as did the violence
and chaos that erupted as a result of a widening social hierarchy. Specifically, the new research found that a combination of
socioeconomic inequality and disease -- tuberculosis and leprosy, which were new at the time, are believed to
have spread quickly during the final days before the collapse -- were largely to blame for the city's
ultimate demise. "In this case, it appears that the rapid urbanization process in Indus cities, and the increasingly large amount of
culture contact, brought new challenges to the human population," says Gwen Robbins Schug, one of the lead researchers involved
with the project. "Infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis were probably transmitted across an interaction sphere that
spanned Middle and South Asia." Rapid urbanization spawned disease spread that killed
off entire
civilization A recent exhumation of remains from Harappa revealed that, toward the end of the city's existence, violence and
disease had reached epic proportions. Because of this, Harappa was essentially being evacuated in droves by its residents during
the final days leading up to its collapse, a previously unknown fact about the civilization that came as a surprise to historians. "The
collapse of the Indus civilization and the reorganization of its human population has been controversial for a long time," says Schug.
Though the exact cause of all the violence and corresponding disease that ravished Harappa is still somewhat shrouded in mystery,
experts now know that a period of rapid urbanization definitely precluded its undoing. Much like what appears to be occurring in
modern society, Harappa "advanced" too quickly and eventually imploded on itself. "The evidence from Harappa offers insights into
how social and biological challenges impacted past societies facing rapid population growth, climate change and environmental
degradation," adds Schug, as quoted by Science Daily. "Unfortunately, in this case, increasing levels of violence and disease
accompanied massive levels of migration and resource stress and disproportionate impacts were felt by the
most vulnerable members of society." Drug-resistant 'superbugs' threaten to kill off modern civilization There is a tendency when
looking at ancient history through the lens of today to assume that what happened to them could never happen to us. Modern
humanity is simply far too advanced to ever just collapse in on itself, goes the assumption. And yet history also has a seemingly
sinister way of repeating itself when you least expect it, in modern times with the threat of drug-resistant "superbugs"
brought about as a result of so-called advancements in medicine.
China needs to shift to a harm reduction model to avoid economic and social
instability—acting now is key
Verity Robins
20-14.
11, “China’s Flawed Drugs Policy,” Foreign Policy Centre, 6—22—11, http://fpc.org.uk/articles/514, accessed 12-
China has woken up to its drug problem, but it is failing woefully in trying to tackle it. Nestled between two major heroin-producing
regions, the Golden Triangle (Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam) and the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran), China has
long been a transit path for drugs headed toward the rest of the world. Along an ever-expanding network of routes that lead to
China's international seaports, domestic heroin use is soaring. No longer just a transit country, it now has a sizable user population
of its own. The
rise in domestic heroin addiction has had disastrous social consequences, with an
increase in Chinese drug cultivation and organised criminal activity, as well as a rise in intravenous
drug use and a spiralling HIV/AIDS epidemic. China's role as a drugs conduit has increased considerably over the
past two decades. Throughout the 20th century, opium and later heroin, from the Golden Triangle, was smuggled to Thailand's
seaports and then on to satiate drug markets throughout the world. More effective law enforcement and a stricter drug policy in
Thailand in the late 1980s and early 90s reduced the state as an effective trafficking route. Concurrently, Burmese drug lord Khun
Sa, the prime heroin producer and distributer along the Thai-Burmese border, surrendered to the Burmese authorities. With the
collapse of Khun Sa's army, Burma's foremost heroin trafficking route into Thailand was disrupted. Consequently, China's role as a
narcotics conduit became even more crucial. Well over half the heroin produced in the Golden Triangle now travels through China,
wending its way through southern provinces Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangdong towards Hong Kong. This shift in regional drug trade
routes coincided with rapid economic development in China's southwest. More robust roads allow for faster and easier
transportation of illicit drugs, while an increased fiscal and technological ability to refine heroin locally has driven down its market
value and increased local consumption. By 1989, the HIV virus was detected amongst injecting drug users in China's most southwesterly province Yunnan. Needle sharing drove the epidemic, and HIV/AIDS rapidly spread to drug users in neighbouring
provinces and along trafficking routes. At the turn of the century, HIV infections had been reported in all 31 provinces, autonomous
regions and municipalities, with drug users accounting for 60-70 per cent of reported cases. While the Chinese government was
slow to engage substantively with a generalised AIDS epidemic in the country, a new administration taking office in 2003 under
President Hu Jintao accelerated the commitment to and implementation of evidence-based HIV policies. Having woken up to the
seriousness of its HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Chinese government sought increasingly progressive means to combat the crisis, calling
on a range of outside actors to implement new and innovative pilot projects. During the 2000s, the government seemingly revoked
its zero-tolerance attitude towards drug users, introducing needle exchange programmes and controlled methadone maintenance
treatments in the most affected areas. While the Chinese government continues to take a pragmatic approach to its
HIV/AIDS crisis, the good work of these projects is offset by the 2008 Narcotics Law that vastly
emphasises law enforcement over medical treatment in the government's response to drug use. This law calls for
the rehabilitation of illicit drug users and for their treatment as patients rather than as criminals, yet the law also allows for the
incarceration - without trial or judicial oversight – of individuals suspected by police of drug use for up to six years in drug detention
centres. To allow for this, the 2008 Narcotics Law considerably enhances police power to randomly search people for possession of
drugs, and to subject them to urine tests for drug use without reasonable suspicion of crime. The law also empowers the
police, rather than medical professionals, to make judgements on the nature of the suspected users' addiction, and to
subsequently assign alleged drug users to detention centres. According to Human Rights Watch, whilst in detention
centres suspected drug users receive no medical care, no support for quitting drugs, and no skills training for re-entering society
upon release. In the name of treatment, suspected drug users are confined under "horrific conditions, subject to cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment, and forced to engage in unpaid labour". Not only is this law ineffective in tackling China's
growing drug problem and rehabilitating its users, but incarceration of suspected addicts in
detention centres represents a serious breach of the basic human rights guaranteed by both China's
domestic and international legal commitments. Furthermore, the law is a counter productive policy for combating
HIV/AIDS in China. The threat of forcible detention only discourages users from seeking
professional help to tackle their addictions, and from utilising needle exchange programmes for fear of incarceration. The
result is to encourage "underground" illicit drug use that leads to needle sharing and hence the
spread of HIV/AIDS. Effective tackling of illicit drug use requires developing voluntary, outpatient
treatment based upon effective, proven approaches to drug addiction. Specific reform of the law should reverse the
expanded police powers to detain suspected users without trial, and implement specific procedural mechanisms to protect the
health and human rights of drug users in a standardised and appropriate way. The Chinese government has sought to work with
outside actors in combating its HIV/AIDS epidemic, particularly in its most affected province Yunnan. The UK Department for
International Development (DfID) has been engaged in HIV/AIDS prevention throughout southwest China since the launch of the
China-UK HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care Programme in 2001. DfID's Multilateral Aid Review, published in March this year, cut all
future development aid to China. The discontinuation of DfID projects in southwest China will weaken efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS
and rehabilitate drug users in the region. It also lessens pressure on China to combat these issues in a reasonable and felicitous
way. The international donor community present in China must implement policies that reflect
realities on the ground by ensuring that the health care and treatment of drug users is at the core
of their HIV/AIDS policies. They should also use their position of influence to nudge Beijing to
rectify the flaws in the 2008 Narcotics Law with its negative implications for the human rights of suspected drug users, and
for combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. If the country's skyrocketing number of intravenous drug users and the
resultant HIV/AIDS epidemic are left to fester , it could result in severe health consequences,
economic loss and social devastation . China still has time to act, but it should do so now before it
is too late.
Instability causes diversionary wars in the South China Sea
Cole 14,
Taipei-based journalist and contributor to The Diplomat who focuses on military issues in Northeast Asia and in the
Taiwan Strait. He previously served as an intelligence officer at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Where Would Beijing
Use External Distractions?, J Michael, http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/where-would-beijing-use-external-distractions/
Throughout history, embattled
governments have often resorted to external distractions to tap into a restive
population’s nationalist sentiment and thereby release, or redirect, pressures that otherwise could have been turned
against those in power. Authoritarian regimes in particular, which deny their citizens the right to punish the authorities
through retributive democracy — that is, elections — have used this device to ensure their survival during periods of
domestic upheaval or financial crisis. Would the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), whose legitimacy is so contingent on social stability and economic growth, go
down the same path if it felt that its hold on power were threatened by domestic instability? Building on the premise that the many contradictions that are inherent to the
extraordinarily complex Chinese experiment, and rampant corruption that undermines stability, will eventually catch up with the CCP, we can legitimately ask how, and where,
Beijing could manufacture external crises with opponents against whom nationalist fervor, a major characteristic of contemporary China, can be channeled. In past decades, the
CCP has on several occasions tapped into public outrage to distract a disgruntled population, often by encouraging (and when necessary containing) protests against external
opponents, namely Japan and the United States. While serving as a convenient outlet, domestic protests, even when they turned violent (e.g., attacks on Japanese
manufacturers), were about as far as the CCP would allow. This self-imposed restraint, which was prevalent during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, was a function both of China’s
focus on building its economy (contingent on stable relations with its neighbors) and perceived military weakness. Since then, China has established itself as the world’s
second-largest economy and now deploys, thanks to more than a decade of double-digit defense budget growth, a first-rate modern military. Those impressive
achievements have, however, fueled Chinese
nationalism, which has increasingly approached the dangerous
zone of hubris . For many, China is now a rightful regional hegemon demanding respect, which if denied can — and should — be
met with threats, if not the application of force. While it might be tempting to attribute China’s recent assertiveness in the South and
East China Seas to the emergence of Xi Jinping, Xi alone cannot make all the decisions; nationalism is a component that cannot be
dissociated from this new phase in Chinese expressions of its power. As then-Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi is said to have
told his counterparts at a tense regional forum in Hanoi in 2010, “There is one basic difference among us. China is a big state and
you are smaller countries.” This newfound assertiveness within its backyard thus makes it more feasible that,
in times of serious trouble at home, the Chinese leadership could seek to deflect potentially
destabilizing anger by exploiting some external distraction . Doing so is always a calculated risk, and
sometimes the gambit fails, as Slobodan Milosevic learned the hard way when he tapped into the furies of nationalism to appease
mounting public discontent with his bungled economic policies. For an external distraction to achieve its objective (that is, taking
attention away from domestic issues by redirecting anger at an outside actor), it must not result in failure or military defeat. In other
words, except for the most extreme circumstances, such as the imminent collapse of a regime, the decision to externalize a
domestic crisis is a rational one: adventurism must be certain to achieve success, which in turn will translate into political gains for
the embattled regime. Risk-taking is therefore proportional to the seriousness of the destabilizing forces within. Rule No. 1 for
External Distractions: The greater the domestic instability, the more risks a regime will be willing to take ,
given that the scope and, above all, the symbolism of the victory in an external scenario must also be greater. With this in mind, we
can then ask which external distraction scenarios would Beijing be the most likely to turn to should domestic disturbances compel it
to do so. That is not to say that anything like this will happen anytime soon. It is nevertheless not unreasonable to imagine such a
possibility. The intensifying crackdown on critics of the CCP, the detention of lawyers, journalists and activists, unrest in Xinjiang,
random acts of terrorism, accrued censorship — all point to growing instability. What follows is a very succinct (and by no means
exhaustive) list of disputes, in descending order of likelihood, which Beijing could use for external distraction. 1. South China Sea
The S outh C hina S ea, an area where China is embroiled in several territorial disputes with smaller
claimants, is ripe for exploitation as an external distraction. Nationalist sentiment, along with the
sense that the entire body of water is part of China’s indivisible territory and therefore a “core interest ,” are
sufficient enough to foster a will to fight should some “incident,” timed to counter unrest back home, force China to
react. Barring a U.S. intervention, which for the time being seems unlikely, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has both the
numerical and qualitative advantage against any would be opponent or combination thereof. The Philippines and Vietnam, two
countries which have skirmished with China in recent years, are the likeliest candidates for external distractions, as the costs of a
brief conflict would be low and the likelihood of military success fairly high. For a quick popularity boost and low-risk distraction,
these opponents would best serve Beijing’s interests.
That goes nuclear
Goldstein 13 (Avery Goldstein, Professor of Global Politics and International Relations, Director of the Center for the Study of
Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania, “China’s Real and Present Danger”, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2013,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139651/avery-goldstein/chinas-real-and-present-danger) gender edited
Uncertainty about what could lead either Beijing or Washington to risk war makes a crisis far more likely, since neither side knows
when, where, or just how hard it can push without the other side pushing back. This situation bears some resemblance to that of the
early Cold War, when it took a number of serious crises for the two sides to feel each other out and learn the rules of the road. But
today’s environment might be even more dangerous.¶ The balance of nuclear and conventional military power between China and
the United States, for example, is much more lopsided than the one that existed between the Soviet Union and the United States.
the huge U.S. advantage in conventional forces
would increase the temptation for Washington to threaten to or actually use force. Recognizing the temptation
Should Beijing and Washington find themselves in a conflict,
facing Washington, Beijing might in turn feel pressure to use its conventional forces before they are destroyed. Although China
could not reverse the military imbalance, it might believe that quickly imposing high costs on the United States would be the best
way to get it to back off.¶ The fact that both sides have nuclear arsenals would help keep the situation in check, because both sides
would want to avoid actions that would invite nuclear retaliation. Indeed, if only nuclear considerations mattered, U.S.-Chinese
crises would be very stable and not worth worrying about too much. But the two sides’
conventional forces complicate
matters and undermine the stability provided by nuclear deterrence . During a crisis, either side might believe that
using its conventional forces would confer bargaining leverage, manipulating the other side’s fear of escalation through what the
economist Thomas Schelling calls a “competition in risk-taking.” In a crisis, China or the United States might believe that it valued
what was at stake more than the other and would therefore be willing to tolerate a higher level of risk. But because using
conventional forces would be only the
first step in an unpredictable process subject to misperception ,
missteps, and miscalculation, there is no guarantee that brinkmanship [ brinkspersonship] would end
before it led to an unanticipated nuclear catastrophe .¶ China, moreover, apparently believes that nuclear
deterrence opens the door to the safe use of conventional force. Since both countries would fear a potential nuclear exchange, the
Chinese seem to think that neither they nor the Americans would allow a military conflict to escalate too far. Soviet leaders, by
contrast, indicated that they would use whatever military means were necessary if war came -- which is one reason why war never
came. In addition, China’s official “no first use” nuclear policy, which guides the Chinese military’s preparation and training for
conflict, might reinforce Beijing’s confidence that limited war with the United States would not mean courting nuclear escalation. As a
result of its beliefs, Beijing might be less cautious about taking steps that would risk triggering a crisis. And if a crisis ensued,
China might also be less cautious about firing the first shot .¶ Such beliefs are particularly worrisome given
recent developments in technology that have dramatically improved the precision and effectiveness of conventional military
capabilities. Their lethality might confer a dramatic advantage to the side that attacks first, something that was generally not true of
conventional military operations in the main European theater of U.S.-Soviet confrontation. Moreover, because the sophisticated
computer and satellite systems that guide contemporary weapons are highly vulnerable to conventional military strikes or
cyberattacks, today’s more precise weapons might be effective only if they are used before an adversary has struck or adopted
countermeasures. If peacetime restraint were to give way to a search for advantage in a crisis, neither China nor the United States
could be confident about the durability of the systems managing its advanced conventional weapons.¶ Under such circumstances,
Beijing and Washington would have incentives to initiate an attack . China would feel
particularly strong pressure , since its advanced conventional weapons are more fully dependent on
vulnerable computer networks , fixed radar sites, and satellites. The effectiveness of U.S. advanced forces is less
both
dependent on these most vulnerable systems. The advantage held by the United States, however, might increase its temptation to
strike first, especially against China’s satellites, since it would be able to cope with Chinese retaliation in kind.
Scenario 2 is the Environment:
Unregulated marijuana has a massive environmental impact—federal legalization
key
Zuckerman 13 (Seth, journalist, 10-31-13, "Is Pot-Growing Bad for the Environment?" The Nation)
www.thenation.com/article/176955/pot-growing-bad-environment?page=0,2
As cannabis production has ramped up in Northern California to meet the demand for medical and black-market
marijuana, the ecological impacts of its cultivation have ballooned. From shrunken, muddy streams to rivers choked
with algae and wild lands tainted with chemical poisons, large-scale cannabis agriculture is emerging as a
significant threat to the victories that have been won in the region to protect wilderness, keep toxic chemicals out of the
environment, and rebuild salmon runs that had once provided the backbone of a coast-wide fishing industry. River advocate
Scott Greacen has spent most of his career fighting dams and the timber industry, but now he’s widened his focus to include the
costs of reckless marijuana growing. Last year was a time of region-wide rebound for threatened salmon runs, but one of his
colleagues walked his neighborhood creek and sent a downbeat report that only a few spawning fish had returned. Even more
alarming was the condition of the creek bed: coated with silt and mud, a sign that the water quality in this stream was going downhill.
“The problem with the weed industry is that its impacts are severe, it’s not effectively regulated, and it’s growing so rapidly,”
says Greacen, executive director of Friends of the Eel River, which runs through the heart of the marijuana belt. That lack of
regulation sets marijuana’s impacts apart from those that stem from legal farming or logging, yet the 76year-old federal prohibition on cannabis has thwarted attempts to hold its production to any kind of
environmental standard . As a result, the ecological impact of an ounce of pot varies tremendously, depending on whether it
was produced by squatters in national forests, hydroponic operators in homes and warehouses, industrial-scale operations on
private land, or conscientious mom-and-pop farmers. Consumers could exert market power through their choices, if only they had a
reliable, widely accepted certification program, like the ones that guarantee the integrity of organic agriculture. But thanks to the
prohibition on pot, no such certification program exists for cannabis products. To understand how raising some dried flowers—the
prized part of the cannabis plant—can damage the local ecosystem, you first have to grasp the skyrocketing scale of backwoods
agriculture on the redwood coast. Last fall, Scott Bauer of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife turned a mapping crew loose on satellite photos of two adjoining creeks. In the Staten
Island–sized area that drains into those streams, his team identified more than 1,000 cannabis farms, estimated to produce some 40,000 small-tree-sized plants annually. Bauer holds up the maps, where each
greenhouse is marked in blue and each outdoor marijuana garden in red, with dots that correspond to the size of the operation. It looks like the landscape has a severe case of Technicolor acne. “In the last
couple of years, the increase has been exponential,” Bauer says. “On the screen, you can toggle back and forth between the 2010 aerial photo and the one from 2012. Where there had been one or two sites, now
there are ten.” Each of those sites represents industrial development in a mostly wild landscape, with the hilly terrain flattened and cleared. “When someone shaves off a mountaintop and sets a facility on it,”
Bauer says, “that’s never changing. The topsoil is gone.” The displaced soil is then spread by bulldozer to build up a larger flat pad for greenhouses and other farm buildings. But heavy winter rains wash some of
the soil into streams, Bauer explains, where it sullies the salmon’s spawning gravels and fills in the pools where salmon fry spend the summer. Ironically, these are the very impacts that resulted from the worst
logging practices of the last century. “We got logging to the point that the rules are pretty tight,” Bauer says, “and now there’s this whole new industry where nobody has any idea what they’re doing. You see guys
building roads who have never even used a Cat [Caterpillar tractor]. We’re going backwards.” Then there’s irrigation. A hefty cannabis plant needs several gallons of water per day in the rainless summer growing
season, which doesn’t sound like much until you multiply it by thousands of plants and consider that many of the streams in the area naturally dwindle each August and September. In the summer of 2012, the two
creeks that Bauer’s team mapped got so low that they turned into a series of disconnected pools with no water flowing between them, trapping the young fish in shrinking ponds. “It’s a serious issue for the coho
salmon,” Bauer says. “How is this species going to recover if there’s no water?” The effects extend beyond salmon. During several law enforcement raids last year, Bauer surveyed the creeks supplying marijuana
farms to document the environmental violations occurring there. Each time, he says, he found a sensitive salamander species above the grower’s water intakes, but none below them, where the irrigation pipes
had left little water in the creek. On one of these raids, he chastised the grower, who was camped out onsite and hailed from the East Coast, new to the four- to six-month dry season that comes with California’s
Mediterranean climate. “I told him, ‘You’re taking most of the flow, man,’ ” Bauer recalls. “’It’s just a little tiny creek, and you’ve got three other growers downstream. If you’re all taking 20 or 30 percent, pretty soon
there’s nothing left for the fish.’ So he says, ‘I didn’t think about that.’ ” While some growers raise their pot organically, many do not. “Once you get to a certain scale, it’s really hard to operate in a sustainable
way,” Greacen says. “Among other things, you’ve got a monoculture, and monocultures invite pests.” Spider mites turn out to be a particular challenge for greenhouse growers. Tony Silvaggio, a lecturer at
Humboldt State University and a scholar at the campus’s year-old Humboldt Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research, found that potent poisons such as Avid and Floramite are sold in small vials under
the counter at grower supply stores, in defiance of a state law that requires they be sold only to holders of a pesticide applicator’s license. Nor are just the workers at risk: the miticides have been tested for use on
decorative plants, but not for their impacts if smoked. Otherwise ecologically minded growers can be driven to spray with commercial pesticides, Silvaggio has found in his research. “After you’ve worked for
months, if you have an outbreak of mites in your last few weeks when the buds are going, you’ve got to do something—otherwise you lose everything,” he says. Outdoor growers face another threat: rats, which
are drawn to the aromatic, sticky foliage of the cannabis plant. Raids at growing sites typically find packages of the long-acting rodent poison warfarin, which has begun making its way up the food chain to
predators such as the rare, weasel-like fisher. A study last year in the online scientific journal PLOS One found that more than 70 percent of fishers have rat poison in their bloodstream, and attributed four fisher
deaths to internal bleeding triggered by the poison they absorbed through their prey. Deep in the back-country, Silvaggio says, growers shoot or poison bears to keep them from raiding their encampments. The
final blow to environmental health from outdoor growing comes from fertilizers. Growers dump their used potting soil, enriched with unabsorbed fertilizers, in places where it washes into nearby streams and is
suspected of triggering blooms of toxic algae. The deaths of four dogs on Eel River tributaries have been linked to the algae, which the dogs ingest after swimming in the river and then licking their fur. The
cannabis industry—or what Silvaggio calls the “marijuana-industrial complex”—has been building toward this collision with the environment ever since California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996,
legalizing the medicinal use of marijuana under state law. Seven years later, the legislature passed Senate Bill 420, which allows patients growing pot with a doctor’s blessing to form collectives and sell their
herbal remedy to fellow patients. Thus were born the storefront dispensaries, which grew so common that they came to outnumber Starbucks outlets in Los Angeles. From the growers’ point of view, a 100-plant
operation no longer had to be hidden, because its existence couldn’t be presumed illegal under state law. So most growers stopped hiding their plants in discreet back-country clearings or buried shipping
containers and instead put them out in the open. As large grows became less risky, they proliferated—and so did their effects on the environment. Google Earth posted satellite photos taken in August 2012, when
most outdoor pot gardens were nearing their peak. Working with Silvaggio, a graduate student identified large growing sites in the area, and posted a Google Earth flyover tour of the region that makes it clear that
the two creeks Bauer’s team studied are representative of the situation across the region. With all of the disturbance from burgeoning backwoods marijuana gardens, it might seem that raising cannabis indoors
would be the answer. Indoor growers can tap into municipal water supplies and don’t have to clear land or build roads to farms on hilltop hideaways. But indoor growing is responsible instead for a more insidious
brand of damage: an outsize carbon footprint to power the electric-intensive lights, fans and pumps that it takes to raise plants inside. A dining-table-size hydroponic unit yielding five one-pound crops per year
would consume as much electricity as the average US home, according to a 2012 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy. All told, the carbon footprint of a single gram of cannabis is the same as driving
seventeen miles in a Honda Civic. In addition, says Kristin Nevedal, president of the Emerald Growers Association, “the tendency indoors is to lean toward chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides to stabilize
the man-made environment, because you don’t have the natural beneficials that are found outdoors.” Nevertheless, the appeal of indoor growing is strong, explains Sharon (not her real name), a single mother
who used to raise marijuana in the sunshine but moved her operation indoors after she split up with her husband. Under her 3,000 watts of electric light, she raises numerous smaller plants in a space the size of
two sheets of plywood, using far less physical effort than when she raised large plants outdoors. “It’s a very mommy-friendly business that provides a dependable, year-round income,” she says. Sharon harvests
small batches of marijuana year-round, which fetch a few hundred dollars more per pound than outdoor-grown cannabis because of consumers’ preferences. Sharon’s growing operation supports her and her
teenage daughter in the rural area where she settled more than two decades ago. Add up the energy used by indoor growers, from those on Sharon’s scale to the converted warehouses favored by urban
dispensaries, and the impact is significant—estimated at 3 percent of the state’s total power bill, or the electricity consumed by 1 million homes. On a local level, indoor cannabis production is blocking climate
stabilization efforts in the coastal city of Arcata, which aimed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent over twelve years. But during the first half of that period, while electricity consumption was flat or
declining slightly statewide, Arcata’s household electrical use grew by 25 percent. City staff traced the increase to more than 600 houses that were using at least triple the electricity of the average home—a level
consistent with a commercial cannabis operation. The city has borne other costs, too, besides simply missing its climate goals. Inexpertly wired grow houses catch fire, and the conversion of residential units to
indoor hothouses has cut into the city’s supply of affordable housing. Last November, city voters approved a stiff tax on jumbo electricity consumers. Now the city council is working with other Humboldt County
local governments to pass a similar tax so that growers can’t evade the fee simply by fleeing the city limits, says City Councilman Michael Winkler. “We don’t want any place in Humboldt County to be a cheaper
place to grow than any other. And since this is the Silicon Valley of marijuana growing, there are a lot of reasons why people would want to stay here if they’re doing this,” he says. “My goal is to make it expensive
enough to get large-scale marijuana growing out of the neighborhoods.” A
tax on excessive electricity use may seem like an indirect way of curbing household
cannabis cultivation, but the city had to back away from its more direct approach—a zoning ordinance—when the federal
government threatened to prosecute local officials throughout the state if they sanctioned an activity that is categorically forbidden
under US law. Attempts in neighboring Mendocino County to issue permits to outdoor growers meeting environmental and publicsafety standards were foiled when federal attorneys slapped county officials with similar warnings—illustrating, yet again, the way
prohibition sabotages efforts to reduce the industry’s environmental damage. Indeed,
observers cite federal cannabis
prohibition as the biggest impediment to curbing the impacts of marijuana cultivation , which
continues to expand despite a decades-long federal policy of zero tolerance. “We don’t have a set of best management practices for
this industry, partly because of federal prohibition,” says researcher Silvaggio. “If a grower comes to the county agricultural
commissioner and asks, ‘What are the practices I can use that can limit my impact?’, the county ag guy says, ‘I can’t talk to you
about that because we get federal money.’ ”
Lack of industry regulation causes widespread use of banned pesticides
Gabriel et al 13 (Mourad, Greta Wengert, Mark Higley, Shane Krogan, Warren Sargent, and Deana Clifford, 4-11-13, "Silent
Forests? Rodenticides on Illegal Marijuana Crops Harm Wildlife" Wildlife Society News) news.wildlife.org/twp/2013-spring/silentforests/
Problem Spreading Like Weeds Illegal marijuana growing is not just a problem for wildlife. The High Sierra Volunteer Trail
Crew is a nonprofit trail-maintenance crew that has spent the past seven years maintaining and cleaning trails throughout the Sierra
Nevadas’ national forests. In the mid-2000s, the group realized that risks associated with large-scale marijuana production
throughout most, if not all, California national forests threatened backcountry use of public lands. Since then, the trail crew’s
Environmental Reclamation Team (ERT) has remediated more than 600 large-scale marijuana cultivation sites on
public lands. The numbers are daunting, especially when considering that these 600 sites were in only two of
California’s 17 national forests and may constitute only a fraction of the actual marijuana cultivation sites that exist in these
forests. Tommy Lanier, Director of the National Marijuana Initiative, a White House supported program, states that “60 percent to 70
percent of the national marijuana seizures come from California annually, and of those totals, about 60 percent comes from public
lands.” Based on data from ERT-remediated sites, at least 50 percent of them have SGARs. Beyond finding anticoagulant
rodenticides, the team and other remediation groups frequently find and remove restricted and banned pesticides
including organo- phosphates, organochlorines, and carbamates as well as thousands of pounds of nitrogenrich fertilizers. Many of the discovered pesticides have been banned for use in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union,
specifically certain carbamates, which gained notoriety worldwide after an explosion of public awareness about their use to kill
African wildlife. Unfortunately, these same malicious uses are occurring in California, where marijuana cultivators place pourable
carbamate pesticides in opened tuna or sardine cans in order to kill black bears, gray foxes, raccoons, and other carnivores that
damage marijuana plants or raid food caches at grow-site encampments. In many cases, law enforcement officers approaching
grow sites observe wildlife exposed to what officers call “wildlife bombs” due to their high potential for mass wildlife killing. For
example, as federal and state officers approached a grow site in Northern California, they discovered a black bear and her cubs
seizing and convulsing as they slowly succumbed to the neurological effects of these pesticides. Because toxicants are usually
dispersed throughout cultivation sites, it is remarkably difficult to detect and remove all pesticide threats.
Those cause endocrine disruption
Cappiello et al 14 (A, LC-MS Laboratory, DiSTeVA, University of Urbino, Piazza Rinascimento 6, 61029, Urbino, Italy, G
Famiglini, Palma P, V Termopoli, AM Lavezzi, L Matturri, May 2014, "Determination of selected endocrine disrupting compounds in
human fetal and newborn tissues by GC-MS." www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24633505
Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) include organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), organophosphate
pesticides (OPPs), carbamate pesticides, and plasticizers, such as bisphenol A (BPA). They persist in the
environment because of their degradation resistance and bioaccumulate in the body tissues of humans
and other mammals. Many studies are focused on the possible correlation between in utero exposure to EDCs and adverse health
hazards in fetuses and newborns. In the last decade, environmental pollution has been considered a possible trigger for Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and Sudden Intrauterine Unexplained Death Syndrome (SIUDS), the most important death-causing
syndromes in fetuses and newborns in developed countries. In this work, a rapid and sensitive analytical method was developed to
determine the level of OCPs and OPPs, carbamates, and phenols in human fetal and newborn tissues (liver and brain) and to unveil
the possible presence of non-targeted compounds. The target analytes where selected on the basis of their documented presence
in the Trentino-Alto Adige region, an intensive agricultural area in northern Italy. A liquid-solid extraction procedure was applied on
human and animal tissues and the extracts, after a solid phase extraction (SPE) clean-up procedure, were analyzed by gas
chromatography coupled to a quadrupole mass spectrometric detector (GC-qMS). A GC-TOFMS (time-of-flight) instrument, because
of its higher full-scan sensitivity, was used for a parallel detection of non-targeted compounds. Method validation included accuracy,
precision, detection, and quantification limits (LODs; LOQs), and linearity response using swine liver and lamb brain spiked at
different concentrations in the range of 0.4-8000.0 ng/g. The method gave good repeatability and extraction efficiency. Method
LOQs ranged from 0.4-4.0 ng/g in the selected matrices. Good linearity was obtained over four orders of magnitude starting from
LOQs. Isotopically labeled internal standards were used for quantitative calculations. The method was then successfully applied to
the analysis of liver and brain tissues from SIUDS and SIDS victims coming from the above mentioned region.
Extinction
Togawa 99 (Tatsuo, Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering – Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Technology in
Society, August)
Advanced technology provides a comfortable life for many people, but it also produces strong destructive forces that can cause
extinction of the human race if used accidentally or intentionally. As stated in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1955, hydrogen
bombs might possibly put an end to the human race.1 Nuclear weapons are not the only risks that arise from modem technologies.
In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote in her book, Silent Spring [2], that the amount of the pesticide parathion used on California farms
alone at that time could provide a lethal dose for five to ten times the whole world's population. Destruction of the ozone layer, the
greenhouse effect, and chemical pollution by endocrine destructive chemicals began to appear as the result of
advanced technology, and they are now
considered to be potential causes of extinction of the human
race unless they are effectively controlled.
1AC Federalism
Contention 2 is Federalism
Raich represented the biggest ever expansion of Congress’ commerce powers,
destroying federalism, judicial review and allowing for state control of police
powers
Brandon J. Stoker 9, J.D. Candidate, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, “Note and Comment: Was
Gonzales v. Raich the Death Knell of Federalism? Assessing Meaningful Limits on Federal Intrastate Regulation in Light of U.S. v.
Nascimento”, 23 BYU J. Pub. L. 317, lexis
When the Supreme Court decided Gonzales v. Raich2 in 2005, it marked the first occasion in over a decade that
the Court broadly construed the Commerce Clause to permit federal regulation of intrastate activity. More
importantly, Raich signaled an abrupt end to the Rehnquist Court’s “federalism revolution” by circumscribing three
recent cases delineating meaningful limits on Congress’s Commerce Clause powers.3
It represents the boldest
assertion of congressional power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several states” in the history of the
Court .4 Indeed, Raich and its progeny threaten to undermine the delicate balance of federal and state
power structurally imbued in our constitutional republic by acquiescing to the unbridled exercise of federal power.
Though some have expressed skepticism about the ostensibly broad effect Raich might have on federalism jurisprudence, recent
circuit court cases decided pursuant to the standards set forth in Raich demonstrate federal appropriation of
“core” state powers,5 including, in particular, state police powers. This Comment argues that the Supreme Court
should limit Raich by reviving the limitation on congressional regulation of noneconomic
intrastate activity to circumstances where failure to regulate such activity would undermine a broader regulatory program. The
Court should also narrowly confine Raich’s definition of “economic activity” to prevent lower courts from “piling inference upon
inference” to demonstrate otherwise tenuous connections to interstate commerce. This approach would not require the Court to
overrule Raich, but merely to enforce the clear standards articulated in United States v. Lopez6 and United States v. Morrison.7 Part
II provides background on the Supreme Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence between 1937 and 1994—a period of virtually
unchecked federal expansion—and the Rehnquist Court’s “federalism revolution” between 1995 and 2005 that
reestablished limits on federal commerce powers. This section examines in particular how United States v. Lopez
and United States v. Morrison limited the scope and nature of activity within Congress’s regulatory purview by (1) moving away from
the “rational basis” test when evaluating Commerce Clause challenges, (2) limiting regulation to quintessential “economic” activity,
and (3) enforcing the “essential” component of the broader regulatory regime exception. Part III explains how Raich largely
unraveled the progress made by the Rehnquist Court. First, the Court adopted a definition of “economic” that fails to limit the
scope of activity within Congress’s regulatory purview. Second, the decision opens the door to federal regulation of noneconomic,
intrastate activity that falls within a broader regulatory scheme regardless of whether such activity is “essential” to the larger
regulatory program. Finally, the Court reasserted a “rational basis” test that effectively eliminates judicial scrutiny of the actual
aggregate effect of a regulated activity on interstate commerce, inquiring rather “whether a ‘rational basis’ exists for so concluding.”8
These standards have reduced judicial review of Commerce Clause challenges to a rubberstamping exercise
where the regulated activity is rationally related to commerce. More important, they have rendered “as-applied” challenges to
otherwise valid statutes nearly impossible. Part IV considers one of the first casualties in the breakdown of meaningful limits on
federal commerce powers in Raich’s jurisprudential wake: appropriation of state police powers through RICO
prosecutions. This section contrasts two nearly identical cases in which federal prosecutors charged local street gangs members
with racketeering for engaging in intrastate, noneconomic criminal activity. The Sixth Circuit reversed the federal conviction in United
States v. Waucaush9 by applying the clear principles articulated in Morrison and Lopez without the encumbrances of Raich. The
First Circuit, however, affirmed the criminal convictions in United States v. Nascimento10 by taking Raich to its logical end, which is
to say, by not imposing meaningful limits on the federal government’s prosecutorial powers under RICO. These cases aptly
demonstrate how Raich encourages judicial acquiescence to federal appropriation of traditional state powers by narrowly
limiting the force of judicial review.
That trades off with effective counter-terrorism
Little 6
Erica
, Legal Analyst for Heritage, Brian W. Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial
Studies at Heritage, Federalizing “Gang Crime” is Counterproductive and Dangerous,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Crime/wm1221.cfm
Congress should discontinue its habit of expanding federal criminal law. The phenomenon of
overfederalization of crime undermines state and local accountability for law enforcement, undermines
more cooperative and creative efforts to fight crime (that is, allowing the states to act as "laboratories of democracy"), and
injures America's federalist system of government. One of the more concrete problems that comes with federal
overcriminalization is the misallocation of scarce federal law enforcement resources , which results in selective
prosecution. New demands distract the F ederal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Attorneys, and other federal law
enforcers from national problems that undeniably require federal attention, such as the investigation and
prosecution of espionage and terrorism . Moreover, federal prosecution is more expensive than state-level prosecution.
More broadly,
Lone wolf terrorism poses a unique threat- we need to use more federal
resources to prevent attacks
Majoran 14, Andrew Majoran (MS from the Transnational Security Studies program at Royal Holloway, University of London in
the United Kingdom, specializes in international security, counter-terrorism, multilateral defense, and maritime security), The
Mackenzie Institute, “Wolves Among Us: The Dangers Of Lone Wolf Terrorism”, July 5, 2014, acc 12/19,
http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/wolves-among-us-dangers-lone-wolf-terrorism/
In conclusion, Western understanding of terrorism must evolve to ensure that the threat of lone wolf terrorism is contained. For too
long Western governments, media outlets, and general populations have stereotyped terrorism as large recognizable extremist
groups like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram. Although these terrorist groups do pose a threat to Western security, they
have been hindered in recent years by increased law enforcement, government presence, and counter-insurgency
efforts.23 On the other side of the terrorism spectrum, the societal focus on large terrorist groups has benefitted
the individual lone wolf terrorist efforts domestically and internationally. Lone wolves are difficult to detect due
to their isolationist nature and are seldom discovered until after their terrorist attacks have taken place. It is evident that lone wolf
terrorism is difficult to stop using traditional counter-terrorism tactics; however, this does not mean that
more cannot be done to prevent lone wolf terrorism from continuing to grow. Measures such as monitoring of the
internet, identifying overly aggressive political activism publically, enhancement of weapon identification
devices, the expansion of CCTV in public areas, and the use of advanced biometrics to simplify surveillance and gather
data must be taken.24 It is evident that lone wolves pose a significant threat to the security of the West, and they
will continue to do so as long as we remain complacent. Lone wolf terrorism can be fought effectively, but it requires us to move
away from associating terrorism with large international terrorist groups and practicing vigilance in our own communities.
They’ll use WMDs – causes extinction
Gary A. Ackerman 14 & Lauren E. Pinson, Gary is Director of the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Lauren is
Senior Researcher and Project Manager for the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses of Terrorism, An
Army of One: Assessing CBRN Pursuit and Use by Lone Wolves and Autonomous Cells, Terrorism and Political Violence, Volume
26, Issue 1
The first question to answer is whence the concerns about the nexus between CBRN weapons and isolated actors come and
whether these are overblown. The general threat of mass violence posed by lone wolves and small autonomous cells has been
detailed in accompanying issue contributions, but the potential use of CBRN weapons by such perpetrators presents some singular
features that either amplify or supplement the attributes of the more general case and so are deserving of particular attention. Chief
among these is the impact of rapid technological development. Recent and emerging advances in a variety of areas, from
synthetic biology 3 to nanoscale engineering, 4 have opened doors not only to new medicines and materials, but also to
new possibilities for malefactors to inflict harm on others. What is most relevant in the context of lone actors and small autonomous
cells is not so much the pace of new invention, but rather the commercialization and consumerization of CBRN weaponsrelevant technologies. This process often entails an increase in the availability and safety of the technology, with a
concurrent diminution in the cost, volume, and technical knowledge required to operate it. Thus, for example,
whereas fifty years ago producing large quantities of certain chemical weapons might have been a dangerous
and inefficient affair requiring a large plant, expensive equipment, and several chemical engineers, with the advent of chemical
microreactors, 5 the same processes might be accomplished far more cheaply and safely on a desktop assemblage,
purchased commercially and monitored by a single chemistry graduate student.¶ The rapid global spread and increased
user-friendliness of many technologies thus represents a potentially radical shift from the relatively small scale of harm a single
individual or small autonomous group could historically cause. 6 From the limited reach and killing power of the sword, spear, and
bow, to the introduction of dynamite and eventually the use of our own infrastructures against us (as on September 11), the
number of people that an individual who was unsupported by a broader political entity could kill with a single action has
increased from single digits to thousands. Indeed, it has even been asserted that “over time … as the leverage provided by
technology increases, this threshold will finally reach
its culmination—with the ability of one man to declare
war on the world and win .” 7 Nowhere is this trend more perceptible in the current age than in the area of unconventional
weapons.¶ These new technologies do not simply empower users on a purely technical level. Globalization and the expansion of
information networks provide new opportunities for disaffected individuals in the farthest corners of the globe to become familiar with
core weapon concepts and to purchase equipment—online technical courses and eBay are undoubtedly a boon to would-be
purveyors of violence. Furthermore, even the most solipsistic misanthropes, people who would never be able to function socially as
part of an operational terrorist group, can find radicalizing influences or legitimation for their beliefs in the maelstrom of virtual
identities on the Internet.¶ All of this can spawn, it is feared, a more deleterious breed of lone actors, what have been referred to in
some quarters as “super-empowered individuals.” 8 Conceptually, super-empowered individuals are atomistic game-changers, i.e.,
they constitute
a single (and often singular) individual who can shock the entire system (whether national,
regional, or global) by relying only on their own resources . Their core characteristics are that they have superior
intelligence, the capacity to use complex communications or technology systems, and act as an individual or a “lone-wolf.” 9 The
end result, according to the pessimists, is that if one of these individuals chooses to attack the system, “the unprecedented nature of
his attack ensures that no counter-measures are in place to prevent it. And when he strikes, his attack will not only kill
massive amounts of people, but also profoundly change the financial, political, and social systems that govern modern life.” 10 It
almost goes without saying that the same concerns attach to small autonomous cells, whose members' capabilities and resources
can be combined without appreciably increasing the operational footprint presented to intelligence and law enforcement agencies
the most likely means by which
to accomplish this level of system perturbation is through the use of CBRN agents as WMD . On the motivational side, therefore,
seeking to detect such behavior.¶ With the exception of the largest truck or aircraft bombs,
lone actors and small autonomous cells may ironically be more likely to select CBRN weapons than more established terrorist
groups—who are usually more conservative in their tactical orientation—because the extreme asymmetry of these weapons may
provide the only subjectively feasible option for such actors to achieve their grandiose aims of deeply affecting the system. The
inherent technical challenges presented by CBRN weapons may also make them attractive to self-assured individuals who may
have a very different risk tolerance than larger, traditional terrorist organizations that might have to be concerned with a variety of
constituencies, from state patrons to prospective recruits. 11 Many other factors beyond a “perceived potential to achieve mass
casualties” might play into the decision to pursue CBRN weapons in lieu of conventional explosives, 12 including a fetishistic
fascination with these weapons or the perception of direct referents in the would-be perpetrator's belief system.¶ Others are far
more sanguine about the capabilities of lone actors (or indeed non-state actors in general) with respect to their potential for using
CBRN agents to cause mass fatalities, arguing that the barriers to a successful large-scale CBRN attack remain high, even in
today's networked, tech-savvy environment. 13 Dolnik, for example, argues that even though homegrown cells are “less
constrained” in motivations, more challenging plots generally have an inverse relationship with capability, 14 while Michael Kenney
cautions against making presumptions about the ease with which individuals can learn to produce viable weapons using only the
Internet. 15 However, even most of these pundits concede that low-level CBR attacks emanating from this quarter will probably
lead to political, social, and economic disruption that extends well beyond the areas immediately affected by the attack. This
raises an essential point with respect to CBRN terrorism: irrespective of the harm potential of CBRN weapons or an actor's
capability (or lack thereof) to successfully employ them on a catastrophic scale, these weapons invariably exert a stronger
psychological impact on audiences—the essence of terrorism—than the traditional gun and bomb. This is surely not lost on those
lone actors or autonomous cells who are as interested in getting noticed as in causing casualties.¶ Proven Capability and Intent¶
While legitimate debate can be had as to the level of potential threat posed by lone actors or small autonomous cells wielding CBRN
weapons, possibly the best argument for engaging in a substantive examination of the issue is the most concrete one of all—that
these actors have already demonstrated the motivation and capability to pursue and use CBRN weapons, in some
cases even close to the point of constituting a genuine WMD threat. In the context of bioterrorism, perhaps the most
cogent illustration of this is the case of Dr. Bruce Ivins, the perpetrator behind one of the most serious episodes of bioterrorism in
living memory, the 2001 “anthrax letters,” which employed a highly virulent and sophisticated form of the agent and not only killed
five and seriously sickened 17 people, but led to widespread disruption of the U.S. postal services and key government facilities.
16¶ Other historical cases of CBRN pursuit and use by lone actors and small autonomous cells highlight the need for further
exploration. Among the many extant examples: 17¶ Thomas Lavy was caught at the Alaska-Canada border in 1993 with 130 grams
of 7% pure ricin. It is unclear how Lavy obtained the ricin, what he planned to do with it, and what motivated him.¶ In 1996, Diane
Thompson deliberately infected twelve coworkers with shigella dysenteriae type 2. Her motives were unclear.¶ In 1998, Larry
Wayne Harris, a white supremacist, was charged with producing and stockpiling a biological agent—bacillus anthracis, the causative
agent of anthrax.¶ In 1999, the Justice Department (an autonomous cell sympathetic to the Animal Liberation Front) mailed over
100 razor blades dipped in rat poison to individuals involved in the fur industry.¶ In 2000, Tsiugio Uchinshi was arrested for mailing
samples of the mineral monazite with trace amounts of radioactive thorium to several Japanese government agencies to persuade
authorities to look into potential uranium being smuggled to North Korea.¶ In 2002, Chen Zhengping put rat poison in a rival snack
shop's products and killed 42 people.¶ In 2005, 10 letters containing a radioactive substance were mailed to major organizations in
Belgium including the Royal Palace, NATO headquarters, and the U.S. embassy in Brussels. No injuries were reported.¶ In 2011,
federal agents arrested four elderly men in Georgia who were plotting to use ricin and explosives to target federal buildings, Justice
Department officials, federal judges, and Internal Revenue Service agents.¶ Two recent events may signal an even greater interest
in CBRN by lone malefactors. First, based on one assessment of Norway's Anders Breivik's treatise, his references to CBRN
weapons a) suggest that CBRN weapons could be used on a tactical level and b) reveal (to perhaps previously uninformed
audiences) that even low-level CBRN weapons could achieve far-reaching impacts driven by fear. 18 Whether or not Breivik would
actually have sought or been able to pursue CBRN, he has garnered a following in several (often far-right) extremist circles and his
treatise might inspire other lone actors. Second, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released two issues of Inspire
magazine in 2012. Articles, on the one hand, call for lone wolf jihad attacks to target non-combatant populations and, on the other,
permit the use of chemical and biological weapons. The combination of such directives may very well influence the weapon
selection of lone actor jihadists in Western nations. 19¶
Judicial review is key to federalism and SOP
Brandon J. Stoker 9, J.D. Candidate, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, “Note and Comment: Was
Gonzales v. Raich the Death Knell of Federalism? Assessing Meaningful Limits on Federal Intrastate Regulation in Light of U.S. v.
Nascimento”, 23 BYU J. Pub. L. 317, lexis
The political process was not, however, the sole mechanism envisioned by the Framers for warding off federal encroachment.
Indeed, they saw the Supreme Court as a final check on the national government, and frequently raised this
argument in ratification debates to ward off claims that the proposed constitution would facilitate a unitary government.20 Even the
early Court acknowledged the role of the judiciary in defining the limits of federal power vis-à-vis the
states.21 Historically, judicial intervention—rather than political safeguards—has been the surest check
on federal encroachment, though the Court’s willingness to impose limits on federal power fluctuates according to the
philosophical posture of the majority. Professor Erwin Chemerinsky explains that the Court vacillates between two views about the
underlying structure of American government: one that treats federalism as “empowerment” and another that treats federalism as a
fundamental limit on government power.22 The first model—federalism as empowerment—emphasizes the benefit of having
multiple levels of government deal with social and economic problems where the failures of one can be compensated by the
other.23 Those who view federalism as empowerment give the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment expansive
readings to facilitate federal action while leaving limitations on federal action to the political process and other constitutional
mechanisms, such as the separation of powers.24 Those who treat federalism as a limit on federal power, however, see it as the
Court’s responsibility to narrowly define the parameters of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers.25
Since the Court plays an active role in safeguarding other aspects of our constitutional framework— namely,
separation of powers, checks and balances, and judicial review26—the responsibility to preserve balance
between federal and state power—an equally important component of the Framers’ design— is no less incumbent
upon the judicial branch.27 Indeed, proponents of limits see the Court’s failure to fulfill this responsibility as a
threat to our entire system of government,28 and thus read the Tenth Amendment broadly to protect the prerogatives
of state governments.29 The following provides a brief treatment of the vacillating trends in the Court’s Commerce Clause
jurisprudence. .¶ [FOOTNOTE n28 STARTS. Id. During the early twentieth century - a period of judicial limitation - the Court took
seriously its charge to limit federal commerce powers. See, e.g., A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. U.S, 295 U.S. 495, 548
(1935) ("[ Limiting federal
Commerce Clause powers is] essential to the maintenance of our constitution al
system. Otherwise , as we have said, there would be virtually no limit to the federal power , and for all practical
purposes we should have a completely centralized government."); Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, 276 (1918) ("The far
reaching result of upholding the act cannot be more plainly indicated than by pointing out that if Congress can thus regulate
matters entrusted to local authority by prohibition of the movement of commodities in interstate commerce, all freedom
of commerce will be at an end, and the power of the states over local
system of government be practically destroyed.") FOOTNOTE n28 ENDS].
matters may be eliminated , and thus our
SCOTUS key model
Michael P. Scharf 9 et al., Counsel of Record, Brief of the Public International Law & Policy Group as Amicus Curiae in Support
of the Petitioners, Jamal Kiyemba, et. Al., v. Barack H. Obama, et al., SCOTUS, No. 08-1234, 12—09, p. 21-32.
III. TRANSNATIONAL JUDICIAL DIALOGUE CONFIRMS THIS COURT’S LEADERSHIP IN PROMOTING ADHERENCE TO RULE
OF LAW IN TIMES OF CONFLICT. PILPG’s on-the-ground experience demonstrating the leadership of this Court is confirmed by a
study of transnational judicial dialogue. Over the past halfcentury, the world’s constitutional courts have been engaged in a rich and
growing transnational judicial dialogue on a wide range of constitutional law issues. See, e.g., Melissa A. Waters, Mediating Norms
and Identity: The Role of Transnational Judicial Dialogue in Creating and Enforcing International Law, 93 Geo. L.J. 487 (2005);
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Judicial Globalization, 40 Va. J. Int’l L. 1103 (2000). Courts around the world consider, discuss, and cite
foreign judicial decisions not out of a sense of legal obligation, but out of a developing sense that foreign decisions are valuable
resources in elucidating complex legal issues and suggesting new approaches to common problems. See Waters, supra, at 493-94.
In this transnational judicial dialogue, the decisions of this Court have exercised a profound — and profoundly positive — influence
on the work of foreign and international courts. See generally Constitutionalism and Rights: The Influence of the United States
Constitution Abroad (Louis Henkin & Albert J. Rosenthal eds., 1990); Anthony Lester, The Overseas Trade in the American Bill of
Rights, 88 Colum. L. Rev. 537 (1988). As Anthony Lester of the British House of Lords has noted, “there is a vigorous overseas
trade in the Bill of Rights, in international and constitutional litigation involving norms derived from American constitutional law.
When life or liberty is at stake, the landmark judgments of the Supreme Court of the United States, giving fresh meaning to the
principles of the Bill of Rights, are studied with as much attention in New Delhi or Strasbourg as they are in Washington, D.C.” Id. at
541. This Court’s overseas influence is not limited to the Bill of Rights. From Australia to India to Israel to the United Kingdom,
foreign courts have looked to the seminal decisions of this Court as support for their own rulings
upholding judicial review, enforcing s eparation o f p owers, and providing a judicial check on the political
branches. Indeed, for foreign courts, this Court’s rulings in seminal cases such as Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137
(1803),4 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 436 (1954),5 United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974),6 and Roper v. Simmons,
543 U.S. 551 take on a special significance. Reliance on the moral authority of this Court can provide invaluable
support for those foreign courts struggling to establish their own legitimacy , to shore up judicial
authority against overreaching by powerful executives, and to develop a strong rule of law within their own national legal
systems. This Court’s potential to positively influence the international rule of law is particularly important in the nascent
transnational judicial dialogue surrounding the war on terrorism and the primacy of rule of law in times of conflict. As the world’s
courts begin to grapple with the novel, complex, and delicate legal issues surrounding the modern-day war on terrorism, and as
states seek to develop judicial mechanisms to address domestic conflicts, foreign governments and judiciaries are confronting
similar challenges. In particular, foreign governments and judiciaries must consider how to accommodate the legitimate needs of the
executive branch in times of war within the framework of the law. Although foreign courts are just beginning to address these
looking to the experience of the U.S., and to the precedent of this
Court, for guidance on upholding the rule of law in times of conflict. In recent years, courts in Israel, the
issues, it is already clear that they are
United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have relied on the precedent of this Court in decisions addressing the rights of detainees.8
In short, as a result of this Court’s robust influence on transnational judicial dialogue, its decisions have proved
extraordinarily important to the development of the rule of law around the world. International
courts have similarly relied on the precedent of this Court in influential decision s. For example, in the
important and developing area of international criminal law, the international war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda both
relied heavily on the precedent of this Court in their early opinions. In the first five years of the Yugoslav Tribunal, the first in the
modern iteration of the war crimes tribunals, the justices cited this Court at least seventeen times in decisions establishing the
fundamental legal principles under which the Tribunal would function.9 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda similarly
relied on this Court’s precedent, citing this Court at least twelve times in its first five years.10 The precedent of this Court has
provided a crucial foundation for international criminal law. The reliance on the precedent of this Court speaks to the Court’s
international leadership on the promotion of respect for the rule of law in times of conflict.
Specifically, South Sudan models U.S. federalism
Agok Manyang Agok 12-14, The New Sudan Vision, "Federalism: An Idea for South Sudan to Consider", 2014,
www.newsudanvision.com/sudan/2809-federalism-an-idea-for-south-sudan-to-consider
Nations which have attempted or adapted federalism include Canada, U nited S tates of America, Russia, Nigeria,
Ethiopia, South Africa, Australia, and Brazil among others. However, since South Sudan is a presidential system as
opposed to a parliamentarian, it’s imperative to examine the U nited S tates federal system . Scholars and experts on
governance tend to agree that the United States system is a cooperative federal system. Dual federalism holds that the federal
government and the state governments are co-equals, each sovereign. United States had shied away from dual federalism because
the system tends to creates power vacuum between the central government and the States. Cooperative federalism balances the
need for federal oversight without oppressive restraints on the individual state governments. In this model the federal government
and the states’ governments share some responsibilities and assume independence for others. The military for example is a federal
responsibility while the National Guard is the state’s responsibility.¶ With dual federalism, the federal government minimize its
support for local programs while continuing to levy income tax on its citizens. As a result, the State governments are usually forced
to raise taxes on individual incomes in order to fund local programs left unfunded by the federal government. Both systems,
however, have advantages and disadvantages.¶ The litmus test: U nited S tates versus other federal systems¶ Unlike most
federal systems, the U.S. federal system has a constitutionally spelled out system. It identifies responsibilities for both the central
government and the individual states. The express powers of the central government include the right to levy taxes, declare war,
coin money and regulate interstate and foreign commerce (Article 1, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution). In addition to the express
powers, the federal government has implied power to pass any law “necessary and proper” for the execution of its express powers.
Other powers called “inherent powers” include the ability of the federal government to acquire more territories whether through
peaceful or other means. The U.S. constitution also sets aside what it referred to as “reserved powers” (10th
Amendment to the US constitution) for the state governments. Additional shared powers between the federal and states
government includes borrowing money and enforcing laws.
Federalism prevents South Sudan collapse
Augustino Lucano 14, Upper Nile Times, "Federalism is Desirable in South Sudan", August 7,
upperniletimes.net/editorials/federalism-is-desirable-in-south-sudan/
South Sudan is highly diverse country with 64 tribes. There is a need for a fair system which helps to serve our
communities equitably. The current political crisis is disastrous with very poor governance in the country and
we need a better system. Doig (2012) explained that “Federalism is the most important political device for the regulation and
accommodation of the world’s most burning and devastating conflicts” (p. 1).¶ Federalism is desirable in South Sudan because it will
allow for sufficient growth in our country. We need a political system which allows the citizens and the government to resolve
problems. Nivola (2005) described that “Federalism is a political system permitting a large measure of regional self-rule and gives
the rulers and the ruled a ‘school of their citizenship’, ‘a preserver of their liberties’, and ‘a vehicle for flexible response to their
problems'” (p. 1). I believe that federalism will lead to political reformation by removing the national government and resolving some
of the contentious issues.
Federalism will allow the South Sudan government to achieve and maintain
stability. ¶ In addition, Doig (2012) described “Those who prefer a federal system of governance generally argue that this plan
reduces the dangers while increasing the benefits. Thus a federal system may be helpful in encouraging and preserving individual
liberty, since citizens who feel aggrieved can appeal to more than one final authority, and they may also be able to move to a
different state or province” (p. 2).¶ Federalism is desirable in South Sudan because it encourages
pluralism. Federal systems will allow the South Sudan government to develop at the national, state, and local levels, giving the
South Sudanese people more access to leaders and opportunities to get involved in their government. Doig (2012) illustrated that
“Federalism encourages each state or province to devise its own strategies for economic development — strategies which may be
more effective because they are based on a closer understanding of local culture, resources and skills, and which, through the
variety of different strategies tried by different states and provinces, may produce innovative programs whose success can then be
emulated by other regions & nations” (p. 2).¶ The South Sudanese people will benefit from federalism because it will ensure the
separation of powers and prevents tyranny in South Sudan. Even if one person or group took control of all the other
branches of the federal government, federalism ensures that governments would still function independently. Federalism, therefore,
fulfills the vision of a governmental structure that ensures liberty in South Sudan.
That escalates – every country has key interests at stake
Gaaki Kigambo 14, Ugandan journalist and a graduate of Carleton University and is currently a special correspondent for The
East African, Regional Tensions Complicate South Sudan’s Crisis, 2-28, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13597/regionaltensions-complicate-south-sudan-s-crisis
The deadly conflict in South Sudan, itself the culmination of a long-running power struggle within the ruling Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement, is increasingly drawing in neighboring countries driven by disparate security and economic
interests, further complicating the crisis and efforts to reach a resolution. ¶ The U.N. has accused both sides of South Sudan’s split
of committing human rights abuses in the conflict, which has so far claimed an unknown number of lives, displaced an estimated
900,000 people both inside and outside the country and shows no signs of letting up. An agreement to cease hostilities
was violated even before its ink dried, jeopardizing an already faltering mediation process led by the Intergovernmental
Authority on Development (IGAD) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. ¶ Uganda was the first of South Sudan’s neighbors to intervene
militarily, sending an estimated 4,500 soldiers to the country within four days of the outbreak of fighting there on Dec. 15. Uganda
was compelled, Kampala insists, by a distress call from South Sudan’s embattled President Salva Kiir and requests from the U.N.,
Washington and London to step in. ¶ One of the main aims of the intervention, Ugandan Defense Minister Crispus Kiyonga told
parliament, was to urgently prevent a potentially genocidal situation from emerging out of the political fallout between Kiir and his
former deputy, Riek Machar. The conflict between their factions had rapidly manifested itself along an age-old ethnic fault line
between Kiir’s majority Dinka and Machar’s Nuer ethnic group. ¶ However, Uganda’s military presence in South Sudan
has unsettled its other neighbors, not least Sudan. There is no love lost between Museveni and longtime Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir, who have repeatedly accused each other of supporting rebel forces hostile to their governments. ¶
Bashir’s quick visit to Juba, South Sudan’s capital, three weeks after the conflict broke out was widely interpreted as a public
gesture that he was ready to cast his lot with South Sudan’s government. But Juba apparently spurned Khartoum’s suggestion to
set up a joint force to protect vital oil fields in Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states in the north of South Sudan, which have borne the
brunt of the conflict. Instead, South Sudan preferred to give that role to the Ugandan army. Bashir is now believed to be backing
Machar, his longtime ally. ¶ Analysts say Khartoum fears Uganda’s military involvement will further damage
Sudan’s economic ties with South Sudan, which have been significantly reduced since the South’s independence. Uganda,
together with Kenya, has been pushing a $250 million infrastructure project known as the Lamu-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport
(LAPSSET) corridor, which comprises a port, an oil pipeline, a railway line and a highway, and which will depend for its success on
South Sudan. Uganda needs the LAPSSET corridor to transport its newly discovered oil, as it would greatly reduce the distance the
oil, which must be heated at some expense for pipeline transit, would need to travel before it reaches the coast. ¶ Ethiopia, too, has
reason to object to Uganda’s military presence in South Sudan. Ugandan intelligence reports say Khartoum is now routing its
support for Machar through Eritrea, Ethiopia’s bitter rival, to cover up its involvement. Analysts say the Ethiopian government also
fears the South Sudan conflict could exacerbate tensions in Ethiopia’s Gambella region, which borders
Sudan and has a high concentration of Nuers, potentially resulting in a full-blown conflict. Indeed, the undercurrents of
such an outbreak are already perceptible. This explains why Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who is the
current chair of IGAD, asked Uganda to withdraw from South Sudan, saying its presence risked regionalizing the conflict
and pointedly declaring that “there are other interests also from other sides.”¶ Although Uganda has expressed willingness to
withdraw, even announcing a two-month withdrawal timeline, there is little appetite to actually do so in Kampala’s
policymaking circles. For one thing, Uganda perceives itself as the guarantor of state stability in South Sudan, which remains in
jeopardy. Renewed fighting has broken out in which Machar’s forces appear to be making gains, despite having initially been
pushed out of nearly all the major centers in Unity, Upper Nile and Jonglei states by joint efforts of the South Sudanese and
Ugandan troops. ¶ Moreover, Uganda’s withdrawal is conditioned on the deployment of the African Union’s African Capacity for
Immediate Response to Crisis (ACIRC), an outfit that is ideally supposed to rapidly respond to crises on the continent.
Unfortunately, the African Union Peace and Security Council has yet to meet to work out modalities for the deployment of ACIRC in
South Sudan. A tough task awaits them in finding countries willing to contribute troops to the mission. As it is, IGAD long ago
approved a force of 5,600 troops for South Sudan, but has received none to date from its eight members. Indeed, only Uganda
appears willing to contribute. The same is true of the U.N., which also agreed last year to augment its presence in this beleaguered
nation by 5,500 troops but has yet to implement its resolutions with more blue berets on the ground. ¶ Uganda’s continued
military presence in South Sudan is further polarizing both sides of the conflict and directly obstructing the
IGAD-led mediation, which holds the best hope for a long-term political solution. Kiir, who enjoys Uganda’s military support, has
demonstrated little interest in the Addis Ababa process, while Machar has preconditioned any progress in Addis Ababa on the
withdrawal of all foreign military forces as well as the release of all SPLM political figures detained since the outbreak of the conflict.
Meanwhile, Kampala is testing the patience of South Sudan’s other neighbors, who might soon feel the need to join
in the conflict in order to safeguard their own interests. ¶ To break the current deadlock, IGAD must clarify the
objectives of the current mediation and, together with the AU, pressure Uganda to withdraw its forces from South Sudan, while also
pushing both Kiir and Machar to engage meaningfully with the mediation process. In the absence of progress in Addis Ababa, the
risk of a regionalization of the conflict looms, further complicating any efforts to resolve the crisis.
Nuclear war
Caroline Glick 7, deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Center for Security
Policy, “Condi's African holiday”, December 11, http://www.rightsidenews.com/20071211309/editorial/us-opinion-and-editorial/ourworld-condis-african-holiday.html
The Horn of Africa is a dangerous and strategically vital place. Small wars, which rage continuously, can easily
escalate into big wars. Local conflicts have regional and global aspects. All of the conflicts in this tinderbox, which
controls shipping lanes from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea, can potentially give rise to regional, and indeed global
conflagrations between competing regional actors and global powers.
2AC
K Ans: FW [Long]
Preventing extinction risks is a pre-requisite to societal transformation
Bostrum 12 (Nick, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford, directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and
winner of the Gannon Award, Interview with Ross Andersen, correspondent at The Atlantic, 3/6, “We're
Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction”,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-humanextinction/253821/)
Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, has argued over the course of several papers that
human extinction risks are poorly understood
and, worse still, severely underestimated by society . Some of these existential risks are fairly well known, especially the natural ones. But others are obscure or
even exotic. Most worrying to Bostrom is the subset of existential risks that arise from human technology, a subset that he expects to grow in number and potency over the next century.¶
Despite his concerns about the risks posed to humans by technological progress, Bostrom is no luddite. In fact, he is a longtime advocate of transhumanism---the effort to improve the human
condition, and even human nature itself, through technological means. In the long run he sees technology as a bridge, a bridge we humans must cross with great care, in order to reach new
and better modes of being. In his work, Bostrom uses the tools of philosophy and mathematics, in particular probability theory, to try and determine how we as a species might achieve this
safe passage. What follows is my conversation with Bostrom about some of the most interesting and worrying existential risks that humanity might encounter in the decades and centuries to
come, and about what we can do to make sure we outlast them.¶ Some have argued that we ought to be directing our resources toward humanity's existing problems, rather than future
existential risks, because many of the latter are highly improbable. You have responded by suggesting that
existential risk mitigation may in fact be a
dominant moral priority over the alleviation of present suffering . Can you explain why? ¶ Bostrom: Well suppose you have a
moral view that counts future people as being worth as much as present people. You might say that fundamentally it doesn't matter
whether someone exists at the current time or at some future time, just as many people think that from a fundamental moral point of view, it doesn't matter where somebody is spatially--somebody isn't automatically worth less because you move them to the moon or to Africa or
something. A human life is a human life. If you have
that moral point of view that future generations matter in proportion to their population numbers, then you get
this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a much higher utility than pretty much anything
else that you could do. There are so many people that could come into existence in the future if humanity
survives this critical period of time---we might live for billions of years, our descendants might colonize
billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently.
Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will tend to
outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinary
standards.
Disease Reps Good
Disease securitization mobilizes political action to solve disease
Dr. Christian Enemark 5, is a Visiting Fellow of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at ANU
where he serves as Deputy Director of the National Centre for Biosecurity.'INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY', The Nonproliferation Review, 12:1, 107 – 125. March 1st – via Taylor &
Francis, which is usually obtainable through google scholar
In pursuing international cooperation, a
threshold issue is how to win political acceptance for the idea that some infectious
diseases pose a threat to security as well as to health. To securitize infectious diseases is to seek some of the
overriding political interest and superior financial resources associated with more traditional (military) concepts
of security. Labeling something a security issue lends it a sense of urgency, attracts greater public attention, and
implicitly demands resources.1 There is a strong humanitarian imperative to mitigate the huge potential and actual loss of life resulting from infectious
disease, but humanitarian motivations alone are not sufficient to address this problem. In appealing to national
governments*/still the principal players in the international arena*/infectious diseases need to be portrayed in
such a way as to stimulate concerns about national interests. Historically, governments have shown greater
enthusiasm toward their own security than they have toward humanitarian causes.A good introduction to the way in which
infectious diseases impact security is to examine their relevance to military operations throughout history. The historian Livy described an outbreak of plague in the
Carthaginian and Roman armies during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC. The Carthaginians, less accustomed than the Romans to the city's moist climate, suffered
greater casualties from the disease and were defeated shortly afterward.2 In the thirteenth century, the Mongol invasions helped spread various epidemics of
plague between East Asia and Eastern Europe. The sixteenth century demise of the Aztec empire came about mostly because the Spanish conquerors brought
smallpox and measles with them to the New World. During World War I, an outbreak of typhus in Serbia in 1915 was so severe that the fighting on both sides
stopped for six months.And disease was relevant in April 2003 when Canada's health minister suggested that medical staff from the Canadian Forces could help
relieve pressure on Toronto hospital staff treating patients with SARS. The military replied that it was already critically short of physicians to look after its troops. At
the time, Canada was preparing for a major deployment to Afghanistan. Had the SARS outbreak in Toronto become so bad as to require medical personnel from
Canadian military units to assist, those units would not have been able to deploy overseas.3 In
one sense, infectious diseases are already an
''established'' security threat in the form of biological warfare . Weapons for deliberately disseminating
pathogenic microÂorganisms potentially pose direct security threats to many countries. BW is not a new
threat like emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, and it fits more easily within traditional
conceptions of security. For these reasons, attempts to link disease and security via the problem of BW tend
to resonate more strongly with the public and policymakers. But biological weapons are just one part of a
spectrum of risks associated with the biological sciences. The spectrum encompasses natural disease
outbreaks, accidents arising from otherwise benign activities such as medical research with pathogens,
and the use of disease as a weapon of war or terror.5Transparency, Cooperation, and Security Global
networks assisted in the defeat of SARS by providing for the free exchange of information on
surveillance, diagnosis, and treatment. Openness and transparency are also vital for maintaining confidence
in cooperative efforts to confront disease-based security threats through formal institutions like the WHO and
the BWC. The last section of this article discusses how excessive secrecy on the part of individual
governments can undermine collective attempts to address infectious disease threats, whether of
natural or deliberate origin. The experience of SARS in early 2003 demonstrated well the
importance of government transparency in fostering cooperation against a common microbial
threat. It was therefore unfortunate that the re-emergence of H5N1 avian influenza in 2004 was
possibly the subject of attempted cover-ups by certain governments in Southeast Asia. In the short term,
the disease known as ''bird flu'' is a security issue for countries in that region in the way it has brought
economic devastation to the poultry industry, thus threatening the livelihoods of millions of people.
However, the recent damage is negligible in comparison to that which might occur if H5N1 is not
brought under control. The virus already meets two of the three criteria for causing a global pandemic of
catastrophic proportions: the ability to replicate in humans and the absence of viral antibodies in the
human population. The third criterion is that the virus be able to spread rapidly among people.4 7 If
H5N1 were to adapt itself to spread from person to person as easily as regular human flu, its ability to
kill would far exceed that of SARS.
Terror Reps Good
Terrorism studies are epistemologically valid---our authors are self-reflexive
Boyle, 08 – Michael J. Boyle, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, and John
Horgan, International Center for the Study of Terrorism, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State
University, April 2008, “A Case Against Critical Terrorism Studies,” Critical Studies On Terrorism, Vol. 1,
No. 1, p. 51-64
Jackson (2007c) calls for the development of an explicitly CTS on the basis of what he argues preceded
it, dubbed ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’. The latter, he suggests, is characterized by: (1) its poor
methods and theories, (2) its state centricity, (3) its problem-solving orientation, and (4) its institutional
and intellectual links to state security projects. Jackson argues that the major defining characteristic of
CTS, on the other hand, should be ‘a skeptical attitude towards accepted terrorism “knowledge”’. An implicit
presumption from this is that terrorism scholars have laboured for all of these years without being aware that
their area of study has an implicit bias, as well as definitional and methodological problems. In fact, terrorism
scholars are not only well aware of these problems , but also have provided their own searching critiques of the
field at various points during the last few decades (e.g. Silke 1996, Crenshaw 1998, Gordon 1999, Horgan
2005, esp. ch. 2, ‘Understanding Terrorism’). Some of those scholars most associated with the critique of
empiricism implied in ‘Orthodox Terrorism Studies’ have also engaged in deeply critical examinations of the
nature of sources, methods, and data in the study of terrorism. For example, Jackson (2007a) regularly cites
the handbook produced by Schmid and Jongman (1988) to support his claims that theoretical progress
has been limited. But this fact was well recognized by the authors; indeed, in the introduction of the
second edition they point out that they have not revised their chapter on theories of terrorism from the
first edition, because the failure to address persistent conceptual and data problems has undermined
progress in the field. The point of their handbook was to sharpen and make more comprehensive the
result of research on terrorism, not to glide over its methodological and definitional failings (Schmid and
Jongman 1988, p. xiv). Similarly, Silke's (2004) volume on the state of the field of terrorism research
performed a similar function, highlighting the shortcomings of the field, in particular the lack of rigorous
primary data collection. A non-reflective community of scholars does not produce such scathing indictments of
its own work.
Critical terror studies are wrong—no evidence to substantiate their claims and no viable
alternative
Jones and Smith, 9 - * University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia AND ** King's College,
University of London, London, UK (David and M.L.R.,“We're All Terrorists Now: Critical—or
Hypocritical—Studies “on” Terrorism?,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 32, Issue 4 April 2009 ,
pages 292 – 302, Taylor and Francis)
the
journal's ambition is to deconstruct what it views as the ambiguity of the word “terror,” its manipulation by
ostensibly liberal democratic state actors, and the complicity of “orthodox” terrorism studies in this
authoritarian enterprise. Exposing the deficiencies in any field of study is, of course, a legitimate scholarly exercise, but what the symposium introducing the new volume
The journal, in other words, is not intended, as one might assume, to evaluate critically those state or non-state actors that might have recourse to terrorism as a strategy. Instead,
announces questions both the research agenda and academic integrity of journals like Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and those who contribute to them. Do these claims, one might wonder,
have any substance? Significantly, the original proposal circulated by the publisher Routledge and one of the editors, Richard
Jackson , suggested some uncertainty concerning
the preferred title of the journal. Critical Studies on Terrorism appeared last on a list where the first choice was Review of Terror Studies. Evidently, the concision of a review fails to capture the
critical perspective the journal promotes. Criticism, then, is central to the new journal's philosophy and the adjective connotes a distinct ideological and, as shall be seen, far from pluralist and
inclusive purpose. So, one might ask, what exactly does a critical approach to terrorism involve? What it Means to be Critical The editors and contributors explore what it means to be “critical”
in detail, repetition, and opacity, along with an excessive fondness for italics, in the editorial symposium that introduces the first issue, and in a number of subsequent articles. The editors
inform us that the study of terrorism is “a growth industry,” observing with a mixture of envy and disapproval that “literally thousands of new books and articles on terrorism are published
every year” (pp. l-2). In adding to this literature the editors premise the need for yet another journal on their resistance to what currently constitutes scholarship in the field of terrorism study
and its allegedly uncritical acceptance of the Western democratic state's security perspective. Indeed, to be critical requires a radical reversal of what the journal assumes to be the typical
perception of terrorism and the methodology of terrorism research. To focus on the strategies practiced by non-state actors that feature under the conventional denotation “terror” is, for the
, “acts of clandestine non-state terrorism are committed by a tiny number of
individuals and result in between a few hundred and a few thousand casualties per year over the entire world”
critical theorist, misplaced. As the symposium explains
(original italics) (p. 1). The United States's and its allies' preoccupation with terrorism is, therefore, out of proportion to its effects. 1 At the same time, the more pervasive and repressive terror
practiced by the state has been “silenced from public and … academic discourse” (p. 1).
The complicity of terrorism studies with the increasingly
authoritarian demands of Western, liberal state and media practice, together with the moral and political
blindness of established terrorism analysts to this relationship forms the journal's overriding assumption and one that
its core contributors repeat ad nauseam. Thus, Michael Stohl, in his contribution “Old Myths, New Fantasies and the Enduring Realities of Terrorism” (pp. 5-16), not only discovers ten “myths”
informing the understanding of terrorism, but also finds that these myths reflect a “state centric security focus,” where analysts rarely consider “the violence perpetrated by the state” (p. 5).
He complains that the press have become too close to government over the matter. Somewhat contradictorily Stohl subsequently asserts that media reporting is “central to terrorism and
counter-terrorism as political action,” that media reportage provides the oxygen of terrorism, and that politicians consider journalists to be “the terrorist's best friend” (p. 7). Stohl further
compounds this incoherence, claiming that “the media are far more likely to focus on the destructive actions, rather than on … grievances or the social conditions that breed [terrorism]—to
present episodic rather than thematic stories” (p. 7). He argues that terror attacks between 1968 and 1980 were scarcely reported in the United States, and that reporters do not delve deeply
into the sources of conflict (p. 8). All of this is quite contentious, with no direct evidence produced to support such statements. The “media” is after all a very broad term, and to assume that it
is monolithic is to replace criticism with conspiracy theory. Moreover, even if it were true that the media always serves as a government propaganda agency, then by Stohl's own logic,
the notion
that an inherent pro-state bias vitiates terrorism studies pervades the critical position . Anthony Burke, in “The End of Terrorism
terrorism as a method of political communication is clearly futile as no rational actor would engage in a campaign doomed to be endlessly misreported. Nevertheless,
Studies” (pp. 37-49), asserts that established analysts like Bruce Hoffman “specifically exclude states as possible perpetrators” of terror. Consequently, the emergence of “critical terrorism
studies” “may signal the end of a particular kind of traditionally state-focused and directed 'problem-solving' terrorism studies—at least in terms of its ability to assume that its categories and
commitments are immune from challenge and correspond to a stable picture of reality” (p. 42). Elsewhere, Adrian Guelke, in “Great Whites, Paedophiles and Terrorists: The Need for Critical
Thinking in a New Era of Terror” (pp. 17-25), considers British government-induced media “scare-mongering” to have legitimated an “authoritarian approach” to the purported new era of
terror (pp. 22-23). Meanwhile, Joseba Zulaika and William A. Douglass, in “The Terrorist Subject: Terrorist Studies and the Absent Subjectivity” (pp. 27-36), find the War on Terror constitutes
“the single,” all embracing paradigm of analysis where the critical voice is “not allowed to ask: what is the reality itself?” (original italics) (pp. 28-29). The construction of this condition, they
further reveal, if somewhat abstrusely, reflects an abstract “desire” that demands terror as “an ever-present threat” (p. 31). In order to sustain this fabrication: “Terrorism experts and
commentators” function as “realist policemen”; and not very smart ones at that, who while “gazing at the evidence” are “unable to read the paradoxical logic of the desire that fuels it,
Booth, in “The Human Faces of Terror: Reflections in a Cracked Looking Glass” (pp. 65-79), reiterates Richard
Jackson's contention that state terrorism “is a much more serious problem than non-state terrorism” (p. 76). Yet,
whereby lack turns toexcess” (original italics) (p. 32). Finally, Ken
one searches in vain in these articles for evidence to support the ubiquitous assertion of state bias : assuming
this bias in conventional terrorism analysis as a fact seemingly does not require a corresponding concern with
evidence of this fact, merely its continual reiteration by conceptual fiat. A critical perspective dispenses not
only with terrorism studies but also with the norms of accepted scholarship. Asserting what needs to be demonstrated commits, of
critical theory apparently emancipates (to use its favorite verb) its practitioners from the
confines of logic, reason, and the usual standards of academic inquiry. Alleging a constitutive weakness in established scholarship without the
necessity of providing proof to support it, therefore, appears to define the critical posture. The unproved “state centricity” of terrorism studies serves
course, the elementary logical fallacy petitio principii. But
as a platform for further unsubstantiated accusations about the state of the discipline. Jackson and his fellow
editors, along with later claims by Zulaika and Douglass, and Booth, again assert that “orthodox” analysts rarely bother “to interview or
engage with those involved in 'terrorist' activity” (p. 2) or spend any time “on the ground in the areas most affected by conflict” (p. 74). Given that Booth and
Jackson spend most of their time on the ground in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, not a notably terror rich environment if we discount the operations of Meibion Glyndwr who would as a matter of
principle avoid pob sais like Jackson and Booth, this seems a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. It also overlooks the fact that Studies in Conflict and Terrorism first advertised the problem
of “talking to terrorists” in 2001 and has gone to great lengths to rectify this lacuna, if it is one, regularly publishing articles by analysts with first-hand experience of groups like the Taliban, Al
Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah. A consequence of avoiding primary research, it is further alleged, leads conventional analysts uncritically to apply psychological and problem-solving approaches
to their object of study. This propensity, Booth maintains, occasions another unrecognized weakness in traditional terrorism research, namely, an inability to engage with “the particular
dynamics of the political world” (p. 70). Analogously, Stohl claims that “the US and English [sic] media” exhibit a tendency to psychologize terrorist acts, which reduces “structural and political
problems” into issues of individual pathology (p. 7). Preoccupied with this problem-solving, psychopathologizing methodology, terrorism analysts have lost the capacity to reflect on both their
practice and their research ethics. By contrast, the critical approach is not only self-reflective, but also and, for good measure, self-reflexive. In fact, the editors and a number of the journal's
contributors use these terms interchangeably, treating a reflection and a reflex as synonyms (p. 2). A cursory encounter with the Shorter Oxford Dictionary would reveal that they are not.
Despite this linguistically challenged misidentification, “reflexivity” is made to do a lot of work in the critical idiom. Reflexivity, the editors inform us, requires a capacity “to challenge dominant
knowledge and understandings, is sensitive to the politics of labelling … is transparent about its own values and political standpoints, adheres to a set of responsible research ethics, and is
committed to a broadly defined notion of emancipation” (p. 2). This covers a range of not very obviously related but critically approved virtues. Let us examine what reflexivity involves as
Stohl, Guelke, Zulaika and Douglass, Burke, and Booth explore, somewhat repetitively, its implications. Reflexive or Defective? Firstly,
to challenge dominant knowledge
and understanding and retain sensitivity to labels leads inevitably to a fixation with language, discourse , the
ambiguity of the noun, terror, and its political use and abuse. Terrorism, Booth enlightens the reader unremarkably, is “a politically loaded term” (p.
72). Meanwhile, Zulaika and Douglass consider terror “the dominant tropic [sic] space in contemporary political and journalistic discourse” (p. 30). Faced with the “serious challenge” (Booth p.
72) and pejorative connotation that the noun conveys, critical terrorologists turn to deconstruction and bring the full force of postmodern obscurantism to bear on its use. Thus the editors
proclaim that terrorism is “one of the most powerful signifiers in contemporary discourse.” There is, moreover, a “yawning gap between the 'terrorism' signifier and the actual acts signified”
(p. 1). “[V]irtually all of this activity,” the editors pronounce ex cathedra, “refers to the response to acts of political violence not the violence itself” (original italics) (p. 1). Here again they offer
no evidence for this curious assertion and assume, it would seem, all conventional terrorism studies address issues of homeland security. In keeping with this critical orthodoxy that he has
done much to define, Anthony Burke also asserts the “instability (and thoroughly politicized nature) of the unifying master-terms of our field: 'terror' and 'terrorism'” (p. 38). To address this he
contends that a critical stance requires us to “keep this radical instability and inherent politicization of the concept of terrorism at the forefront of its analysis.” Indeed, “without a conscious
reflexivity about the most basic definition of the object, our discourse will not be critical at all” (p. 38). More particularly, drawing on a jargon-infused amalgam of Michel Foucault's
identification of a relationship between power and knowledge, the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School's critique of democratic false consciousness, mixed with the existentialism of the Third Reich's
favorite philosopher, Martin Heidegger, Burke “questions the question.” This intellectual potpourri apparently enables the critical theorist to “question the ontological status of a 'problem'
before any attempt to map out, study or resolve it” (p. 38). Interestingly, Burke, Booth, and the symposistahood deny that there might be objective data about violence or that a properly
focused strategic study of terrorism would not include any prescriptive goodness or rightness of action. While a strategic theorist or a skeptical social scientist might claim to consider only the
The
critical approach to language and its deconstruction of an otherwise useful, if imperfect, political vocabulary has
complex relational situation that involves as well as the actions, the attitude of human beings to them, the critical theorist's radical questioning of language denies this possibility.
been the source of much confusion and inconsequentiality
in the practice of the social sciences. It dates from the relativist pall that French radical post structural philosophers like Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Foucault, and
Jacques Derrida, cast over the social and historical sciences in order to demonstrate that social and political knowledge depended on and underpinned power relations that permeated the
landscape of the social and reinforced the liberal democratic state.
This radical assault on the possibility of either neutral fact or value
ultimately functions unfalsifiably, and as a substitute for philosophy, social science, and a real theory of
language. The problem with the critical approach is that, as the Australian philosopher John Anderson demonstrated, to achieve a genuine study one must either investigate the facts
that are talked about or the fact that they are talked about in a certain way. More precisely, as J.L. Mackie explains, “if we concentrate on the uses of language we fall between these two
in so far as an account of the
use of language spills over into ontology it is liable to be a confused mixture of what should be two distinct
investigations: the study of the facts about which the language is used, and the study of the linguistic
phenomena themselves. It is precisely, however, this confused mixture of fact and discourse that critical thinking
seeks to impose on the study of terrorism and infuses the practice of critical theory more generally. From this
confused seed no coherent method grows. What is To Be Done? This ontological confusion notwithstanding, Ken Booth sees critical theory
not only exposing the dubious links between power and knowledge in established terrorism studies, but also
offering an ideological agenda that transforms the face of global politics . “[C]ritical knowledge,” Booth declares, “involves understandings of
stools, and we are in danger of taking our discoveries about manners of speaking as answers to questions about what is there.”2 Indeed,
the social world that attempt to stand outside prevailing structures, processes, ideologies and orthodoxies while recognizing that all conceptualizations within the ambit of sociality derive from
particular social/historical conditions” (original italics) (p. 78). Helpfully, Booth, assuming the manner of an Old Testament prophet, provides his critical disciples with “big-picture navigation
aids” (original italics) (p. 66) to achieve this higher knowledge. Booth promulgates fifteen commandments (as Clemenceau remarked of Woodrow Wilson's nineteen points, in a somewhat
Critical theorists thus
should “avoid exceptionalizing the study of terrorism,” “recognize that states can be agents of terrorism,” and
“keep the long term in sight.” Unexceptional advice to be sure and long recognized by more traditional students
of terrorism. The critical student, if not fully conversant with critical doublethink, however, might find the fact
that she or he lives within “Powerful theories” that are “constitutive of political, social, and economic life” (6th
Commandment, p. 71), sits uneasily with Booth's concluding injunction to “stand outside” prevailing ideologies (p. 78). In his
different context, “God Almighty only gave us ten”). When not stating the staggeringly obvious, the Ken Commandments are hopelessly contradictory.
3
preferred imperative idiom, Booth further contends that terrorism is best studied in the context of an “academic international relations” whose role “is not only to interpret the world but to
change it” (pp. 67-68). Significantly, academic—or more precisely, critical—international relations, holds no place for a realist appreciation of the status quo but approves instead a Marxist
ideology of praxis. It is within this transformative praxis that critical theory situates terrorism and terrorists. The political goals of those non-state entities that choose to practice the tactics of
terrorism invariably seek a similar transformative praxis and this leads “critical global theorizing” into a curiously confused empathy with the motives of those engaged in such acts, as well as a
disturbing relativism. Thus, Booth again decrees that the gap between “those who hate terrorism and those who carry it out, those who seek to delegitimize the acts of terrorists and those
who incite them, and those who abjure terror and those who glorify it—is not as great as is implied or asserted by orthodox terrorism experts, the discourse of governments, or the popular
press” (p. 66). The gap “between us/them is a slippery slope, not an unbridgeable political and ethical chasm” (p. 66). So, while “terrorist actions are always—without exception—wrong, they
nevertheless might be contingently excusable” (p. 66). From this ultimately relativist perspective gang raping a defenseless woman, an act of terror on any critical or uncritical scale of
evaluation, is, it would seem, wrong but potentially excusable. On the basis of this worrying relativism a further Ken Commandment requires the abolition of the discourse of evil on the
somewhat questionable grounds that evil releases agents from responsibility (pp. 74-75). This not only reveals a profound ignorance of theology, it also underestimates what Eric Voeglin
identified as a central feature of the appeal of modern political religions from the Third Reich to Al Qaeda. As Voeglin observed in 1938, the Nazis represented an “attractive force.” To
understand that force requires not the abolition of evil [so necessary to the relativist] but comprehending its attractiveness. Significantly, as Barry Cooper argues, “its attractiveness, [like that
of al Qaeda] cannot fully be understood apart from its evilness.”4 The line of relativist inquiry that critical theorists like Booth evince toward terrorism leads in fact not to moral clarity but an
inspissated moral confusion. This is paradoxical given that the editors make much in the journal's introductory symposium of their “responsible research ethics.” The paradox is resolved when
one realizes that critical moralizing demands the “ethics of responsibility to the terrorist other.” For Ken Booth it involves, it appears, empathizing “with the ethic of responsibility” faced by
those who, “in extremis” “have some explosives” (p. 76). Anthony Burke contends that a critically self-conscious normativism requires the analyst, not only to “critique” the “strategic
languages” of the West, but also to “take in” the “side of the Other” or more particularly “engage” “with the highly developed forms of thinking” that provides groups like Al Qaeda “with
legitimizing foundations and a world view of some profundity” (p. 44). This additionally demands a capacity not only to empathize with the “other,” but also to recognize that both Osama bin
Laden in his Messages to the West and Sayyid Qutb in his Muslim Brotherhood manifesto Milestones not only offer “well observed” criticisms of Western decadence, but also “converges with
elements of critical theory” (p. 45). This is not surprising given that both Islamist and critical theorists share an analogous contempt for Western democracy, the market, and the international
order these structures inhabit and have done much to shape. Histrionically Speaking Critical theory, then, embraces relativism not only toward language but also toward social action.
Relativism and the bizarre ethicism it engenders in its attempt to empathize with the terrorist other are, moreover, histrionic. As Leo Strauss classically inquired of this relativist tendency in the
social sciences, “is such an understanding dependent upon our own commitment or independent of it?” Strauss explains, if it is independent, I am committed as an actor and I am
uncommitted in another compartment of myself in my capacity as a social scientist. “In that latter capacity I am completely empty and therefore completely open to the perception and
appreciation of all commitments or value systems.” I go through the process of empathetic understanding in order to reach clarity about my commitment for only a part of me is engaged in my
empathetic understanding. This means, however, that “such understanding is not serious or genuine but histrionic.” 5 It is also profoundly dependent on Western liberalism. For it is only in an
open society that questions the values it promotes that the issue of empathy with the non-Western other could arise. The critical theorist's explicit loathing of the openness that affords her
histrionic posturing obscures this constituting fact. On the basis of this histrionic empathy with the “other,” critical theory concludes that democratic states “do not always abjure acts of terror
whether to advance their foreign policy objectives … or to buttress order at home” (p. 73). Consequently, Ken Booth asserts: “If terror can be part of the menu of choice for the relatively
At the
core of this critical, ethicist, relativism therefore lies a syllogism that holds all violence is terror: Western states
use violence, therefore, Western states are terrorist. Further, the greater terrorist uses the greater violence:
Western governments exercise the greater violence. Therefore, it is the liberal democracies rather than Al
Qaeda that are the greater terrorists. In its desire to empathize with the transformative ends, if not the means of terrorism generally and Islamist terror in particular,
strong, it is hardly surprising it becomes a weapon of the relatively weak” (p. 73). Zulaika and Douglass similarly assert that terrorism is “always” a weapon of the weak (p. 33).
critical theory reveals itself as a form of Marxist unmasking. Thus, for Booth “terror has multiple forms” (original italics) and the real terror is economic, the product it would seem of “global
capitalism” (p. 75). Only the engagee intellectual academic finding in deconstructive criticism the philosophical weapons that reveal the illiberal neo-conservative purpose informing the
conventional study of terrorism and the democratic state's prosecution of counterterrorism can identify the real terror lurking behind the “manipulation of the politics of fear” (p. 75).
Moreover, the resolution of this condition of escalating violence requires not any strategic solution that creates security as the basis for development whether in London or Kabul. Instead,
Booth, Burke, and the editors contend that the only solution to “the world-historical crisis that is facing human
society globally” (p. 76) is universal human “emancipation.” This, according to Burke, is “the normative end” that critical theory pursues. Following Jurgen
Habermas, the godfather of critical theory, terrorism is really a form of distorted communication. The solution to this problem of failed communication resides not only in the improvement of
living conditions, and “the political taming of unbounded capitalism,” but also in “the telos of mutual understanding.” Only through this telos with its “strong normative bias towards non
In other words, the only ethical solution to terrorism is
conversation: sitting around an un-coerced table presided over by Kofi Annan, along with Ken Booth, Osama bin
Laden, President Obama, and some European Union pacifist sandalista, a transcendental communicative reason
will emerge to promulgate norms of transformative justice. As Burke enunciates, the panacea of un-coerced communication would establish “a
secularism that might create an enduring architecture of basic shared values” (p. 46). In the end, un-coerced norm projection is not concerned with the
violence” (p. 43) can a universal condition of peace and justice transform the globe.
world as it is, but how it ought to be. This not only compounds the logical errors that permeate critical theory,
it advances an ultimately utopian agenda under the guise of soi-disant cosmopolitanism where one somewhat
vaguely recognizes the “human interconnection and mutual vulnerability to nature, the cosmos and each other ”
(p. 47)
and no doubt bursts into spontaneous chanting of Kumbaya . In analogous visionary terms, Booth defines real security as emancipation in a
way that denies any definitional rigor to either term. The struggle against terrorism is, then, a struggle for emancipation from the oppression of political violence everywhere. Consequently, in
this Manichean struggle for global emancipation against the real terror of Western democracy,
Booth further maintains that universities have a crucial
role to play. This also is something of a concern for those who do not share the critical vision, as university
international relations departments are not now, it would seem, in business to pursue dispassionate analysis
but instead are to serve as cheerleaders for this critically inspired vision. Overall, the journal's fallacious commitment to emancipation
undermines any ostensible claim to pluralism and diversity. Over determined by this transformative approach to world politics, it
necessarily denies the possibility of a realist or prudential appreciation of politics and the promotion not of
universal solutions but pragmatic ones that accept the best that may be achieved in the circumstances. Ultimately,
to present the world how it ought to be rather than as it is conceals a deep intolerance notable in the contempt
with which many of the contributors to the journal appear to hold Western politicians and the Western media. It is the
6
exploitation of this oughtistic style of thinking that leads the critic into a Humpty Dumpty world where words
mean exactly what the critical theorist “chooses them to mean—neither more nor less.” However, in order to justify
their disciplinary niche they have to insist on the failure of established modes of terrorism study . Having identified a source
of government grants and academic perquisites, critical studies in fact does not deal with the notion of terrorism as such, but instead the manner in which the Western liberal democratic state
has supposedly manipulated the use of violence by non-state actors in order to “other” minority communities and create a politics of fear. Critical Studies and Strategic Theory—A Missed
Opportunity Of course, the doubtful contribution of critical theory by no means implies that all is well with what one might call conventional terrorism studies. The subject area has in the past
produced superficial assessments that have done little to contribute to an informed understanding of conflict. This is a point readily conceded by John Horgan and Michael Boyle who put “A
Case Against 'Critical Terrorism Studies'” (pp. 51-74). Although they do not seek to challenge the agenda, assumptions, and contradictions inherent in the critical approach, their contribution to
the new journal distinguishes itself by actually having a well-organized and well-supported argument. The authors' willingness to acknowledge deficiencies in some terrorism research shows
that
critical self-reflection is already present in existing terrorism studies . It is ironic, in fact, that the most clearly reflective, original, and
critical contribution in the first edition should come from established terrorism researchers who critique the critical position. Interestingly, the specter haunting both conventional and critical
terrorism studies is that both assume that terrorism is an existential phenomenon, and thus has causes and solutions. Burke makes this explicit: “The inauguration of this journal,” he declares,
“indeed suggests broad agreement that there is a phenomenon called terrorism” (p. 39). Yet this is not the only way of looking at terrorism. For a strategic theorist the notion of terrorism does
not exist as an independent phenomenon. It is an abstract noun. More precisely, it is merely a tactic—the creation of fear for political ends—that can be employed by any social actor, be it
strategic theory offers a far more “critical
perspective on terrorism” than do the perspectives advanced in this journal. Guelke, for example, propounds a curiously orthodox
state or non-state, in any context, without any necessary moral value being involved. Ironically, then,
standpoint when he asserts: “to describe an act as one of terrorism, without the qualification of quotation marks to indicate the author's distance from such a judgement, is to condemn it as
Terrorism is simply a method to achieve an end. Any moral
judgment on the act is entirely separate. To fuse the two is a category mistake . In strategic theory, which Guelke ignores, terrorism does
absolutely illegitimate” (p. 19). If you are a strategic theorist this is an invalid claim.
not, ipso facto, denote “absolutely illegitimate violence.” Intriguingly, Stohl, Booth, and Burke also imply that a strategic understanding forms part of their critical viewpoint. Booth, for
instance, argues in one of his commandments that terrorism should be seen as a conscious human choice. Few strategic theorists would disagree. Similarly, Burke feels that there does “appear
to be a consensus” that terrorism is a “form of instrumental political violence” (p. 38). The problem for the contributors to this volume is that they cannot emancipate themselves from the
very orthodox assumption that the word terrorism is pejorative. That may be the popular understanding of the term, but inherently terrorism conveys no necessary connotation of moral
All
violence is instrumental. Grading it according to whether it is insurgency, resistance, or atrocity is irrelevant. Any
strategic actor may practice forms of warfare. For this reason Burke's further claim that existing definitions of
terrorism have “specifically excluded states as possible perpetrators and privilege them as targets,” is wholly
inaccurate (p. 38). Strategic theory has never excluded state-directed terrorism as an object of study, and neither for that matter, as Horgan and Boyle point out, have more
condemnation. “Is terrorism a form of warfare, insurgency, struggle, resistance, coercion, atrocity, or great political crime,” Burke asks rhetorically. But once more he misses the point.
conventional studies of terrorism. Yet, Burke offers—as a critical revelation—that “the strategic intent behind the US bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia, Israel's bombing of Lebanon, or
the sanctions against Iraq is also terrorist.” He continues: “My point is not to remind us that states practise terror, but to show how mainstream strategic doctrines are terrorist in these terms
and undermine any prospect of achieving the normative consensus if such terrorism is to be reduced and eventually eliminated” (original italics) (p. 41). This is not merely confused, it displays
remarkable nescience on the part of one engaged in teaching the next generation of graduates from the Australian Defence Force Academy. Strategic theory conventionally recognizes that
actions on the part of state or non-state actors that aim to create fear (such as the allied aerial bombing of Germany in World War II or the nuclear deterrent posture of Mutually Assured
Destruction) can be terroristic in nature.7 The problem for critical analysts like Burke is that they impute their own moral valuations to the term terror. Strategic theorists do not. Moreover, the
those interested in a truly
“critical” approach to the subject should perhaps turn to strategic theory for some relief from the strictures that
have traditionally governed the study of terrorism, not to self-proclaimed critical theorists who only replicate
statement that this undermines any prospect that terrorism can be eliminated is illogical: you can never eliminate an abstract noun. Consequently,
the flawed understandings of those whom they criticize. Horgan and Boyle conclude their thoughtful article by claiming that critical terrorism studies
has more in common with traditional terrorism research than critical theorists would possibly like to admit. These reviewers agree: they are two sides of the same coin. Conclusion In the
looking glass world of critical terror studies the conventional analysis of terrorism is ontologically challenged, lacks self-reflexivity, and is policy oriented. By contrast, critical theory's ethicist,
yet relativist, and deconstructive gaze reveals that we are all terrorists now and must empathize with those sub-state actors who have recourse to violence for whatever motive. Despite their
intolerable othering by media and governments, terrorists are really no different from us. In fact, there is terror as the weapon of the weak and the far worse economic and coercive terror of
At the core of this understanding sits a radical pacifism
and an idealism that requires not the status quo but communication and “human emancipation .” Until this
the liberal state. Terrorists therefore deserve empathy and they must be discursively engaged.
radical post-national utopia arrives both force and the discourse of evil must be abandoned and instead
therapy and un-coerced conversation must be practiced. In the popular ABC drama Boston Legal Judge Brown perennially
referred to the vague, irrelevant , jargon-ridden statements of lawyers as “jibber jabber .” The Aberystwyth-based
school of critical internationalist utopianism that increasingly dominates the study of international relations in
Britain and Australia has refined a higher order incoherence that may be termed Aber jabber . The pages of the journal of
Critical Studies on Terrorism are its natural home.
China Reps Good
Our depictions of China are accurate
Blumenthal et al 11 ( Dan Blumenthal is a current commissioner and former vice chairman of the
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he directs efforts to monitor, investigate,
and provide recommendations on the national security implications of the economic relationship
between the two countries. “Avoiding Armageddon with China”
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/09/06/avoiding_armageddon_with_china?wpisrc=obinsit
e)
The balancing and hedging strategy should involve options to avoid what Traub rightfully describes as
"Armageddon." We call for a myriad of conventional options short of striking the nuclear-armed PRC, in the
hope that such a strategy enhances deterrence in the first place and avoids Armageddon should deterrence fail.
The strategy aims to slow escalation rather than quicken it. The idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy -- of turning
China into an enemy by treating it as one -- is like a unicorn; it is a make believe creature that still has its
believers. The United States has done more than any other country to "turn China into a friend" by welcoming it
into the international community. Alas, China has not fulfilled this U.S. "prophesy of friendship." Instead China
has built what all credible observers call a destabilizing military that has changed the status quo by holding a
gun to Taiwan's head even as Taiwan makes bold attempts at peace, by claiming ever more territory in the
South China Sea, and by attempting to bully and intimidate Japan. Traub asks whether our allies and partners
will be willing to participate in an "anti-Chinese coalition," as he describes it. As the paper says, all allies,
partners, and potential partners are already modernizing their militaries in response to China. And they will
continue to do so regardless of whether the U.S. pursues what Traub would see as an "anti-China" strategy.
Even laid-back Australia has plans to double its submarine fleet -- it is not doing so to defend against Fiji. The
paper argues that it is time for the United States to offer more serious assistance so that matters do not get out
of hand. A strong U.S. presence and commitment to the region's security can help avoid a regional nuclear arms
race, for example. The United States can be a force multiplier by providing the intelligence, surveillance, and re
connaissance that only Washington possesses, and by training, and equipping our allies and friends. This
strategy is one way of beginning to put Asia back in balance as China changes the status quo. Not doing so, we
fear, would lead to Armageddon.
Assessing Chinese motivation is possible and epistemologically useful--Joseph K. Clifton 11, Claremont McKenna College, “DISPUTED THEORY AND SECURITY POLICY:
RESPONDING TO “THE RISE OF CHINA”,
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1164&context=cmc_theses
First, motives can be known. Mearsheimer is correct in observing that assessing motives can be difficult,
but this does not mean that the task is impossible. There clearly are ways of finding out information about
the goals of states and the means with which they plan to achieve them. One of the most important roles of
intelligence analysts, for example, is to determine state interests and expected behavior based on
obtained information. The possibility that information may be flawed should not lead to a rejection of all
information. People make decisions based on less than perfect knowledge all of the time. This ability to know
motives extends to future motives, because an analyst can use information such as historical trends to observe
consistencies or constant evolutions of motives. Prediction of the future is necessarily less certain in its
accuracy, but the prediction can still be made.
104¶ Second, even if there is still some uncertainty of motives, the rational response is not to assume absolute
aggression. Assuming aggressive motive in a situation of uncertainty ignites the security dilemma, which
could actually decrease a state’s security. Mearsheimer calls this tragic, but it is not necessary. An
illustrative example is Mearsheimer’s analysis of the German security situation were the United States
to withdraw its military protection. Mearsheimer argues that it would be rational for Germany to
develop nuclear weapons, since these weapons would provide a deterrent, and it would also be rational
for nuclear European powers to wage a preemptive war against Germany to prevent it from developing
a nuclear deterrent. 105 This scenario is not rational for either side because it ignores motives. If
Germany knows that other states will attack if it were to develop nuclear weapons, then it would not be
rational for it to develop nuclear weapons. And if other states know that Germany’s development of
nuclear weapons is only as a deterrent, then it would not be rational to prevent German nuclear
development. The point is that the security dilemma exists because of a lack of motivational knowledge, so
the proper response is to try to enhance understanding of motives, not discard motivational knowledge
altogether. Misperception is certainly a problem in international politics, but reducing misperception
would allow states to better conform to defensive realist logic, which results in preferable outcomes relative to
offensive realism. 106¶ Assessing motives is vital in the case of the rise of China, because mutually preferable
outcomes can be achieved § Marked 19:56 § if China is not an aggressive power, as offensive realism
would have to assume, but is actually a status quo power with aims that have limited effect on the
security of the U.S. and other potentially affected countries. I do not mean here to claim with certainty
that China is and will always be a status quo power, and policymakers likely have access to more intentional
information than what is publicly known. At the very least, valuing motivational assessments empowers
policymakers to act on this knowledge, which is preferable because of the possibility of reducing competition
and conflict.
Realism is true—evolution proves
Bradley Thayer, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies of
Missouri State University, Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, international and national security affairs senior
analyst at National Institute for Public Policy, DARWIN AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ON THE
EVOLUTIONARY ORIGINS OF WAR AND INTERNAITONAL RELATIONS, 2004, p. 75-6.
The central issue here is what causes states to behave as offensive realists predict. Mearsheimer
advances a powerful argument that anarchy is the fundamental cause of such behavior. The fact that
there is no world government compels the leaders of states to take steps to ensure their security, such as
striving to have a powerful military, aggressing when forced to do so, and forging and maintaining alliances. This
is what neorealists call a self-help system: leaders of states arc forced to take these steps because nothing
else can guarantee their security in the anarchic world of international relations. I argue that
evolutionary theory also offers a fundamental cause for offensive realist behavior. Evolutionary theory
explains why individuals are motivated to act as offensive realism expects, whether an individual is a captain
of industry or a conquistador. My argument is that anarchy is even more important than most scholars
of international relations recognize. The human environment of evolutionary adaptation was anarchic; our
ancestors lived in a state of nature in which resources were poor and dangers from other humans and the
environment were great—so great that it is truly remarkable that a mammal standing three feet high—
without claws or strong teeth, not particularly strong or swift—survived and evolved to become what
we consider human. Humans endured because natural selection gave them the right behaviors to last in
those conditions. This environment produced the behaviors examined here: egoism, domination, and the ingroup/out-group distinction. These specific traits are sufficient to explain why leaders will behave, in the
proper circumstances, as offensive realists expect them to behave. That is, even if they must hurt other
humans or risk injury to themselves, they will strive to maximize their power, defined as either control over
others (for example, through wealth or leadership) or control over ecological circumstances (such as
meeting their own and their family's or tribes need for food, shelter, or other resources).
Secrecy 2AC
Exploitation of and violence against women in the marijuana industry is common
now—legalization is key to eliminate the culture of secrecy that facilitates abuse
Fendrick 13 (Sabrina, staff writer, 5-30-14, "Marijuana Prohibition Puts Industry Women at Risk"
NORML) blog.norml.org/2013/05/30/prohibition-puts-women-at-risk/
As more women are drawn to Humboldt County’s marijuana trade and off-grid lifestyle, a local batteredwomen’s shelter has noticed a growing trend of violent encounters. The Standard-Examiner reports
that, “The bulk of… cases involve single young women aged 18 to 26, who may travel to the area and are
lured to farms by promises of work, money and, often, romance. The women are hired for trim work,
which involves cleaning freshly harvested pot and preparing it for sale.” Most women who survive
violence are hesitant to seek help in general. The women in the pot-growing business however, are
under even more pressure to keep quiet because they are part of a culture that promotes secrecy.
There is no doubt the pot-growing industry supports the local economy by pumping much-needed cash
into the community. The problem is however, that because farm owners and managers (most of whom
are male) are running illegal operations under federal law, standard employment regulations such as
working conditions and sexual harassment laws do not apply. The Director of W.I.S.H (Women’s Crisis
Center of Southern Humboldt), points out that, “Men managing the farms can be paranoid over the
threat of raids or people stealing the plants. Women’s cell phones may be taken away and they may not
be allowed to leave until season’s end. Some are forced off farms at gunpoint without being paid.
Women may be beaten or psychologically controlled…”. The cycle of violence is perpetuated by an
underground, black market economy. This is just one more reason marijuana needs to be legalized and
regulated. Moving the entire marijuana industry above ground will protect workers’ rights, hold
employers accountable, and remove the culture of secrecy that continues to foster female exploitation.
Microaggressions
Their focus on calling out micro-aggressions obscures macro-structures that determine power
relations and makes the debate space inaccessible to non-academics
Common Cause 14 (Anarchist-communist organization, founded in 2007, with active branches in
Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, Ontario, 6-6-14, "With Allies Like These: Reflections on
Privilege Reductionism") linchpin.ca/?q=content/allies-these-reflections-privilege-reductionism
Championing Individual Over Collective Action While anti-oppression theory acknowledges that power
relations operate at both the micro and macro level, it places a disproportionate focus on the level of individual
interactions. Emphasis is placed on individual conduct and personal improvement, with little attention given to
challenging oppression at a structural level. Widely used by activist groups and NGOs, the document
Principles and Practices of Anti-Oppression is a telling example of this trend. The statement describes
the operation of oppression and outlines steps for challenging the unequal distribution of power solely
in terms of individual behaviour. It puts forth the following suggestions for confronting oppression:
“Keep space open for anti-oppression discussion… Be conscious of how your language may perpetuate
oppression…promote anti-oppression in everything you do…don’t feel guilty, feel motivated." In a
similar vein, the popular blog Black Girl Dangerous in a recent post 4 Ways to Push Back Against Your
Privilege offers a simple four-step model. The first step is to make the choice to relinquish power—if you are in
a position of power, relinquish this position. Step two is "just don’t go"—“If you have access to something and
you recognize that you have it partly because of privilege, opt out of it”. The third step is to shut up—if you are
an individual of privilege who is committed to anti-oppression you will “…sit the hell down and shut up.” And
finally, step four is to be careful with the identities that you claim. The strategy for ending oppression is
articulated as a matter of addressing power dynamics between individuals in a group context, but within the
confines of the State and Capitalism. For the privileged subject, struggle is presented as a matter of personal
growth and development—the act of striving to be the best non-oppressive person that you can be. An entire
industry is built on providing resources, guides, and trainings to help people learn to challenge oppression by
means of "checking their privilege." The underlining premise of this approach is the idea that privilege can be
willed away. At best this orientation is ineffective, and at worst it can actually work to recenter those who
occupy positions of privilege at the expense of wider political struggle . Andrea Smith reflecting on her
experiences with anti-oppression workshops, describes this issue: These workshops had a bit of a selfhelp orientation to them: “I am so and so, and I have x privilege.” It was never quite clear what the point
of these confessions were…It did not appear that these individual confessions actually led to any
political projects to dismantle the structures of domination that enabled their privilege. Rather, the
confession became the political project themselves. Resulting in what Smith terms the "ally industrial
complex," the approach of challenging oppression via the confession of one’s privilege leads to a valorization of
the individual actions of a "confessing subject". Acknowledging the ways in which structures of oppression
constitute who we are and how we experience the world through the allocation of privilege is a
potentially worthwhile endeavour. However, it is not in and of itself politically productive or
transformative. Privilege is a matter of power. It equates benefits, including access to resources and
positions of influence, and can be considered in terms of both psychological or emotional benefits, as
well as economic or material benefits. It is much more than personal behaviours, interactions, and language,
and can neither be wished, nor confessed away. The social division of wealth and the conditions under which we
live and work shape our existence, and cannot be transformed through individual actions.
We must organize together to challenge the material infrastructure that accumulates power (one result of
which is privilege). Anything less leads to privilege reductionism—the reduction of complex systems of
oppression whose structural basis is material and institutional to a mere matter of individual interactions and
personal behaviours. Relentless Articulation of Difference As a component of anti-oppression politics,
intersectionality accounts for the complexity of domination by outlining the various ways in which different
forms of oppression intersect and reproduce each other. Rooted in feminist discussions of the 1970s and
1980s that sought to problematize the notion of universal "womanhood," intersectionality provides a
framework for conceptualizing the ways in which different “positionalities” (eg. gender, sexuality, race, class,
ability, etc.) shape people’s subjective experiences, as well as material realities. Patricia Hill Collins
describes intersectionality as an “…analysis claiming that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality,
ethnicity, nation, and age form mutually constructing features of social organization.” In sum,
intersectionality provides a lens through which we can view people’s social locations as mutually
constitutive and tied to systemic inequalities. Intersectionality is often evoked in a manner that isolates and
reifies social categories without adequately drawing attention to common ground. Crucial to its analysis is an
emphasis on a politics of difference—it is asserted that our identities and social locations necessarily
differentiate us from those who do not share those identities and social locations. So, for example, a working
class queer woman will not have the same experiences and by extension, the same interests as an affluent
woman who is straight. Similarly, a cis-man of colour will not have the same experiences and by extension
the same interests as a trans* man of colour, and so on and so forth. Within this framework, difference is
the fundamental unit of analysis and that which proceeds and defines identity. This practice works to isolate
and sever connections between people in that it places all of its emphasis on differentiation. There are
seemingly endless combinations of identities that can be articulated. However, these articulations of
difference do not necessarily get at the root of the problem. As Collins argues: “…Quite simply, difference is less
a problem for me than racism, class exploitation and gender oppression. Conceptualizing these systems of
oppression as difference obfuscates the power relations and material inequalities that constitute oppression." It
is absolutely true that our social locations shape our experiences, and may influence our politics. Acknowledging
difference is important, but it is not enough. It can obscure the functioning of oppression, and act as a barrier
to collective struggle . The experiences of a female migrant who works as a live-in caregiver will not be
the same as a male worker who has citizenship and works in a unionized office. These differences are
substantial and should not be ignored. However, in focusing only on difference we lose sight of the fact that
both are exploited under capitalism, and have a shared interest in organizing to challenge Capital. To be clear,
this is not to say that divisions can be put aside and dealt with “after the revolution”, but to highlight the
importance of finding common ground as a basis to bridge difference and organize collectively to challenge
oppression . In the words of Sherene Razack: “speaking about difference…is not going to start the
revolution.” Moving beyond a politics of difference, we need an oppositional politics that seeks to transform
structural relations of power. The Subcultural Ghetto and Lifestylism The culture of anti-oppression politics
lends itself to the creation and maintenance of insular activist circles. A so-called "radical community" —
consisting of collective houses, activist spaces, book-fairs, etc. — premised on anti-oppression politics
fashions itself as a refuge from the oppressive relations and interactions of the outside world. This notion of
“community”, along with anti-oppression politics’ intense focus on individual and micro personal interactions,
disciplined by "call-outs" and privilege checking, allows for the politicization of a range of trivial lifestyle
choices. This leads to a bizarre process in which everything from bicycles to gardens to knitting are
accepted as radical activity. Call-out culture and the fallacy of community accountability creates a disciplinary
atmosphere in which people must adhere to a specific etiquette. Spaces then become accessible only to those
who are familiar with, and able to express themselves with the proper language and adhere to the dominant
customs. Participation in the discourse which shapes and directs this language and customs is mostly up to those
who are able to spend too much time debating on activist blogs, or who are academics or professionals well
versed in the dialect. As mentioned previously, the containment of radical discourse to the university further
insulates the "activist bubble" and subcultural ghetto. In addition to creating spaces that are alienating to those
outside of our milieu, anti-oppression discourse, call-out culture, and the related "communities" leads
activists to perceive themselves as an "enlightened" section of the class (largely composed of academics,
students, professionals, etc. who have worked on their shit and checked their privilege) who are tasked with
acting as missionaries to the ignorant and unclean masses. This anarchist separatist orientation is problematic
for any who believe in the possibility of mass liberatory social movements that are capable of actually
transforming society.
Getting Better
Structural violence decreasing now
Goklany 9—Worked with federal and state governments, think tanks, and the private sector for over 35 years. Worked with IPCC before its inception as an author, delegate and
reviewer. Negotiated UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Managed the emissions trading program for the EPA. Julian Simon Fellow at the Property and Environment Research
Center, visiting fellow at AEI, winner of the Julian Simon Prize and Award. PhD, MS, electrical engineering, MSU. B.Tech in electrical engineering, Indian Institute of Tech. (Indur, “Have
increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being?” 2009,
http://www.ejsd.org/docs/HAVE_INCREASES_IN_POPULATION_AFFLUENCE_AND_TECHNOLOGY_WORSENED_HUMAN_AND_ENVIRONMENTAL_WELL-BEING.pdf)
Although global population is no longer growing exponentially, it has quadrupled since 1900.
Concurrently, affluence (or GDP per capita) has sextupled, global economic product (a measure of
aggregate consumption) has increased 23-fold and carbon dioxide has increased over 15-fold (Maddison
2003; GGDC 2008; World Bank 2008a; Marland et al. 2007).4 But contrary to Neo- Malthusian fears,
average human well-being , measured by any objective indicator, has never been higher. Food supplies,
Malthus’ original concern, are up worldwide. Global food supplies per capita increased from 2,254
Cals/day in 1961 to 2,810 in 2003 (FAOSTAT 2008). This helped reduce hunger and malnutrition worldwide .
The proportion of the population in the developing world, suffering from chronic hunger declined from 37
percent to 17 percent between 1969–71 and 2001–2003 despite an 87 percent population increase
(Goklany 2007a; FAO 2006). The reduction in hunger and malnutrition, along with improvements in basic
hygiene, improved access to safer water and sanitation, broad adoption of vaccinations, antibiotics,
pasteurization and other public health measures, helped reduce mortality and increase life expectancies . These
improvements first became evident in today’s developed countries in the mid- to late-1800s and started
to spread in earnest to developing countries from the 1950s. The infant mortality rate in developing
countries was 180 per 1,000 live births in the early 1950s; today it is 57. Consequently, global life
expectancy, perhaps the single most important measure of human well-being, increased from 31 years in
1900 to 47 years in the early 1950s to 67 years today (Goklany 2007a). Globally, average annual per
capita incomes tripled since 1950. The proportion of the world’s population outside of high-income OECD
countries living in absolute poverty (average consumption of less than $1 per day in 1985 International
dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity), fell from 84 percent in 1820 to 40 percent in 1981 to 20
percent in 2007 (Goklany 2007a; WRI 2008; World Bank 2007). Equally important, the world is more
literate and better educated. Child labor in low income countries declined from 30 to 18 percent between 1960
and 2003. In most countries, people are freer politically, economically and socially to pursue their goals as
they see fit. More people choose their own rulers, and have freedom of expression . They are more likely to live
under rule of law, and less likely to be arbitrarily deprived of life, limb and property. Social and professional
mobility has never been greater. It is easier to transcend the bonds of caste, place, gender, and other accidents
of birth in the lottery of life. People work fewer hours, and have more money and better health to enjoy their
leisure time (Goklany 2007a). Figure 3 summarizes the U.S. experience over the 20th century with
respect to growth of population, affluence, material, fossil fuel energy and chemical consumption, and
life expectancy. It indicates that population has multiplied 3.7-fold; income, 6.9-fold; carbon dioxide
emissions, 8.5-fold; material use, 26.5-fold; and organic chemical use, 101-fold. Yet its life expectancy
increased from 47 years to 77 years and infant mortality (not shown) declined from over 100 per 1,000 live
births to 7 per 1,000. It is also important to note that not only are people living longer, they are healthier . The
disability rate for seniors declined 28 percent between 1982 and 2004/2005 and, despite better diagnostic
tools, major diseases (e.g., cancer, and heart and respiratory diseases) occur 8–11 years later now than a
century ago (Fogel 2003; Manton et al. 2006). If similar figures could be constructed for other countries,
most would indicate qualitatively similar trends, especially after 1950, except Sub-Saharan Africa and
the erstwhile members of the Soviet Union. In the latter two cases, life expectancy, which had increased
following World War II, declined after the late 1980s to the early 2000s, possibly due poor economic
performance compounded, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, by AIDS, resurgence of malaria, and
tuberculosis due mainly to poor governance (breakdown of public health services) and other manmade
causes (Goklany 2007a, pp.66–69, pp.178–181, and references therein). However, there are signs of a
turnaround, perhaps related to increased economic growth since the early 2000s, although this could, of
course, be a temporary blip (Goklany 2007a; World Bank 2008a). Notably, in most areas of the world,
the healthadjusted life expectancy (HALE), that is, life expectancy adjusted downward for the severity
and length of time spent by the average individual in a less-than-healthy condition, is greater now than
the unadjusted life expectancy was 30 years ago. HALE for the China and India in 2002, for instance,
were 64.1 and 53.5 years, which exceeded their unadjusted life expectancy of 63.2 and 50.7 years in
1970–1975 (WRI 2008). Figure 4, based on cross country data, indicates that contrary to Neo-Malthusian
fears, both life expectancy and infant mortality improve with the level of affluence (economic development)
and time, a surrogate for technological change (Goklany 2007a). Other indicators of human well-being that
improve over time and as affluence rises are: access to safe water and sanitation (see below), literacy,
level of education, food supplies per capita, and the prevalence of malnutrition (Goklany 2007a, 2007b).
Perm solves—solvency deficits to the perm are falsely deterministic. Queer politics thrives in
the complexity of tension
Casey Charles “Queer Writes”. Women's Studies in Communication. Volume: 28. Issue: 1. 2005. pp. 32+.
© 2005 Organization for Research on Women & Communication. QUESTIA
Bachmann's course proposal tells us more than there is in fact something in a name (as Juliet learns when
she marries Romeo); it also points to the contingent evolution of social activism. The consequences of the
insistence on using the word queer were never ultimately foreseeable in this case, nor were the mobilizations
that would arise from the obstacles to the course. At a very practical level, Laclau's statement that "the
subject is a will to transcend structure which itself contains a lack" means , in a Hegelian sense, that activism is
a continuing confrontation between subject and structure in a way that can transform social relations. Ironically,
the phoenix-like mobilization that arose from this course's failure to take place illustrates the optimism that
inhabits Laclau's post-nihilistic notion of radical democracy. In the same way, the narrow victory in the case for
same-sex benefits has created the opportunity for further articulation. The Queer Stories story not only
breaks down the arbitrary boundaries between the discourse of academy and "real world;" it also throws
into question the ultimate results of political defeat and victory. The case of the queer course teaches us that
the struggle for social rearticulation is neither predictable nor fixed within accepted locations of power. Far from
rendering those efforts ineffective or powerless, these instabilities function as the very tools for activism in a
poststructural world.
Queerness
Engaging the law is key to combat heteronormativity
Duggan 94 Queering the State, Lisa Duggan, associate professor of American studies and history at
New York University, Social Text, No. 39 (Summer, 1994), pp. 1-14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/466361
When we turn our attention to this project, we
run into difficulty the moment we step outside our classrooms, books,
journals, and conferences. How do we represent our political concerns in public discourse? In trying to
do this, in trying to hold the ground of the fundamental criticism of the very language of current public discourse that queer theory has
enabled, in trying to translate our constructionist languages into terms that have the power to transform
political practices, we are faced with several difficulties. First, the discussion of the construction of categories of sexual
identity resists translation into terms that are culturally legible and thus usable in consequential public debates.
To illustrate this difficulty, let's imagine that you are asked to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show to talk about public school curriculums. Guest A says material on
gays will influence children to think gay is okay and thus to become disgusting perverts themselves. Guest B, from Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, says
that this will not happen because sexual identity is fixed by the age of three, if not in utero. You are Guest C-what do you say? That "the production of queer
sexualities is historically and culturally conditioned," that if gay materials in class are conducive to the production of queer sexualities, you are squarely in favor of
their use? The
difficulties here on the level of legibility and on the level of political palatability are readily apparent.
use of constructionist language to discuss homosexuality tends to leave heterosexuality in its
naturalized place-it can be taken up by homophobes to feed the fantasy of a world without homosexual bodies and desires. "If history can make them,
Second, the
history can also UNmake them" seems to be the logic here. At a conference in Toronto a decade ago, Dorothy Allison and Esther Newton suggested responding to
this danger in constructionist arguments by producing buttons demanding "Deconstruct Heterosexuality First." Of course, we can respond as the button suggests
and work to denaturalize heterosexuality (which queer studies is, in fact, doing), but this is unlikely to be received in current public debates without guffaws and
disbelief. The usual response to these difficulties is to resort to what is called "strategic essentialism": the use of essentialist categories and identity politics in public
debates because that is all anyone can understand, and we need to be effective in the political arena. I take the concerns that lead to the embrace of strategic
essentialism seriously, but I think that it is ultimately an unproductive solution.8 It allows sexual difference and queer desires to continue to be localized in
homosexualized bodies. It consigns us, in the public imagination, to the realms of the particular and the parochial, the defense team for a fixed minority, that most
"special" of special interest groups-again, letting everyone else off the hook. I would argue that we
need to find a way to close the
language gap in queer studies and queer politics. We need to do this especially with reference to the
operations of the state. Though queer politics is presently claiming public and cultural space in imaginative
new ways (kiss-ins, for example), the politics of the state are generally being left to lesbian and gay civil rights strategies.
These strategies are greatly embattled at present, and there are still many gains to be made through their deployment. But
they are increasingly ineffective in the face of new homophobic initiatives; they appear unable to generate new rhetorics and tactics against attacks designed
specifically to disable identity-based antidiscrimination policies.9 We cannot afford to fall back on strategic essentialism (it will not get us out of the trouble we are
now in), and
we cannot afford to abandon the field. We do have some precedents. Scholars and activists
working on the issues surrounding the AIDS crisis have managed to transport the work of theory into
the arena of politics and public policy with astonishing speed and commitment.10 In the arts the films of
Isaac Julien and the Sankofa collective and those of Marlon Riggs (Tongues Untied and Color Adjustment, both shown on public
television) have brought into public discourse very complex ideas about the construction of racial and sexual
identities and their intersections.
The best method for queer political is pragmatism not negativity- no cooption
Bateman 6 The Future of Queer Theory (on Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death
Drive [Duke UP, 2004]) R. Benjamin Bateman, Doctoral candidate in English at the University of Virginia,
Spring 2006,
http://www.theminnesotareview.org/journal/ns6566/bateman_r_benjamin_ns6566_stf1.shtml
Butler's model offers queer theory a brighter future than Edelman's, not simply because it confers agency
upon social actors and highlights the social's capacity for transformation, but because it supersedes the
liberal inclusiveness for which Edelman faults it. Butler's queer world is not one in which the dominant order
remains stable as it incorporates, or ingests, peripheral sexualities into its fold. Rather, it is one in which the
periphery remakes the center,
rearticulating what it means to be "normal" or "American" or "queer." Thus, queers do not simply enter society on
heterosexuality's terms; they recast such terms, seizing upon instabilities in signification to elaborate previously unarticulated and perhaps unanticipatable ways of
life. Edelman's point that 'queer' names "the resistance of the social to itself" (2002) combats the very anti-futurism he endorses; in this formulation, queerness
functions as the force that prevents a particular social order from coinciding with itself, from congealing into a futureless nightmare. Queer, then, might denote the
instability of all norms and social orders, their intrinsic capacity for change. Queer
theorists more politically programmatic than
Edelman frequently neglect this point. Michael Warner, for example, accuses gays and lesbians who aspire to marriage of caving, in assimilationist
fashion, to heterosexual norms perceived as demands. But queers never exist completely outside such norms—and thus cannot, logically, succumb to them—and
marriage and childrearing might not look the same with gays on board. After all, gays who have been traumatized by their parents' homophobia and lessons of
compulsory heterosexuality are probably less likely than their heterosexual counterparts to repeat such mistakes. Insofar
as married gays retain
connections to less traditional elements of queer culture, we cannot assume that they will abandon
their fights for sexual freedom, conform entirely to all matrimonial traditions, or turn their backs upon
their promiscuous peers. Some might, but many will not. Edelman's book works well as an intensely academic
polemic but as a political resource it proves insufficient. If queer theory is to have a social impact, it
must interpellate the gay and lesbian audience to whom, after all, it is primarily addressed. Few of these people, we
can safely assume, want to live in a void or die Antigone's death. Queer culture should keep insisting that we not sacrifice present, pressing needs to
heterosexual fantasies, but to secure its future it must imagine a political order in which the needs of children are not
inimical to the interests of queers, and it must celebrate—as Eve Sedgwick does so passionately in "How to Grow Your Kids Up Gay" – that which is
most queer, and queer-able, in children.
Legal reform is useful for LGBTQ rights
Levi and Shay 12 The Dangers of Reform: NORMAL LIFE: ADMINISTRATIVE VIOLENCE, CRITICAL
TRANS POLITICS, AND THE LIMITS OF LAW, Jennifer Levi is the director of the Transgender Rights Project
of GLAD, Giovanna Shay is a co-chair of the Corrections Committee of the American Bar Association
Criminal Justice Section, Both serve on the faculty of Western New England University School of Law,
WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS, July/Aug. 2012,
http://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1246&context=facschol
In the context of mass incarceration, in which reform can produce ever cleaner and more technologically advanced human warehouses, Spade's arguments are welltaken. His
critique is less persuasive when he moves into the broader arena of LGBTQ rights. Spade
believes that law reform is at odds with distributive justice. In his view, advocacy that departs from the
idealized approach he champions harms the transgender community. While we laud his critique of some elements of liberal
law refom1, we disagree with his zero-sum frame. Law reform is only one piece of a strategy. It cannot
achieve everything, but it is sometimes a necessary precondition to reaching other goals and, at a
minimum, is not a causative element for diminished opportunities and status. A transgender equality
movement that includes expansion of antidiscrimination laws and marriage equality among its goals is
coextensive with the ~ project of "transformative change."
Spade argues that antidiscrimination laws "create the false impression that,,, fairness has been imposed, and
such protections merely ensure that a person's sexual
orientation or gender identity cannot be an obvious basis for an adverse employment action. They are nowhere
near broad enough to proinise substantive equality, for transgender people or anyone else. However, excluding gender identity and sexual
orientation from existing employment protections is far more damaging than committing the resources
for advocacy required to expand them. In addition, organizing to pass antidiscrimination laws has activated and radicalized LGBTQ advocacy
organizations. The California-based Transgender Law Center (incubated by the National Center for Lesbian Rights) and the
Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (first envisioned by GLAD staff members and interns) are two examples of
the generativity of liberal law reform efforts. Both organizations share many of the distributive justice goals of SRLP.
the legitimacy of the distribution of life chances restored." But
The alternative fails—calling for the destruction of civil society and state glosses over
important infrastructural questions that must be addressed in order for societal change to be
successful. Their stance cedes the political to authoritarian and reaction elites
Bryant 12 — Levi R. Bryant, Professor of Philosophy at Collin College, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from
Loyola University in Chicago, 2012 (“Underpants Gnomes: A Critique of the Academic Left,” Larval
Subjects—Levi R. Bryant’s philosophy blog, November 11th, Available Online at
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/underpants-gnomes-a-critique-of-the-academic-left/,
Accessed 02-21-2014)
I must be in a mood today–half irritated, half amused–because I find myself ranting. Of course, that’s
not entirely unusual. So this afternoon I came across a post by a friend quoting something discussing the
environmental movement that pushed all the right button. As the post read,¶ For mainstream
environmentalism– conservationism, green consumerism, and resource management –humans are
conceptually separated out of nature and mythically placed in privileged positions of authority and
control over ecological communities and their nonhuman constituents. What emerges is the fiction of a
marketplace of ‘raw materials’ and ‘resources’ through which human-centered wants, constructed as
needs, might be satisfied. The mainstream narratives are replete with such metaphors [carbon trading!].
Natural complexity,, mutuality, and diversity are rendered virtually meaningless given discursive
parameters that reduce nature to discrete units of exchange measuring extractive capacities. Jeff
Shantz, “Green Syndicalism”¶ While finding elements this description perplexing– I can’t say that I see
many environmentalists treating nature and culture as distinct or suggesting that we’re sovereigns of
nature –I do agree that we conceive much of our relationship to the natural world in economic terms
(not a surprise that capitalism is today a universal). This, however, is not what bothers me about this
passage.¶ What I wonder is just what we’re supposed to do even if all of this is true? What, given existing
conditions, are we to do if all of this is right? At least green consumerism, conservation, resource
management, and things like carbon trading are engaging in activities that are making real differences.
From this passage–and maybe the entire text would disabuse me of this conclusion–it sounds like we
are to reject all of these interventions because they remain tied to a capitalist model of production that
the author (and myself) find abhorrent. The idea seems to be that if we endorse these things we are
tainting our hands and would therefore do well to reject them altogether.¶ The problem as I see it is that
this is the worst sort of abstraction (in the Marxist sense) and wishful thinking. Within a Marxo-Hegelian
context, a thought is abstract when it ignores all of the mediations in which a thing is embedded. For
example, I understand a robust tree abstractly when I attribute its robustness, say, to its genetics alone,
ignoring the complex relations to its soil, the air, sunshine, rainfall, etc., that also allowed it to grow
robustly in this way. This is the sort of critique we’re always leveling against the neoliberals. They are
abstract thinkers. In their doxa that individuals are entirely responsible for themselves and that they
completely make themselves by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, neoliberals ignore all the
mediations belonging to the social and material context in which human beings develop that play a role
in determining the vectors of their life. They ignore, for example, that George W. Bush grew up in a
family that was highly connected to the world of business and government and that this gave him
opportunities that someone living in a remote region of Alaska in a very different material infrastructure
and set of family relations does not have. To think concretely is to engage in a cartography of these
mediations, a mapping of these networks, from circumstance to circumstance (what I call an “ontocartography”). It is to map assemblages, networks, or ecologies in the constitution of entities.¶
Unfortunately, the academic left falls prey to its own form of abstraction. It’s good at carrying out critiques
that denounce various social formations, yet very poor at proposing any sort of realistic constructions of
alternatives . This because it thinks abstractly in its own way, ignoring how networks, assemblages, structures,
or regimes of attraction would have to be remade to create a workable alternative. Here I’m reminded by the
“underpants gnomes” depicted in South Park:¶ [YouTube video omitted]¶ The underpants gnomes have a
plan for achieving profit that goes like this:¶ Phase 1: Collect Underpants¶ Phase 2: ?¶ Phase 3: Profit!¶
They even have a catchy song to go with their work:¶ [YouTube video omitted]¶ Well this is sadly how it
often is with the academic left. Our plan seems to be as follows:¶ Phase 1: Ultra-Radical Critique¶ Phase 2: ?
(Question Mark)¶ Phase 3: Revolution and complete social transformation!¶ Our problem is that we seem
perpetually stuck at phase 1 without ever explaining what is to be done at phase 2. Often the critiques
articulated at phase 1 are right, but there are nonetheless all sorts of problems with those critiques
nonetheless. In order to reach phase 3, we have to produce new collectives. In order for new collectives to be
produced, people need to be able to hear and understand the critiques developed at phase 1. Yet this is where
everything begins to fall apart. Even though these critiques are often right, we express them in ways that only
an academic with a PhD in critical theory and post-structural theory can understand. How exactly is Adorno to
produce an effect in the world if only PhD’s in the humanities can understand him? Who are these
things for? We seem to always ignore these things and then look down our noses with disdain at the
Naomi Kleins and David Graebers of the world. To make matters worse, we publish our work in expensive
academic journals that only universities can afford, with presses that don’t have a wide distribution, and give
our talks at expensive hotels at academic conferences attended only by other academics . Again, who are these
things for? Is it an accident that so many activists look away from these things with contempt, thinking
their more about an academic industry and tenure, than producing change in the world? If a tree falls in a
forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound! Seriously dudes and dudettes, what are you
doing?¶ But finally, and worst of all, us Marxists and anarchists all too often act like assholes. We denounce
others, we condemn them, we berate them for not engaging with the questions we want to engage with, and
we vilify them when they don’t embrace every bit of the doxa that we endorse. We are every bit as off-putting
and unpleasant as the fundamentalist minister or the priest of the inquisition (have people yet understood
that Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus was a critique of the French communist party system and the
Stalinist party system, and the horrific passions that arise out of parties and identifications in general?).
This type of “revolutionary” is the greatest friend of the reactionary and capitalist because they do more to
drive people into the embrace of reigning ideology than to undermine reigning ideology. These are the people
that keep Rush Limbaugh in business . Well done!¶ But this isn’t where our most serious shortcomings lie.
Our most serious shortcomings are to be found at phase 2. We almost never make concrete proposals for how
things ought to be restructured, for what new material infrastructures and semiotic fields need to be produced,
and when we do, our critique-intoxicated cynics and skeptics immediately jump in with an analysis of all the
ways in which these things contain dirty secrets, ugly motives, and are doomed to fail. How, I wonder, are we
to do anything at all when we have no concrete proposals ? We live on a planet of 6 billion people . These 6
billion people are dependent on a certain network of production and distribution to meet the needs of their
consumption. That network of production and distribution does involve the extraction of resources, the
production of food, the maintenance of paths of transit and communication, the disposal of waste, the building
of shelters, the distribution of medicines, etc., etc., etc.¶ What are your proposals ? How will you meet these
problems ? How will you navigate the existing mediations or semiotic and material features of infrastructure?
Marx and Lenin had proposals. Do you? Have you even explored the cartography of the problem? Today
we are so intellectually bankrupt on these points that we even have theorists speaking of events and acts and
talking about a return to the old socialist party systems, ignoring the horror they generated, their failures, and
not even proposing ways of avoiding the repetition of these horrors in a new system of organization . Who
among our critical theorists is thinking seriously about how to build a distribution and production system
that is responsive to the needs of global consumption, avoiding the problems of planned economy, ie.,
who is doing this in a way that gets notice in our circles? Who is addressing the problems of microfascism that arise with party systems (there’s a reason that it was the Negri & Hardt contingent, not the
Badiou contingent that has been the heart of the occupy movement). At least the ecologists are thinking
about these things in these terms because, well, they think ecologically. Sadly we need something more,
a melding of the ecologists, the Marxists, and the anarchists. We’re not getting it yet though, as far as I
can tell. Indeed, folks seem attracted to yet another critical paradigm, Laruelle.¶ I would love, just for a
moment, to hear a radical environmentalist talk about his ideal high school that would be academically
sound. How would he provide for the energy needs of that school? How would he meet building codes
in an environmentally sound way? How would she provide food for the students? What would be her
plan for waste disposal? And most importantly, how would she navigate the school board, the state
legislature, the federal government, and all the families of these students? What is your plan? What is
your alternative? I think there are alternatives. I saw one that approached an alternative in Rotterdam. If
you want to make a truly revolutionary contribution, this is where you should start. Why should anyone
even bother listening to you if you aren’t proposing real plans? But we haven’t even gotten to that point.
Instead we’re like underpants gnomes, saying “revolution is the answer!” without addressing any of the
infrastructural questions of just how revolution is to be produced, what alternatives it would offer, and how we
would concretely go about building those alternatives. Masturbation.¶ “Underpants gnome” deserves to be a
category in critical theory; a sort of synonym for self-congratulatory masturbation. We need less critique not
because critique isn’t important or necessary–it is–but because we know the critiques, we know the problems .
We’re intoxicated with critique because it’s easy and safe . We best every opponent with critique. We occupy a
position of moral superiority with critique. But do we really do anything with critique? What we need today ,
more than ever , is composition or carpentry . Everyone knows something is wrong. Everyone knows this system
is destructive and stacked against them. Even the Tea Party knows something is wrong with the economic
system, despite having the wrong economic theory. None of us, however, are proposing alternatives . Instead
we prefer to shout and denounce. Good luck with that.
Isaac
Their call to reject the state in every instance is complicit with the evil they criticize
Jeffrey Issac (professor of political science at Indiana University) 2002 Dissent, Spring, ebsco
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught,
an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally
laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that
the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or
refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if
such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean
conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is
not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the
standpoint of politics—as opposed to religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In
categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any
effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it
is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with
“good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of
communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is
equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in
pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those
who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
Prag good
Pragmatic steps are necessary to achieve the alt
Erik Olin Wright, Professor, Sociology, University of Wisconsin, “Guidelines for Envisioning Real
Utopias,” SOUNDSINGS, 4—07, www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Published%20writing/Guidelinessoundings.pdf
5. Waystations¶ The final guideline for discussions of envisioning real utopias concerns the importance
of waystations. The central problem of envisioning real utopias concerns the viability of institutional
alternatives that embody emancipatory values, but the practical achievability of such institutional designs
often depends upon the existence of smaller steps, intermediate institutional innovations that move us in
the right direction but only partially embody these values .Institutional proposals which have an all-or-nothing
quality to them are both less likely to be adopted in the first place, and may pose more difficult transitioncost problems if implemented. The catastrophic experience of Russia in the “shock therapy” approach to
market reform is historical testimony to this problem.¶Waystations are a difficult theoretical and
practical problem because there are many instances in which partial reforms may have very different
consequences than full- bodied changes. Consider the example of unconditional basic income. Suppose
that a very limited, below-subsistence basic income was instituted: not enough to survive on, but a grant
of income unconditionally given to everyone. One possibility is that this kind of basic income would act
mainly as a subsidy to employers who pay very low wages, since now they could attract more workers
even if they offered below poverty level¶ earnings. There may be good reasons to institute such wage
subsidies, but they would not generate the positive effects of a UBI, and therefore might not function as
a stepping stone.¶What we ideally want, therefore, are intermediate reforms that have two main
properties: first, they concretely demonstrate the virtues of the fuller program of transformation, so they
contribute to the ideological battle of convincing people that the alternative is credible and desirable ; and
second, they enhance the capacity for action of people, increasing their ability to push further in the future .
Waystations that increase popular participation and bring people together in problem-solving deliberations
for collective purposes are particularly salient in this regard. This is what in the 1970s was called
“nonreformist reforms”: reforms that are possible within existing institutions and that pragmatically solve real
problems while at the same time empowering people in ways which enlarge their scope of action in the future.
1AR
Extinction first—existence before essence
Paul Wapner, Associate Professor and Director, Global Environmental Policy Program, American University, “Leftist Criticism of
‘Nature’: Environmental Protection in a Postmodern Age,” DISSENT, Winter 2003,
www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/archives/2003/wi03/wapner.htm
All attempts to listen to nature are social constructions-except one. Even the most radical postmodernist must acknowledge
the distinction between physical existence and non-existence. As I have said, postmodernists accept that there
is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world even if they argue about the different meanings
we ascribe to it. This acknowledgment of physical existence is crucial. We can't ascribe meaning to that which
doesn't appear. What doesn't exist can manifest no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should rightly worry about
interpreting nature's expressions. And all of us should be wary of those who claim to speak on nature's behalf (including
environmentalists who do that). But we need not doubt the simple idea that a prerequisite of expression is existence.
This in turn suggests that preserving the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be seen by eco-critics as a
fundamental good. Eco-critics must be supporters, in some fashion, of environmental preservation. Postmodernists reject the idea
of a universal good. They rightly acknowledge the difficulty of identifying a common value given the multiple contexts of our valueproducing activity. In fact, if there is one thing they vehemently scorn, it is the idea that there can be a value that stands above the
individual contexts of human experience. Such a value would present itself as a metanarrative and, as Jean-François Lyotard has
explained, postmodernism is characterized fundamentally by its "incredulity toward meta-narratives." Nonetheless, I can't see how
postmodern critics can do otherwise than accept the value of preserving the nonhuman world. The nonhuman is the
extreme "other"; it stands in contradistinction to humans as a species. In understanding the constructed quality of
human experience and the dangers of reification, postmodernism inherently advances an ethic of respecting the
"other." At the very least, respect must involve ensuring that the "other" actually continues to exist. In our day
and age, this requires us to take responsibility for protecting the actuality of the nonhuman. Instead, however, we
are running roughshod over the earth's diversity of plants, animals, and ecosystems. Postmodern critics should find this
particularly disturbing. If they don't, they deny their own intellectual insights and compromise their fundamental moral commitment.