Impact Defense
African Instability
No Impact
No African War
Burbach and Fettweis, 14 – [David T. Burbach, Associate Professor of National Security
Affairs at the Naval War College, B.A. in Government from Pomona College, and earned a Ph.D.
in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Fettweis,
Associate Professor in International Relations at Tulane University, 2014, The Coming Stability?
The Decline of Warfare in Africa and Implications for International Security,
http://www.contemporarysecuritypolicy.org/assets/CSP-353%20Burbach%20and%20Fettweis.pdf] Jeong
Anarchy has not come to Africa – at least not in the expanding, all-encompassing way meant
by the pessimists of a decade or two ago. The continent is far from uniformly peaceful, and
current outbreaks of violence are reminders of the need for more progress. On the whole,
however, Africa is less war-torn than at any time in the past, which runs contrary to
widespread perceptions that exist even among foreign policy experts. Kaplan remains
unchanged, claiming recently that his most important predictions have actually been borne
out.95 However, the evidence suggests that despite neo-Malthusians fears, by most measures
life on the continent is improving. War is becoming less of a threat to the life of the average
African than emerging middleincome threats like traffic accidents or diabetes. Nor have realist
fears of predatory wars and wholesale remaking of the map of Africa come to pass. That is not
meant to dismiss the suffering of residents of the Central African Republic, South Sudan or
northern Nigeria, nor to suggest that all is well. There are hundreds of millions of Africans who
do not face as great a threat of armed conflict as they once did, however. It is important to see
Africa as more than 50 distinct countries, some – and by historical standards, relatively few – of
which are beset by warfare, even if they continue to face other, even greater challenges.
Nothing guarantees that these trends will continue. Indeed, several require active maintenance.
If the outside world stops responding to African hotspots, at least with diplomatic resources
and avoiding support to plunder-financed armed groups, conflict becomes more likely. Intense
American –Chinese competition could encourage internal conflict or spur vicious circles of
tension between neighbours. The United Nations, former colonizers and AFRICOM have all
been useful in helping to bring stability to the continent, but their long-term interest is hardly
assured. A global recession or a wave of protectionism could dash optimism about economic
growth. But for now, for the first time in quite some time, there is reason for optimism about
the decline of warfare in Africa. What the United States and other outsiders should not do,
however, is continue to look at Africa though a lens that overemphasizes conflict and a few
crisis-afflicted nations. Additional American support for African peacekeeping capability is
welcome, but an increase in American investment in African economies would do even more
good for more people. Policymakers should emphasize to the business community how much is
now going right in Africa. The Obama Administration has taken useful steps in that direction, but
at other times shows signs of the ‘Africa-as-Anarchy’ mindset. Programmes to help African
governments build capacity outside the military-security sphere could be expanded, such as
police and judicial systems, or the infrastructure and service delivery needs of large cities in
which a growing share of Africans live. Africa faces many problems. Peace does not necessarily
bring freedom, justice, or prosperity. But today a far greater percentage of people on the
continent live without serious risk of dying due to warfare than pessimists expected. On the
contrary, ‘end of war’ optimists may prove to be right about Africa too, if on a slower time scale
than most of the world. Perhaps a rising generation of leaders and citizens are being influenced
by both global norms and expectations of greater opportunities. Africa is surely the hardest test
of the global trend away from international conflict. If conflict can no longer find a home there,
will it be welcome anywhere?
Global Norms check instability and escalation – History proves
Burbach and Fettweis, 14 – [David T. Burbach, Associate Professor of National Security
Affairs at the Naval War College, B.A. in Government from Pomona College, and earned a Ph.D.
in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Fettweis,
Associate Professor in International Relations at Tulane University, 2014, The Coming Stability?
The Decline of Warfare in Africa and Implications for International Security,
http://www.contemporarysecuritypolicy.org/assets/CSP-353%20Burbach%20and%20Fettweis.pdf] Jeong
Global Norms, and ‘Sameness’ Every modern state is part of an interconnected international
society, where ideas and norms spread with unprecedented rapidity. As Evan Luard explained,
even though at any given time states vary in their ‘particular interests and motives, in their
political and social structure and in the characteristics of their leaders, all will be to some extent
influenced by the aims and aspirations which are instilled by the society as a whole. No state is
an island.’89 Twenty-first-century Africa exists in a complex, globalizing society whose
members have been slowly abandoning the recourse to warfare. Its leaders and its people
would not be unaffected by such powerful global trends. As elsewhere in the world, warfare
was a natural aspect of politics for most of African history. ‘Periods of rest, or armistice, or
resolution, were never taken for granted’, explained Reid, ‘nor were they always particularly
welcome, because war was economically, politically and socially important.’90 Similar beliefs
about the positive aspects of warfare were widespread in Europe and the United States until the
First World War. That has changed. War is largely considered avoidable and regrettable, not a
welcome test of societal virility.91 There exists now widespread belief that war is not
inevitable, that conflict resolution need not involve violence. Perhaps war is on the decline in
Africa because 21st-century ideas have evolved, much as ideas on slavery evolved in the 19th
century. The post-Cold War era has been more peaceful than any of its predecessors.92 There
have been no major wars involving rich, industrialized nations for at least six decades – the
longest such stretch in history. There are good theoretical reasons to believe that conflict
resolution norms in the global north affect decisions in the south. As Kenneth Waltz argued,
systems tend to produce uniform behaviour among individual units, a tendency toward
‘sameness’.93 Success breeds imitation; the behaviour of prestigious states will be copied. Over
time, a set of behaviours becomes uniform. Peace may be essentially diffusing out from the
global north. It would be hard for Africa to remain immune from a fundamental
transformation in beliefs regarding warfare in broader international society, particularly with
modern communications reducing isolation. It is difficult for leaders to credibly claim war is a
useful, necessary option when the notion is rejected elsewhere. If war-aversion has become
dominant in the global marketplace of ideas in the global north, it would be hard for even
determined belligerents to keep it forever out of the south. The suggestion that a war-aversion
norm is spreading to Africa may be too much for some to accept. Modern African despots may
not be less venal than those who came before, but if the routes to power, prestige and wealth
have changed, they cannot help but have noticed. They need not have turned into pacifists,
but if the structure of incentives has changed, so will their behaviour. A similar process
appears to be at work elsewhere in what was once considered the ‘zone of turmoil’. Latin
America is also experiencing the most peaceful era in its history. The 2004 tsunami helped bring
an end to one of the few active rebellions in Southeast Asia. The only region seemingly immune
to evolving norms is the Middle East. While it is certainly possible that violence in Africa could
return, these potential explanations for the decline in conflict contain grounds for optimism.
The continent appears poised for better economic times, and, less certainly, better governance;
both trends are likely to reduce armed conflict. External influence is growing, and most of its
modern forms reduce incentives to fight. And if an evolution in norms explains some of the
decrease, peace may have even more staying power, for normative evolution is typically
unidirectional.94 American public awareness and American foreign policy may not have
caught up with these trends, and ‘more peaceful’ does not mean ‘perfect’, but there is good
reason to expect a safer future for Africans.
External support and security interventions prevent any risk of conflict
Burbach and Fettweis, 14 – [David T. Burbach, Associate Professor of National Security
Affairs at the Naval War College, B.A. in Government from Pomona College, and earned a Ph.D.
in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Fettweis,
Associate Professor in International Relations at Tulane University, 2014, The Coming Stability?
The Decline of Warfare in Africa and Implications for International Security,
http://www.contemporarysecuritypolicy.org/assets/CSP-353%20Burbach%20and%20Fettweis.pdf] Jeong
External Support According to a Kikuyu proverb, ‘when elephants fight, it is the grass that
suffers’. Africa had the misfortune of being a field for great power competition for centuries.
As others have observed, the decline in destructive intervention and emergence of positive
intervention by outside actors is an important part of the decline of conflict.79 Most
obviously, great powers have largely ceased destructive meddling in the security affairs of the
continent. The divide-and-conquer policies of the colonial powers and the proxy wars of the
Cold War exacerbated local instability – deliberately. Rebel groups and the governments they
challenged could count on the Americans or Soviets for weapons, money, political backing, even
troops. Today extra-continental powers usually do not find themselves on opposite sides of
African wars. For all the talk of US –China competition in Africa, in practice both generally see
their interests aligned in favour of reducing conflict, not fomenting it.80 Rather than dividing
and conquering, international institutions and major powers have more commonly acted in
concert, for example in supporting UN and African Union peacekeeping missions in Somalia,
Sudan, and Mali. External pressure appears to have led to Rwanda and Uganda reducing
support for armed groups in the eastern DRC, thus facilitating UN operations against the ‘M23’
organization.81 There are some negative exceptions, such as money flowing to Islamic
extremists in the Sahel from sympathizers in the Middle East. 82 Overall though an important
factor in the decline of armed conflict is the decrease in external support for it. During the
1990s, when external support dried up many rebel groups turned to alternative sources of
funding, notably, plunder of natural resources.83 UNITA rebels in Angola survived the loss of
American funding via diamond exports while the Angolan government was oil funded. In
resource-poor Mozambique, however, civil war did not outlast Cold War aid. The extractionand-export strategy has become more difficult as the world moves, slowly, to limit illegitimate
trade. ‘Con- flict diamonds’ are not as easy to sell as they were 20 years ago, and the world
recently boycotted cocoa from Ivory Coast after then-President Gbabgo tried to hold on to
power by force.84 Factions in the eastern DRC will find it more difficult to sell minerals if Uganda
and Rwanda indeed reduce their facilitation of exports from that landlocked region. There is also
now positive intervention. The explosion of UN peacekeeping since the end of the Cold War
coincides with the steady drop in violence. There was only one substantial deployment of UN
peacekeepers into Africa prior to 1988 (Congo, 1960 – 1964) but 20 since, as well as European
and African Union operations.85 Andrew Mack of the Human Security Centre gives UN
involvement primary credit for the decline in conflict-related mortality worldwide.86
Peacekeepers can do little against determined belligerents, but ever fewer seem to exist in
Africa. International peacekeeping and mediation deserve some credit for the increased
durability of peace settlements and the reduced recurrence of wars.87 Peace enforcement
efforts have increased alongside peacekeeping.88 Interventions by France and the United
Kingdom in former colonies have often been successful at relatively low cost, from Sierra Leone
in 2004 to the Ivory Coast in 2011 to Mali in 2013. Paris won quick UN Security Council approval
in December 2013 to deploy a small force to the Central African Republic, which seems to have
greatly reduced violence. The United States has stepped up its training and support for African
peacekeeping, and its own intervention capabilities, notably via the creation of US Africa
Command (AFRICOM). African countries themselves have become more willing to act against
outbreaks of violence, diplomatically and sometimes even with peacekeeping forces. Overall,
external pressures no longer exacerbate local instability; to the contrary, today outside
powers usually align on the side of peace. Their interventions are not wholly humanitarian –
valuing stability can freeze injustice in place, as those living in the Niger delta would attest – but
the direct influence of external countries is more conducive for peace now than at any time
since outsiders made significant contact with Africa. Two centuries of poisonous policies may
have come to an end.
Current growth disincentives war
Burbach and Fettweis, 14 – [David T. Burbach, Associate Professor of National Security
Affairs at the Naval War College, B.A. in Government from Pomona College, and earned a Ph.D.
in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Fettweis,
Associate Professor in International Relations at Tulane University, 2014, The Coming Stability?
The Decline of Warfare in Africa and Implications for International Security,
http://www.contemporarysecuritypolicy.org/assets/CSP-353%20Burbach%20and%20Fettweis.pdf] Jeong
Economic Growth Since many of the states in Africa are among the poorest in the world, the
‘capitalist peace’ of prosperity and economic interdependence might not seem to be a likely
explanation for the decline of conflict.71 Research links low per capita GDP to civil conflict.72
Nevertheless, changing economic fortunes may be an important part of the story. While
prosperity and economic interdependence remain lower in Africa than the global north, there is
growing optimism about the continent’s economic future. Six of the fastest growing
economies between 2000 and 2010 were located south of the Sahara.73 The Economist even
moved from ‘Hopeless Africa’ to ‘Emerging Africa’.74 Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa is
expected to reach 5.2 per cent in 2014; surveys show African publics among the most
optimistic in the world.75 Higher per capita income may reduce conflict, and, probably of
more importance, growth and the expectation of future growth promote peace. Individuals
see opportunities in growing economies. Growth increases state capacity to provide services,
to address grievances, or to buy off disaffected groups without taking away resources from
others. In contrast, living standards that are not just low but declining, as was common in the
1990s, create incentives for groups to move fast to seize what they can of a shrinking pie –
before rivals do.76 The chicken-and-egg problem again arises regarding the relationship
between economic and security trends, however. Growth and the optimism that accompanies it
may contribute to the decline in conflict, but stability facilitates investment. These factors
reinforce each other in a virtuous cycle of growth and peace. As former USSecretary of State
Colin Powell told a Ugandan audience, ‘money is a coward’.77 There is also an international
aspect of the virtuous circle: conflict in neighbouring states harms one’s own economy,
especially if those neighbours provide crucial transportation links (e.g. for landlocked
states).78 A reduction of conflict in nearby countries thus makes peace and prosperity more
achievable in one’s own. The virtuous/vicious neighbourhood effect may explain why remaining
conflict in Africa is concentrated in a contiguous zone in the Sahel and northern Great Lakes.
Democracy is expanding national peace in Africa
Burbach and Fettweis, 14 – [David T. Burbach, Associate Professor of National Security
Affairs at the Naval War College, B.A. in Government from Pomona College, and earned a Ph.D.
in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Christopher Fettweis,
Associate Professor in International Relations at Tulane University, 2014, The Coming Stability?
The Decline of Warfare in Africa and Implications for International Security,
http://www.contemporarysecuritypolicy.org/assets/CSP-353%20Burbach%20and%20Fettweis.pdf] Jeong
Democracy Few
theories have become as widely accepted in the international relations
community as the ‘democratic peace’, or the suggestion that democracies do not fight each other (and, somewhat
more controversially, are generally less war-prone). Perhaps it has been the spread of democracy, even in
inchoate and incomplete forms, that has brought unprecedented stability to Africa.
It is not clear,
however, that democratization provides the best explanation of the decline in violence. For one thing, levels of democracy in Africa
are still low: the most recent evaluation from The Economist’s Economic Intelligence Unit rates only Mauritius as a ‘full democracy’.
Eight others earned the title ‘flawed democracies’.65 Freedom House rates ten African
countries (with 13 per cent of the region’s population) as ‘free’, and 21 other states as ‘partially free’.66
Second, evidence for the democracy –peace link is much stronger for external wars than
intrastate conflicts. While there are studies that suggest that democracies are marginally more likely to solve their internal
disputes peacefully, the ‘democratic peace’ is a theory of international relations, not comparative politics.67 Since the vast majority
of African con- flicts are internal, the power of regime type to account for their presence or absence is weakened. Timing is also
problematic for the democracy argument. In the 1970s and 1980s, African nations’ average Polity IV Democracy score was in the – 5
to – 6 range, or very non-democratic.68 A rapid increase occurred in the early 1990s as many dictatorships crumbled, reaching an
average around – 1. In short, the 1990s spike in conflict followed the wave of democratization. These immature democracies may
have been prone to conflict as Snyder and Mansfield have argued, because of opportunist politicians leveraging violent nationalism
or tribal identifies, though that seems less powerful in African cases than for example, the former Yugoslavia.69 The causal arrow
between democracy and warfare in Africa may point in the opposite direction: the decline of conflict may have created the space for
parties to mobilize and elections to occur. It is hard to imagine elections taking place in Liberia in 2005, for instance, if that country’s
civil war had not ended two years earlier. Many of the transitions towards democracy have occurred after the end of conflicts.
Democracy may be helping to prevent war’s return, in other words, but it cannot take full
credit for its disappearance in the first place. The option to address political grievances at the
ballot box has probably undercut the impetus to violence, but it is hard to make the case that
Africa is experiencing a Kantian democratic peace.70
Asteroids
No Impact
No risk that Asteroids will hit the earth – Recent studies prove
The Associated Press, 14 – [The Associated Press, The Washington Post, 12-9-2014, NASA:
Recently spotted asteroid no risk for Earth, Washington Times,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/nasa-recently-spotted-asteroid-no-riskfor-earth/] Jeong
WASHINGTON (AP) - NASA says a newly spotted 1,300-foot wide asteroid is not a threat to hit
Earth, despite recent media reports. NASA’s Near Earth Object program manager Donald
Yeomans said the asteroid, discovered in October by Russian scientists, won’t even get that
close to Earth in the next 150 years. And it isn’t a threat to any other planet, either.
Calculations by NASA and Harvard say the closest asteroid 2014 UR116, will get to Earth is
about 2.7 million miles in April 2047. Yeomans said that is so far away that it doesn’t make
NASA’s running list of risky near-Earth objects. Yeomans said in-depth analysis confirmed that
that the space rock would not near Earth soon.
No impact to asteroids – No chance that it will hit the Earth
Plait, 14 – [Phil Plait, Astronomer and Lecturer on space, 9-7-2014, No, We’re Not Facing an
Onslaught of Asteroid Impacts,
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/09/07/debunking_no_asteroid_swarm_is_h
eaded_for_earth.html] Jeong
Today—Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014—at about 18:00 UTC, a small asteroid named 2014 RC will harmlessly pass by the Earth, though at the
close distance of very roughly 40,000 kilometers. I wrote all about it a couple of days ago … and also warned that you can expect a
bunch of breathless and fact-free YouTube videos about it, claiming it would hit us. I was so, so close. The
very day I posted
that, a ridiculous article appeared in the U.K. tabloidExpress, claiming that the Earth “faces
100 YEARS of killer [asteroid] strikes starting 2017.” How do I phrase this? That claim is really, really, really,
really, really wrong. Really. The author of this article, Nathan Rao, has a history of writing reality-impaired articles; for example, in
August he wrote a piece suggesting the Supermoon might kill everyone on Earth. This led to a less-than-satisfying exchange of
tweets between Rao and me (and many others), with him trying to defend his writing, and ended with me telling him,
“Whatever
helps you sleep at night.” Anyway, this asteroid article he wrote is more of the
same. Essentially the only time he gets anything right in that piece is when he quotes some astronomers, but the conclusions he
jumps (leaps, launches, hyperspace blasts) to are way, way off the mark. For example, he claims: A previously unknown asteroid belt
has been located in deep space and is now hurtling towards our part of the solar system. … The terrifying predictions came as NASA
revealed disturbing new data showing 400 impacts are expected between 2017 and 2113, based on new observational data of
objects seen in space over the past 60 days. Um, no. Not even close. It’s
not an asteroid belt, but a single asteroid.
And it’s not 400 impacts, it’s 400 predicted passes of Earth, most missing by a wide margin.
Happily, U.K. amateur astronomer David Wood (who also sent me the note notifying me of Rao’s article) did the footwork for me.
He figured out that Rao is talking about the asteroid 2014 NZ64. It fits Rao’s (bizarrely
interpreted) description; it was recently discovered (in July, about 60 days ago) and the JPL
Earth Impact Risk Summary page has a list of 399 near-Earth passes between the years 2017
and 2113, the exact range Rao listed. It’s obviously what Rao is talking about, but somehow
Rao turned a single asteroid that will miss us into hundreds of asteroids that will all hit us.
That’s a somewhat significant error to make. So what’s the science here? NZ64 is a small, 100-meter or so wide,
asteroid that has an orbit that does take it pretty close to Earth. Since its discovery it has only been observed a handful of times, and
as I’ve written many times before, the fewer observations you have, the harder it is to predict where the asteroid will be in the
future. Given that, at this time, NZ64 has only been observed over less than a two-day timespan, I’d say
trying to figure
out where it’ll be more than a few months in advance is nearly impossible. So bear that in mind with
the impact risk page (which is automatically generated); we really don’t know where this asteroid will be more than a few years in
the future … and since
Earth is small, and space is very, very big, I’d be willing to bet the chance of
an impact will get even smaller once a better orbit is determined. Even so, take a look at the impact risk
page, and you’ll see a column there labeled “Impact Probability.” This gives the fractional chance of an
impact at every given encounter, where 0 is no impact for sure, and 1 would definitely be an
impact. Note how close to 0 the numbers are! Typical values translate into odds of about a
billion to one—even the wildest Vegas spender wouldn’t take that risk—and the highest
chance I saw was for a pass in 2023, when it has a one in 6 million chance of hitting us. I have a
hard time working up a sweat over that. Note also that each listed probability is actually a link where the numbers are literally
spelled out for you, right there for everyone and anyone to see. That's the central premise of Rao's article, and it's clearly wrong. I
could stop there, but there's one more thing I'd like to point out. He writes: Asteroid 2012 DA14, discovered by astronomers at the
LaSagra Observatory in Spain, currently has less than a one per cent chance of hitting but scientists can't rule out the possibility that
it might smash into our planet. Actually, that is precisely wrong: DA14 was taken off the impact risk list months ago, after
observations ruled out any chance of impact in the near future. Update, Sept. 7, 2014, at 17:00 UTC: Ron Baalke notified me that
DA14 was taken off the impact list in February 2013, the day it passed the Earth. So it's been over a year and a half that we've known
it can't hit us. Normally
I would ignore nonsense like Rao’s article, but I decided to write about it
when I saw his piece was relatively popular on Facebook (though the comments there are pretty funny, as
most of the commenters fully grasp the, ah, tenuous reality of the article). Also, to put it mildly, I take a dim view of articles that
spin, fold, and mutilate science, doubly so when it’s astronomy on the wrong end of it. And
at the very least, this is a
chance to show folks how this whole process of flagging asteroids works, so somegood can
come of it. But it also shows that, once again and as always, you can’t believe everything (or anything) you see online (and I
certainly would be extremely skeptical of anything I read in the Express). When it comes to things like asteroid impacts, your best
bet is to check with JPL, or—ahem—here. If an asteroid has a decent chance of hitting us, I’d write about it … after getting
confirmation and as many facts as I could from people who actually understand asteroid science.
NASA concedes no risk of asteroids- It’s all rhetoric
Zolifagharifard, 7-8, - [Ellie ZOLFAGHARIFARD, Reporter at Dailymail.com, It's OK, the world
WON'T end in September: Nasa forced to address radical claims a giant asteroid will soon
destroy humanity, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3116200/The-world-WON-Tend-September-Nasa-forced-address-radical-claims-giant-asteroid-soon-destroy-humanity.html]
Jeong
A massive asteroid is on a collision course with Earth, and it is large enough to spell the end of
humanity. This is the radical claim of an online community of biblical theorists who say that
life as we know it will be wiped out between 22 to 28 September this year. Despite their lack
of credentials, the popularity of the prediction has now forced Nasa to speak up, dismissing
the theory as unfounded. Nasa knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course
with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small,' a Nasa spokesperson said. 'In
fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next
several hundred years.' According to the 'message', Rodriguez says the asteroid would strike
near Puerto Rico triggering earthquakes and tsunamis. This, he adds, will devastate the east
coast of the US, Mexico, central and southern America. He warned that Nasa should issue an
alert 'so people can be relocated from the areas that are to be affected.' Other accounts of the
apocalypse theory being shared online agree that the event will be a climate catastrophe.
Some cite a meeting between French foreign minister Laurent Fabius and US Secretary of State
John Kerry in May 2014 is further evidence the Rapture is approaching, according to the
Huffington Post. Others have even predicted the events will be started by Cern's Large Hadron
Collider. One blogger, said: 'The Cern logo is 666, the sign of the beast in a circle. The Cern
collider looks like the all seeing eye or stargate we see so much of.'
Biodiversity
No Impact
No Impact – Current conservation practices solve
Brand, 4-21 - [Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation and co-founder of the
Revive and Restore project in San Francisco, 4-21-2015, Rethinking Extinction: The idea that we
are edging up to a mass extinction is not just wrong – it’s a recipe for panic and paralysis, aeon,
http://aeon.co/magazine/science/why-extinction-is-not-the-problem/] Jeong
The trends are favourable. Conservation efforts often appear in the media like a series of
defeats and retreats, but as soon as you look up from the crisis-of-the-month, you realise
that, in aggregate, conservation is winning. The ecologist Stuart Pimm at Duke University in
North Carolina claims that conservationists have already reduced the rate of extinction by 75per
cent. Getting the world’s extinction rate back down to normal is a reasonable goal for this
century. Restoring full natural bioabundance in most of the world will take longer, however. It
would mean bringing wildlife populations back up to the marvellous level of ecological
richness that existed before human impact. That could be a two-century goal. But a perception
problem stands in the way. Consider the language of these news headlines: ‘Fuelling Extinction:
Obama Budget Is Killer For Endangered Species’ (Huffington Post, February 2015). ‘“Racing
Extinction” Sounds Alarm On Ocean’s Endangered Creatures’ (NBC News, January 2015).
‘“Extinction Crisis”: 21,000 Of World’s Species At Risk Of Disappearing (Common Dreams, July
2013). ‘Australian Mammals On Brink Of “Extinction Calamity”’ (BBC, February 2015). ‘The Sixth
Extinction Is Here – And It’s Our Fault (Re/code, July 2014). The headlines are not just
inaccurate. As they accumulate, they frame our whole relationship with nature as one of
unremitting tragedy. The core of tragedy is that it cannot be fixed, and that is a formula for
hopelessness and inaction. Lazy romanticism about impending doom becomes the default view.
No end of specific wildlife problems remain to be solved, but describing them too often as
extinction crises has led to a general panic that nature is extremely fragile or already
hopelessly broken. That is not remotely the case. Nature as a whole is exactly as robust as it
ever was – maybe more so, with humans around to head off ice ages and killer asteroids.
Working with that robustness is how conservation’s goals get reached. How does nature’s
prodigious robustness actually work? We don’t know yet! Not in detail. For instance we’ve just
begun to glimpse how microbes work, and how the ocean works. Ecology is not yet a predictive
science, and conservation biology is still a young discipline. With every increment of
improvement in scientific tools, data and theory, and every single project expanding the
breadth of conservation practice, we learn more about nature’s genius, and we increase
humanity’s ability to blend in with nature, to the everlasting benefit of both.
No extinction – bio-d’s resilient and intervening factors check
Gray 15 [Richard, "The amazing chart that shows that far from heading for a mass extinction,
life is flourishing like never before - and is likely to continue to do so for millions of years",
DailyMail.com, 4/22/15, www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3050597/Stop-worryingextinctions-Life-Earth-actually-FLOURISHING-diverse-before.html] // SKY
The diversity of life on Earth is increasing despite dire warnings that the planet is facing a mass
extinction, a leading writer has claimed. Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation
and editor of the Whole Earth Catalogue, believes the focus on widespread extinctions may
actually be harmful. Instead he argues it is highly unlikely that the planet is facing a sixth mass
extinction as many threatened species are recovering. This chart shows the increase in marine
biodiversity from the fossil record and the five mass extinction events His views are likely to be
controversial with conservationists who have been warning that human activities risk killing off a
large proportion of species on Earth in an event to rival the extinction of the dinosaurs. Mr
Brand, who campaigns for long term solutions to the world's problems rather than short term
policy decisions, said that the rate of discovery of new species was currently outstripping the
loss of species to extinction. Writing for Aeon, he said: 'Viewing every conservation issue
through the lens of extinction threat is simplistic and usually irrelevant. 'Worse, it introduces
an emotional charge that makes the problem seem cosmic and overwhelming rather than
local and solvable.' Instead he argues that the trends for conservation are actually 'looking
bright' as depleted ecosystems are being enriched and damage in others is slowing. He said:
'The five historic mass extinctions eliminated 70 per cent or more of all species in a relatively
short time. That is not going on now.' Mr Brand points to recent research by the ecologist Mark
Costello at the University of Auckland who found that the number of new species being
recorded was now at around 18,000 a year. They said that the current extinction rate of one
per cent of species per decade was far lower than the discovery rate of three per cent per
decade. Fossil records also indicate that biodiversity in the world has been increasing for the
past 200 million years and is now at its highest level ever. The black rhino, pictured, was
considered to be one of the most endangered species in the world and intensive efforts have
been made to help conserve the species and its numbers are slowly beginning to rise again Mr
Brand also points to the efforts that have taken place on many islands around the world where species are most vulnerable to extinction. He said that schemes to eradicate invasive
species like rats and goats had been hugely successful and allowed many island species to
bounce back. He also pointed to the example of cod, which the ICUN Red List describes as being
threatened with extinction, but many cod fisheries are now recovering. Mr Brand, who is also a
campaigner to reintroduce extinct species such as woolly mammoths and passenger pigeons,
believes biotechnology could also help to bring other species back from the brink by allowing
their genetic diversity to be improved. He said that some wild animals are moving back into
areas where they have long been absent by themselves. Salmon for example have moved back
into the Rhine, Seine and the Thames as the water has becoe cleaner. Wolves, lynx and brown
bears are also spreading in many parts of Europe. He said that even with climate change, it is
unlikely that all of the 23,214 species currently deemed as threatened with extinction would
die out. There are more than 1.5 million known species in the world. Mr Brand said he did not
believe climate change is likely to have much impact on the loss of wildlife as many species
will evolve and adapt to cope. He said: 'My own prediction is that climate change will be
deemed intolerable for humans long before it speeds up extinction rates, and even if radical
steps have to be taken to head it off, they will be taken.'
No impact – Species are resillient
Bastasch 14 [Michael, "Global Warming Is Increasing Biodiversity Around The World", The
Daily Caller, 5/15/14, dailycaller.com/2014/05/15/global-warming-is-increasing-biodiversityaround-the-world/] // SKY
A new study published in the journal Science has astounded biologists: global warming is not
harming biodiversity, but instead is increasing the range and diversity of species in various
ecosystems. Environmentalists have long warned that global warming could lead to mass
extinctions as fragile ecosystems around the world are made unlivable as temperatures
increase. But a team of biologists from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan found that
global warming has not led to a decrease in biodiversity. Instead, biodiversity has increased in
many areas on land and in the ocean. “Although the rate of species extinction has increased
markedly as a result of human activity across the biosphere, conservation has focused on
endangered species rather than on shifts in assemblages,” reads the editor’s abstract of the
report. The study says “species turnover” was “above expected but do not find evidence of
systematic biodiversity loss.” The editor’s abstract adds that the result “could be caused by
homogenization of species assemblages by invasive species, shifting distributions induced by
climate change, and asynchronous change across the planet.” Researchers reviewed 100 longterm species monitoring studies from around the world and found increasing biodiversity in
59 out of 100 studies and decreasing biodiversity in 41 studies. The rate of change in
biodiversity was modest in all of the studies, biologists said. But one thing in particular that
shocked the study’s authors was that there were major shifts in the types of species living in
ecosystems. About 80 percent of the ecosystems analyzed showed species changes of an
average of 10 percent per decade — much greater than anyone has previously predicted. This,
however, doesn’t mean that individual species aren’t being harmed by changing climates. The
study noted that, for example, coral reefs in many areas of the world are being replaced by a
type of algae. “In the oceans we no longer have many anchovies, but we seem to have an awful
lot of jellyfish,” Nick Gotelli, a biologist at the University of Vermont and one of the study’s
authors, told RedOrbit.com. “Those kinds of changes are not going to be seen by just counting
the number of species that are present.” “We move species around,” Gotelli added. “There is a
huge ant diversity in Florida, and about 30 percent of the ant species are non-natives. They have
been accidentally introduced, mostly from the Old World tropics, and they are now a part of the
local assemblage. So you can have increased diversity in local communities because of global
homogenization.” The study comes with huge implications for current species preservation
strategies, as most operate under the assumption that biodiversity will decrease in a warming
world. But if biodiversity is increasing, then conservationists may need a new way to monitor
the effects of global warming on ecosystems.
Bio-d loss is exaggerated – the decline is gradual and reversible
Brand 15 [Stewart, "Rethinking Extinction", 4/21/15, aeon, aeon.co/magazine/science/whyextinction-is-not-the-problem/] // SKY
The way the public hears about conservation issues is nearly always in the mode of ‘[Beloved
Animal] Threatened With Extinction’. That makes for electrifying headlines, but it misdirects
concern. The loss of whole species is not the leading problem in conservation. The leading
problem is the decline in wild animal populations, sometimes to a radical degree, often
diminishing the health of whole ecosystems. Viewing every conservation issue through the lens
of extinction threat is simplistic and usually irrelevant. Worse, it introduces an emotional
charge that makes the problem seem cosmic and overwhelming rather than local and
solvable. It’s as if the entire field of human medicine were treated solely as a matter of death
prevention. Every session with a doctor would begin: ‘Well, you’re dying. Let’s see if we can do
anything to slow that down a little.’ Medicine is about health. So is conservation. And as with
medicine, the trends for conservation in this century are looking bright. We are re-enriching
some ecosystems we once depleted and slowing the depletion of others. Before I explain how
we are doing that, let me spell out how exaggerated the focus on extinction has become and
how it distorts the public perception of conservation. Many now assume that we are in the
midst of a human-caused ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ to rival the one that killed off the dinosaurs
66 million years ago. But we’re not. The five historic mass extinctions eliminated 70 per cent
or more of all species in a relatively short time. That is not going on now. ‘If all currently
threatened species were to go extinct in a few centuries and that rate continued,’ began a
recent Nature magazine introduction to a survey of wildlife losses, ‘the sixth mass extinction
could come in a couple of centuries or a few millennia.’ The fossil record shows that biodiversity
in the world has been increasing dramatically for 200 million years and is likely to continue.
The two mass extinctions in that period (at 201 million and 66 million years ago) slowed the
trend only temporarily. Genera are the next taxonomic level up from species and are easier to
detect in fossils. The Phanerozoic is the 540-million-year period in which animal life has
proliferated. Chart courtesy of Wikimedia. The range of dates in that statement reflects
profound uncertainty about the current rate of extinction. Estimates vary a hundred-fold –
from 0.01 per cent to 1 per cent of species being lost per decade. The phrase ‘all currently
threatened species’ comes from the indispensable IUCN (International Union for Conservation
of Nature), which maintains the Red List of endangered species. Its most recent report shows
that of the 1.5 million identified species, and 76,199 studied by IUCN scientists, some 23,214
are deemed threatened with extinction. So, if all of those went extinct in the next few
centuries, and the rate of extinction that killed them kept right on for hundreds or thousands
of years more, then we might be at the beginning of a human-caused Sixth Mass Extinction.
No impact to Bio-D loss – Multiple checks on escalation
Biello, 14 – [David Biello, Editor at Scientific American on the Environment and Energy, 7-252014, Fact or Fiction?: The Sixth Mass Extinction Can Be Stopped,
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-the-sixth-mass-extinction-can-bestopped/] Jeong
Biologists and paleoecologists estimate that humans have driven roughly 1,000 species extinct
in our 200,000 years on the planet. Since 1500 we have killed off at least 322 types of animals,
including the passenger pigeon, the Tasmanian tiger and, most recently, the baiji, a freshwater
dolphin in China. Another 20,000 or more species are now threatened with extinction according
to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which keeps a list of all the known
endangered plants and animals on the planet. The population of any given animal among the
five million or so species on the planet is, on average, 28 percent smaller, thanks to humans.
And as many as one third of all animals are either threatened or endangered, a new study
inScience finds. In the jargon it's an "Anthropocene defaunation," or sixth mass extinction, and
one caused by humans. Scientists can't be sure of the current die-off rate, perhaps because
much of it is happening to beetles and other insects that are notoriously overlooked. But
according to that new study in Science, the total number of such invertebrates fell by half over
the past 35 years while the human population doubled. Other recent studies suggest that the
current extinction rate is roughly 1,000 times faster than the average pace in Earth's history.
That makes this the fastest extinction event on record, even if it is not yet a mass die-off. The
biggest, fiercest animals still left on the planet—elephants, tigers, whales, among others—are
most at risk. And we humans have shown no inclination to stop the activities—overexploitation
for food, habitat destruction and others—that drive extinction. And yet it's not too late. In the
past few decades humans brought the black-footed ferret back from just seven individuals;
vaccinated and hand-reared condors to relative abundance; and battled to preserve and
restore populations of hellbender salamanders, to name just a few in just North America
alone. According to another new analysis in Science, people have physically moved 424
species of plants and animals to protect them from extinction. For such assisted migration
efforts to succeed, careful attention must be paid both to genetics and habitat. There is no point
in bringing back the baiji, for example, if the Yangtze River remains polluted and overfished. But
conservation efforts can work. Fishes can rebound when fishing pressure is removed, just as
Maine haddock and Washington State coho salmon both have. The reforesting of the U.S.
eastern seaboardshows that when farms go away, woodlands return, and coyotes, deer,
turkey and other wildlife move back in. The animals and plants of the Amazon rainforest have
benefited from Brazil's efforts to curb deforestation. And in what might prove an enduring
lesson in conservation, paleoecologists have shown that 20 out of 21 large mammals in India—
from leopards to muntjac deer—have survived there for the past 100,000 years alongside one of
the largest human populations on the planet. To avoid the sixth mass extinction we will
probably have to employ more aggressive conservation, such as moving species to help them
cope with a changing climate. Think re-wilding: reintroducing species like wolves or beavers
that were once present in a given ecosystem but have since disappeared. Aggressive
conservation might also mean killing off newcomer species to preserve or make room for local
flora and fauna; in New Zealand, rat extirpations have helped kakapos survive. In the most
extreme case aggressive conservation could involve bringing in new animals to fill the role of
animals that have gone extinct. For example, European sailors ate their way through the Indian
Ocean islands of Mauritius, killing off the dodo and the local tortoise species. But closely related
tortoises from the neighboring Seychelles archipelago have been imported recently, and they
have helped restore the island ecosystem, including bringing back the endangered local ebony
trees. As a result of that success, similar projects are being considered from Caribbean islands
to Madagascar. There is even some hope of bringing back entirely extinct species in the future
using the new tools of synthetic biology. (De-extinction or even ecological replacement could
cause some of the same problems as invasive species, so careful management is required.)
Countries
at: Iran
Iran won’t go nuclear – They lack the incentives
Pillar, 6-8 – [ Paul R. Pillar, Senior fellow in the Brookings Institution, 28-year veteran of the
Central Intelligence Agency, Visiting professor at Georgetown University, A.B. degree from
Dartmouth College (1969), B.Phil from Oxford University (1971) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from
Princeton University (1975 and 1978), 6-8-2015, No, Iran Isn’t Destabilizing the Middle East,
LobeLog Policy, http://www.lobelog.com/no-iran-isnt-destabilizing-the-middle-east/] Jeong
As the nuclear negotiations with Iran enter what may be their final lap, diehard opponents of any agreement with Tehran have been leaning more
heavily than ever on the theme that Iran is a nasty actor in the Middle East intent on doing all manner of nefarious things in the region. Insofar as the
theme is not just an effort to generate distaste for having any dealings with the Iranian regime and purports to have a connection with the nuclear
agreement, the idea is that the sanctions relief that will be part of the agreement will give Iran more resources to do still more nefarious stuff in the
region. Several
considerations invalidate this notion, just on the face of it, as a reason to oppose
the nuclear agreement. The chief one is that if Iran really were intent on doing awful,
destructive things in its neighborhood, that would be all the more reason to ensure it does
not build a nuclear weapon— which is what the agreement being negotiated is all about. Another consideration is
that if the United States were to leave in place economic sanctions that supposedly were
erected for reasons related to Iran’s nuclear program, and to leave them in place to deny Iran
resources to do other things, the United States would be telling not only Iran but also the rest
of the world that the United States is a liar. The United States would have lied when it said that it had imposed these
sanctions for the purpose of inducing concessions regarding Iran’s nuclear policy. The damage to U.S. credibility whenever the United States attempts
in the future to use sanctions to induce policy change should be obvious. Interestingly, calls to keep current sanctions in place to deny funding for
Iranian regional activities are coming from some of the same quarters that call for putting even more of an economic squeeze on Iran to get a “better
deal”. This position is contradictory. If
the United States were to demonstrate that it is not going to remove
existing sanctions in return for Iran’s concessions on its nuclear program, the Iranians would
have no reason to believe that still more concessions on their part would bring the removal of
still more sanctions—and thus they would not make any more concessions. An invalid assumption underlying the argument about freeing
up resources is that the Iranians’ regional policy is narrowly determined by how many rials they have in their bank account. This assumption
contradicts, by the way, the assertion commonly made, again by some of the same quarters,
that Iranian leaders are far from being green eyeshade types who do such careful calculations
and instead are irrational religious fanatics who cannot be trusted with advanced technology
let alone with a nuclear weapon. In any case, with Iran just as with other states, foreign policy is a function of many calculations of
what is or is not in their national interest, and not just a matter of the available financial resources. A related unwarranted assumption is each
additional rial that does become available to the Iranians they will spend on regional shenanigans that we won’t like. That
assumption is
never supported by any analysis; it just gets tossed into discussion to be taken for granted. If
analysis is instead applied to the topic, a much different conclusion is reached; that Iran is far
more likely to apply freed resources to domestic needs. This is a straightforward matter of political calculations and
political survival, not only for President Rouhani but for other Iranian leaders who are acutely aware of the demands and expectations of the Iranian
people in this regard. But set aside for the moment all the logical inconsistencies and other reasons to reject the notion of an Iranian regional marauder
as a reason to oppose the nuclear agreement. Focus instead on the image of an Iran whose current regional policy supposedly is already an assortment
of destructive activities. This image has become the kind of conventional wisdom that repeatedly gets invoked (even, in this instance, by supporters of
the nuclear agreement) without any felt need by those who invoke it to provide any supporting facts or analysis because it is taken for granted that
everyone “knows” it to be true. The
references to the image are almost always vague and general,
couched in terms of Iran supposedly “destabilizing” the Middle East or seeking to “dominate”
it or exercise “hegemony” over it, or that it is “on the march” to take over the region. Often
there are references to “terrorism” and “subversion” without anything more specific being
offered. Often the names of conflict-ridden countries in the region are recited, but again without any specifics as to who is doing what in those
countries. To get away from such uselessly general accusations, ask: (1) what exactly is Iran doing
in the Middle East that is of concern; and (2) how does what Iran is doing differ from what
other states are doing in the same places? A careful comparison of this sort leads to the
conclusion that Iran, contrary to the conventional wisdom, does not stand out in doing
aggressive, destabilizing, or hegemonic things. Iran is one of the largest states in the Middle East and naturally, as with any
such state, competes for influence in its region. To try to keep any such state, be it Iran or any other, from competing for such influence would be futile
and damaging in its own right. To label Iranian policy as seeking “hegemony” or “domination” is only that—i.e., applying a label—when others are using
more forceful and destructive ways of trying to extend their own influence in the same places. Iran, unlike others, has not launched wars or invaded
neighboring territory (except in counterattacking during the war with Iraq that Saddam Hussein started). Nor has Iran drawn, China-like, any nine-dash
lines and asserted unsupported domination over swaths of its own region. The assumption that just about anything Iran does in the Middle East is
contrary to U.S. interests keeps getting made despite what should be the glaringly obvious counterexample of the war in Iraq. Iran and the United
States are on the same side there. They both are supporting the government of Iraq in trying to push back the radical group generally known as ISIS.
Why should Iran’s part of this effort be called part of regional trouble-making, while the U.S. part of it is given some more benign description? Those in
the United States who would rather not face that counterexample are usually quick to mutter something like, “Yes, but the Iranians are doing this for
their own malign purposes of spreading their influence in Iraq.” The first thing to note in response to such muttering is that if we are worried about
increased Iranian influence in Iraq, that increase is due chiefly not to anything the Iranians have done but rather to a war of choice that the United
States initiated. The
next thing is to ask on behalf of what interests the Iranians would use their
influence in Iraq, and how that relates to U.S. interests. The preeminent Iranian objective
regarding Iraq is to avoid anything resembling the incredibly costly Iran-Iraq War, and to have
a regime in Baghdad—preferably friendly to Iran, but at least not hostile to it—that would not
launch such a conflict again. Iran also does not want endless instability along its long western border, and its leaders are smart enough
to realize that narrowly prejudicial sectarian politics are not a prescription for stability. These lines of thinking are consistent with U.S. interests; it is not
only in the current fight against ISIS that U.S. and Iranian interests converge.
Iran won’t destabilize the middle east – Won’t go nuclear
Pillar, 6-8 – [ Paul R. Pillar, Senior fellow in the Brookings Institution, 28-year veteran of the
Central Intelligence Agency, Visiting professor at Georgetown University, A.B. degree from
Dartmouth College (1969), B.Phil from Oxford University (1971) and an M.A. and Ph.D. from
Princeton University (1975 and 1978), 6-8-2015, No, Iran Isn’t Destabilizing the Middle East,
LobeLog Policy, http://www.lobelog.com/no-iran-isnt-destabilizing-the-middle-east/] Jeong
Look carefully also at another conflict-ridden Middle Eastern state whose name often gets casually invoked: Yemen. Iran and the United States are not
on the same side of this civil war, although the United States probably has as much explaining to do as to why it has taken the side it has—the same
side as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the most capable and threatening Al-Qaeda branch operating today—as Iran does. Iran has become
identified with the side of the rebellious Houthi movement, although the most prominent Yemeni leader on the same side as the Houthis is Ali Abdullah
Saleh, who as the Yemeni president for more than thirty years was seen as our guy in Yemen, not the Iranians’ guy. Iran did not instigate the Houthi
rebellion, nor are the Houthis accurately described as “clients” of Iran much less “proxies,” as they often inaccurately are. Instead
Iran was
probably a source of restraint in advising the Houthis not to capture the capital of Sanaa,
although the Houthis went ahead and did it anyway. The Iranians probably are glad to see the Saudis bleed some in
Yemen, and whatever aid Tehran has given to the Houthis was given with that in mind. But any such aid pales in comparison to
the extent and destructiveness of the Saudis’ intervention in Yemen, which has included aerial
assaults that have caused many hundreds of civilian casualties. In the same vein consider Bahrain, which is an
interesting case given historical Iranian claims to Bahrain and past Iranian activity there. Despite that background and despite Bahraini government
accusations, there is an absence of reliable evidence of anything in recent years that could accurately be described as Iranian subversion in Bahrain.
Instead it is again the Saudis who have used forceful methods to exert their influence on a
neighbor, and in this case to prop up an unpopular Sunni regime in a Shia majority country. The
principal Saudi military intervention in Bahrain came a few years ago, but it was an early shot in a campaign that has taken fuller shape under King
Salman to use any available means, including military force, to expand Saudi influence in the region. If
there is a Persian Gulf power
that has been using damaging methods to try to become a regional hegemon, it is Saudi
Arabia, not Iran. The Saudis could claim to be acting on behalf of a status quo in Bahrain and Yemen, but then what about Syria, where it is
Iran that is backing the existing regime? And as perhaps the most germane question, how can any one of the
outside players that have mucked into that incredibly complicated civil war be singled out as a
destabilizing regional marauder while the others (some of whom, such as the United States
and Israel, have conducted their own airstrikes in the country) be given the benefit of more
benign labeling? Iran did not start the Syrian war. And each of the most significant sides fighting that war are dominated by what we normally
would consider certifiable bad guys: the Assad regime, ISIS, and an Islamist coalition led by the local Al-Qaeda branch. It is hard to see a clear and
convincing basis for parceling out benign and malign labeling here when it comes to the outside players. Then of course there is the rest of the
Levantine part of the region, including Palestine; the aid relationships that Iran has had with the H groups—Hezbollah and Hamas—are continually
invoked in any litany of Iranian regional activity. Lebanese Hezbollah certainly is still an important ally of Iran, although it has long since become strong
enough to outgrow any Iranian hand-holding. We should never forget that prior to 9/11 Hezbollah was the group that had more U.S. blood on its hands
through terrorism than any other group. We also should understand that Hezbollah has become a major player in Lebanese politics in a way in which
many in the region, including its immediate political opponents, accept it as a legitimate political actor. Right now as a military actor it is deeply
involved in the effort to support the Syrian regime, and it is not looking to stir up any new wars or instability anywhere else. Hamas has never been
anything remotely resembling a proxy of Iran, although it has accepted, somewhat reluctantly, Iranian aid in the absence of other help. To Iran, Hamas
represents Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation of (or blockading and subjugation of) Palestinian territory, without being an accessory to that
occupation, which is how the Palestinian Authority is widely seen. Hamas is the winner of the last free Palestinian election, and it has repeatedly made
clear that its ambition is to hold political power among Palestinians and that it is willing to maintain a long-term truce with Israel. Right now Hamas is
trying, unfortunately with only partial success, to keep small groups from overturning the current cease-fire with rocket firings into Israel. Again,
none of this is a conflict that Iran has instigated or that Iran is stirring up or escalating. Iran is
not the cause of the instability that already reigns. And the broader opposition to continued
Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is opposition that Iran shares with many others,
including the whole Arab world. As long as we are looking at this part of the region, it is impossible to escape notice that Iran does
not hold a candle to Israel when it comes to forcefully throwing weight around in the neighborhood in damaging and destabilizing ways, even without
considering the occupation of the West Bank. This
has included multiple armed invasions of neighboring
territory as well as other actions, such as the attack on Iraq years ago that stimulated Iraq to
speed up its program to develop nuclear weapons. And before we leave the Middle East as a
whole, it also is impossible to escape notice that the single most destabilizing action in the
region over the past couple of decades was the U.S. launch of a war of aggression in Iraq in
2003. Iran certainly has done nothing like that. The ritualistically repeated notion that Iran is wreaking instability all over
the region is a badly mistaken myth. There are important respects in which Iranian policies and actions do offend U.S. interests, but protection of those
interests is not helped by perpetuating myths. Perpetuation
of this particular myth has several deleterious
effects. The most immediate and obvious one is to corrupt debate over the nuclear deal.
Another is to foster broader misunderstanding about Iranian behavior and intentions that
threatens to corrupt debate over other issues as well. Yet another consequence involves a failure to understand fully
that every state competes for influence. Such efforts to compete are called foreign policy. It would be in our own interests for other states to wage that
competition through peaceful and legitimate means. By
misrepresenting who is doing what, and through what
means, in the Middle East today, the myth about Iranian behavior maintains a constituency
for isolating and ostracizing Iran— which makes it less, not more, likely that Iran, so ostracized,
will use peaceful and legitimate means to pursue its interests in the future.
at: North Korea
North Korea’s not a threat – They don’t have the capabilities
Jackson and Suh, 7-9 – [Van Jackson, Visiting Fellow at the Center for a New American
Security and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, Hannah Suh, Asia-Pacific
Security Program at Center for a New American Security, 7-9-2015, The Biggest Myth about
North Korea, The National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-biggest-myth-aboutnorth-korea-13290] Jeong
A million lives and a trillion dollars. Experts in the 1990s predicted that the costs of war with
North Korea would reach at least this magnitude. While this is probably true of a worst-case
scenario, and estimates would doubtless be even higher today, pundits and officials alike have
allowed it to cloud reasoned judgment about North Korea. A strawman argument has taken
hold that any actions against North Korea will lead to cataclysmic death and destruction. This
is wrong. Alliance military actions against North Korea will not automatically trigger a nuclear
holocaust or the annihilation of Seoul. Fear, risk aversion and a misunderstanding of North
Korea have allowed the most dangerous scenario to be conflated with the most likely one.
Rather than being paralyzed by the fact that anything is possible, alliance policy and military
planning needs to recognize a simple reality: no matter what North Korea threatens, it will
assiduously seek to avoid war-triggering actions. North Korea’s own historical behavior and its
widely presumed goal of regime survival confirms as much. It isn’t hard to find pundits who
would have us believe North Korea is prepared to immolate the Korean Peninsula in a blaze of
glory at the first hint of conflict. One argument goes that offensive military action “likely would
trigger a war which would devastate South Korea.” Another offers that even an “extremely
limited” preemptive strike “…risks sparking a major military conflict…that might have
devastating consequences for the [United States], Korea, and beyond...” Still others argue that
there’s nothing the United States or South Korea can do because North Korean artillery aimed
at Seoul prevents even minor military actions, implying that any attacks on North Korea will
trigger the worst scenario imaginable. One analyst even pointedly remarks that using force
against North Korea would be worse than allowing its nuclear program to expand. Nor is this
illogic limited to pundits; successive U.S. administrations have fallen prey to the same fearbased, rather than logic-based, thinking. During the George W. Bush administration, the
prevailing view “…was that if any kind of military strike starts against North Korea, the North
Koreans would invade…and they will cause enormous destruction of Seoul.” And former
secretary of defense Robert Gates wrote in his memoir of the Obama administration’s
hyperventilating pleas with the highest levels of the South Korean government not to retaliate
against North Korea for its November 2010 artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island. Widespread
fear of a North Korean total war is a pathology based on an imaginary North Korea. No matter
one’s political leanings, right and left alike agree that North Korea’s primary goal is regime
survival, meaning that North Korea will not only take actions to safeguard its regime, but also
avoid taking actions that put its survival at risk. This bears out in sixty years of observing North
Korean behavior—even during the so-called “second Korean war” of the late 1960s, North Korea
never escalated beyond isolated military attacks. Today, North Korea threatens South Korean
NGOs that send propaganda balloons into its territory, yet fires at the balloons and not the
people launching them. In repeated naval clashes with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, North
Korea strikes some blows and suffers others, but it never escalates beyond the local clash. North
Korea has had countless opportunities to escalate or broaden conflicts in a crisis, yet has
consistently chosen restraint. Whatever North Korea’s rhetoric and motivations for violence,
its track record shows a preference for not taking actions that would jeopardize the regime,
and the North Korean escalation that everyone fears would do precisely that. Even if North
Korea responded with violence when attacked or retaliated against, there is a massive
difference between responding with limited or tit-for-tat violence (its historical modus
operandi) and responding with the most devastatingly lethal response it can come up with,
like a nuclear first-strike or artillery barrages against Seoul. The latter are regime-ending
actions, while the former may demonstrate resolve against the alliance and allow both sides a
chance to sue for peace.
at: Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia won’t go nuclear – Western nations check
Zakaria, 6-11 – [Fareed Zakaria, PhD in Government from Harvard University, Correspondent
with the Washington Post, 6-11-2015, Why Saudi Arabia can’t get a nuclear weapon, The
Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/saudi-arabias-nuclearbluff/2015/06/11/9ce1f4f8-1074-11e5-9726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html] Jeong
Of the many unnerving aspects of the future of the Middle East, a nuclear arms race would top the list. And to feed that unease, Saudi Arabia has been
periodically dropping hints that, should Iran’s nuclear ambitions go unchecked, it might just have to get nuclear weapons itself. This week, the Saudi
ambassador to London made yet another explicit threat, warning that “all options will be on the table.” Oh, please!
Saudi Arabia isn’t
going to build a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia can’t build a nuclear weapon. Saudi Arabia hasn’t even
built a car. (By 2017, after much effort, the country is expected to manufacture its first automobile.) Saudi Arabia can dig holes in
the ground and pump out oil but little else. Oil revenue is about 45 percent of its gross domestic product, a staggeringly high
figure, much larger than petro-states such as Nigeria and Venezuela. It makes up almost 90 percent of the Saudi government’s revenue. D espite
decades of massive government investment, lavish subsidies and cheap energy,
manufacturing is less than 10 percent of Saudi GDP. Where would Saudi Arabia train the scientists to work on its secret
program? The country’s education system is backward and dysfunctional, having been largely
handed over to its puritanical and reactionary religious establishment. The country ranks 73rd in the quality
of its math and science education,according to the World Economic Forum — abysmally low for a rich country. Iran, despite 36 years of sanctions and a
much lower per capita GDP, fares far better at 44. And who would work in Saudi Arabia’s imagined nuclear industry? In a penetrating book, Karen
Elliott House, formerly of the Wall Street Journal,describes the Saudi labor market: “One of every three people in Saudi Arabia is a foreigner. Two out of
every three people with a job of any sort are foreign. And in Saudi Arabia’s anemic private sector, fully nine
out of ten people holding
jobs are non-Saudi. . . . Saudi Arabia, in short, is a society in which all too many men do not
want to work at jobs for which they are qualified; in which women by and large aren’t allowed
to work; and in which, as a result, most of the work is done by foreigners.” None of this is to suggest that
the kingdom is in danger of collapse. Far from it. The regime’s finances are strong, though public spending keeps rising and oil revenue has been
declining. The royal family has deftly used patronage, politics, religion and repression to keep the country stable and quiescent. But
that has
produced a system of stagnation for most, with a gilded elite surfing on top with almost
unimaginable sums of money. Saudi Arabia’s increased assertiveness has been portrayed as strategic. In fact, it is a panicked and
emotional response to Iran, fueled in no small measure by long-standing anti-Shiite bigotry. It is pique masquerading as strategy. In October 2013, after
having spent years and millions of dollars campaigning for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, it abruptly declined the post at the last minute, signaling
that it was annoyed at U.S. policy in its region. Its
most recent international activism, the air campaign in
Yemen, has badly backfired. Bruce Riedel, a former top White House aide, says that damage
to civilians and physical infrastructure “has created considerable bad blood between Yemenis
and their rich Gulf neighbors that will poison relations for years. Yemenis always resented their rich brothers,
and now many will want revenge.” He notes that the air campaign is being directed by the new defense minister, the king’s 29-year-old son, who has no
experience in military affairs or much else.
But couldn’t Saudi Arabia simply buy a nuclear bomb? That’s highly
unlikely. Any such effort would have to take place secretly, under the threat of sanctions,
Western retaliation and interception. Saudi Arabia depends heavily on foreigners and their
firms to help with its energy industry, build its infrastructure, buy its oil and sell it goods and
services . Were it isolated like Iran or North Korea, its economic system would collapse. It is often claimed that Pakistan
would sell nukes to the Saudis. And it’s true that the Saudis have bailed out Pakistan many times. But the government
in Islamabad is well aware that such a deal could make it a pariah and result in sanctions. It is
unlikely to risk that, even to please its sugar daddy in Riyadh. In April, Pakistan refused repeated Saudi pleas to
join the air campaign in Yemen. So let me make a prediction: Whatever happens with Iran’s nuclear program, 10
years from now Saudi Arabia won’t have nuclear weapons. Because it can’t.
Disease
No Impact
No Impact to Disease Spread – Experienced Scientists check
Strong and Grolla, 5-12 – [Jim Strong, Head, Diagnostics and Therapeutics, Public Health
Agency of Canada, Allen Grolla, Biologist at Public Health Agency of Canada, Ebola diaries:
Detecting disease on an unprecedented scale, World Health Organization,
http://www.who.int/features/2015/ebola-diaries-strong/en/] Jeong
In June 2014, Jim
Strong and Allen Grolla, laboratory scientists from the Public Health Agency of
Canada, were deployed through the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) to
work with WHO in Guinea and Sierra Leone. They had experience working in previous
haemorrhagic fever outbreaks in Angola, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo,
and Kenya. As they began receiving and testing specimens they realized they were in the middle of something much bigger than
any of the outbreaks they had seen before. "We arrived in Conakry, Guinea in late June 2014 with a lot of lab equipment, amid an
outbreak that was moving very quickly.
It took several days of discussion to determine the best place to
set up our lab. When we first arrived in Conakry, we didn’t see many cases. It was believed that Ebola was mostly around
Guéckedou. Most of the reports indicated that the outbreak was going to be contained because
there was a reasonable response at that point. Nobody really predicted the fact that the
outbreak was already widespread and that we were well behind the curve. Anxiety levels really
started to escalate in late June and July, however, when it became apparent that there were many cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
We started to see that later when we got to Guéckedou and even more in Kailahun in Sierra Leone. We shifted first from Conakry to
Guéckedou and later across the Mano River to Kailahun district in Sierra Leone, the new epicentre at the time. We
travelled
with about 16 boxes and cases of medical and diagnostic equipment, bouncing around on the
back of trucks. Setting up the first laboratory in Kailahun Our trip to Kailahun started in the
early morning. We went down a very bumpy road to the river crossing. The borders were not closed yet and there were still a
lot of people and goods crossing, including motorbikes and huge boatloads of cassava. The WHO logistician negotiated our cro•ssing
with Customs authorities. We loaded all our kits into canoes, and off we went. In Kailahun, the people were very friendly. They
wanted to sit right next to us, hear our story and know exactly what was going on. There was no laboratory testing at that time in
Kailahun. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had just set up an Ebola treatment centre on the outskirts of town and started to admit
patients. We
set up our laboratory right across from where medical staff exited the wards, in the
low-risk zone of the treatment centre. A much bigger outbreak than anyone had predicted
When our laboratory was set up in Kailahun, the number of positive samples was higher than
any other outbreak we had been in. The MSF site was only getting a portion of the cases in the district, so we realized
this was much bigger than anything else we had been involved in before. The difference was the size and how rapidly it spread
geographically. The projections and actual caseloads were going up beyond what we expected. This was quite different from
previous outbreaks. Usually the outbreak is centred in one single area, a small town or village where there is a hospital setting. But
this one was in multiple towns, multiple big cities, eventually including capitals, and spread very quickly. Testing up to 40 samples a
day We ran the laboratory from around 8:00 am, when the first batch of samples came in, until about 6:00 pm. We would get a
second batch in the afternoon, including swab samples, process those and get the results 2 to 3 hours later. That was sort of a
standard day. We would always be on call if ambulances came in. There was a need to test for priority cases, often healthcare
workers, where results needed to be known very quickly because it had a lot of implications for the hospital. Generally,
the
number of samples would range from on a low day of 10 up to days where we had 35 to 40. The
numbers started to go up when there was more sampling of corpses in the community. The most we did in a day was 80. Later on,
we also set up another laboratory in Magbaraka in Sierra Leone, another hot area. For several months we were operating 2
laboratories, doing similar caseloads. Challenges with staffing for a prolonged outbreak Since this outbreak was so large, we had to
use staff who had never been deployed to an outbreak before. Prior to being deployed, we provided them with the necessary
training to make them comfortable and proficient with the work. You
will deal with samples that are positive, so
you need to be prepared and comfortable in handling that. This outbreak required that
several people were deployed multiple times and the fear of the unknown in this
unprecedented event made it a particular challenge. In all, the human resource challenge was one of the most
difficult to manage.
The upside is we now have a strong group of people with deployment
experience for this type of outbreak.
Their impacts are all rhetoric – Disease isn’t a major threat
Engelhardt, 14 – [Tom Engelhardt, Graduate from Yale, and Masters from Harvard University,
11-4-2014, Why Washington Continues to Beat the War and Disease Drums Escalation is now a
structural fact embedded in the war in the Middle East and the Ebola crisis here at home,
http://www.thenation.com/article/why-washington-continues-beat-war-and-disease-drums/ ]
Jeong
Speaking of escalation, don’t think Congress will be the only place where escalation fever is
likely to mount. Consider the pressures that will come directly from the Islamic State and Ebola.
Let’s start with Ebola. Admittedly, as a disease it has no will, no mind. It can’t, in any normal
sense, beat the drum for itself and its dangers. Nonetheless, though no one knows for sure, it
may be on anescalatory path in at least two of the three desperately poor West African
countries where it has embedded itself. If predictions prove correctand the international
response to the pandemic there is too limited to halt the disease, if tens of thousands of new
cases occur in the coming months, then Ebola will undoubtedly be headingelsewhere in Africa,
and as we’ve already seen, some cases will continue to make it to this country, too. Not only
that, but sooner or later someone with Ebola might not be caught in time and the disease could
spread to Americans here. The likelihood of a genuine pandemic in this country seems
vanishingly small. But Ebola will clearly be in the news in the months to come, and in the post9/11 American world, this means further full-scale panic and hysteria, more draconian decisions
by random governors grandstanding for the media and their electoral futures. It means feeling
like a targeted population for a long time to come. In this way, Ebola should remain a force for
escalation in this country. In its effects here so far, it might as well be an African version of the
Islamic State. From Washington’s heavily militarized response to the pandemic in Liberia to
the quarantining of an American nurse as if she were a terror suspect, it’s already clear that,
as Karen Greenberg has predicted, the American response is falling into a “war-on-terror”
template.
No extinction – their impacts are all media fear-mongering – ebola proves
Dean 14 [Alex, "Fear Not, Ebola Won't Wipe Us Out", Spiked, 8/6/14, www.spikedonline.com/newsite/article/fear-not-ebola-wont-wipe-us-out/15549#.VaAbVvlViko] // SKY
Whenever a disease breaks out, we are bombarded with doomsday predictions. Coverage of
ebola has conformed to this pattern. Major newspapers have bombarded us with page after
page of pharmaceutical puffery; some journalists speak as though we are headed for an
apocalypse. Commentary has been speculative, pessimistic and quick to apportion blame. The
Guardian’s West Africa correspondent says that ‘new hotspots have flared up, fuelled by crossborder trade’, while US Republican politician Phil Gingrey has been making unsubstantiated
rants about ‘illegal immigrants carrying deadly diseases’. The head of the World Health
Organisation stoked panic with his statement that the virus ‘is moving faster than efforts to
control it’. We must compare this reportage, all these ‘the end is nigh’ performances, with the
reality. A quick look at hard science shows there is a dramatic mismatch and that
commentators have wildly exaggerated the threat ebola poses. We are not headed for
extinction. John Oxford, a virologist at the University of London, has explained that the
hysteria surrounding ebola is disproportionate to the threat. He points out that ebola ‘doesn’t
spread very easily’, and that the virus’s reproductive number - how many people are infected
by each carrier - is very low. Where measles has a reproductive number of 12, ebola’s number
is 1. Moreover, virologists have been quick to point out that ebola is very easily destroyed, for a
virus. A quick wash of the hands and it’s gone. Ebola can devastate families and communities,
yes, but when you consider that it has a low death toll compared with other viruses in Africa, we
must conclude that reports have been hyperbolic and scaremongering. Yet this disproportionate
panic over ebola was to be expected. We saw similar responses when swine flu broke out and
the UK’s chief medical officer predicted 65,000 deaths and the media swallowed it up, and
again when the House of Lords told us that 65,000 Britons would die from bird flu. Perhaps
political and medical bodies have a duty to err on the side of caution – to over-prepare and
over-predict – but the media and some of the public also gobbled up these doomsday
predictions with relish. What’s the explanation for this? Why do some observers seem to be
ravenously awaiting the next big pandemic? Why do we want these viruses to be worse than
they are? I think some people long for doomsday predictions because they want their antiprogress attitudes to be validated. Ours is an era in which we are told to fear other people for
their unpredictability and to see our fellow humans as a threat. Relationships are sometimes
described as ‘toxic’ - such is our misanthropy that we now even describe our ultimate forms of
intimacy in the language of disease. Today’s anti-human scaremongers are desperate for their
attitudes to be affirmed, and so they exaggerate viruses which are spread through human
contact and movement. People convince themselves that ebola is the result of immigration and
human contact and modern forms of travel because then their regressive attitudes feel truer,
more real. They don’t see the hectic globalised world as exciting; they see it as unnerving and
are thrilled when a virus gives them reason to complain about it. These ridiculous attitudes
have found no real affirmation, though. Humankind will deal with ebola, and a disease spread
through contact should never serve as a reason to despise that contact: intimacy makes life
worth living and immigration and trade are the seeds of social and economic progress. We
must not allow the fearmongers to undermine our rational convictions. Pay no attention to
the miserablists. Fear not, humankind – we are doing okay.
People are resilient – black death proves
Nature World News 14 ["Black Death Made Britons More Resilient to Disease, Study Says",
5/8/14, Nature World News, www.natureworldnews.com/articles/6947/20140508/black-deathmade-britons-more-resilient-disease-study.htm] // SKY
People who survived the Black Death were healthier and lived longer than the previous
generations, a new study has found. The research shows that the Bubonic plague, which killed
25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, led to better living conditions for survivors
and shaped the demographics of the region. University of South Carolina anthropologist Sharon
DeWitte led the latest research on plague. Analysis of skeletal remains showed that people who
lived after the plague had lower risk of dying at any age when compared to people who lived
before the epidemic. The plaque was caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis. Some estimates
suggest that nearly half of all Londoners died during the first wave of the disease from 1347 to
1351. The epidemic led to the rise of living standards, which meant that the post-epidemic
London had a healthier population than pre-plague population. "Knowing how strongly
diseases can actually shape human biology can give us tools to work with in the future to
understand disease and how it might affect us," Sharon DeWitte said in a news release. For the
study, she analyzed bones of over 1,000 men, women and children who lived before or after the
Black Death. The skeletal remains were housed in the Museum of London. The research also
showed that the plague didn't kill people randomly, but chose frail people as its victims.
Survivors also had a longer life expectancy than the previous generation. DeWitte said that she
was surprised by the difference in health outcomes before and after the plaque struck Europe.
"The Black Death was just the first outbreak of medieval plague, so the post-Black Death
population suffered major threats to health in part from repeated outbreaks of plague,"
DeWitte said. "Despite this, I found substantial improvements in demographics and thus health
following the Black Death."
Economy
Uniqueness
The economy is rising now – Business confidence and employment are
increasing
Mutikani, 6-25 – [ Lucia Mutikani, Journalist for Reuters, 6-25-2015, Robust U.S. consumer
spending buoys economic growth outlook, Reuters,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/25/us-usa-economy-idUSKBN0P51J920150625] Jeong
U.S. consumer spending recorded its largest increase in nearly six years in May on strong
demand for automobiles and other big-ticket items, further evidence that economic growth
was accelerating in the second quarter. While other data on Thursday showed a modest
increase in first-time applications for unemployment benefits last week, the underlying trend
in jobless claims continued to suggest the labor market was tightening . The strengthening
economy suggests the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates this year even as inflation
remains well below the U.S. central bank's 2 percent target. Many economists expect a rate hike in September.
"This portends well for second-quarter growth and the broader momentum of economic activity in the second half of the year, and keeps the prospect
of a September rate hike squarely on the table," said Anthony Karydakis, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak in New York.The Commerce
Department said consumer spending rose 0.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since August 2009, after a 0.1 percent rise in April. May's sturdy
increase in consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S.
economic activity, suggested households
were finally spending some of the windfall from lower gasoline prices, and capped a month of
solid economic reports. It was the latest indication that growth was gaining momentum after
gross domestic product shrank at a 0.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter, as the economy battled
bad weather, port disruptions, a strong dollar and spending cuts in the energy sector. From employment to the housing market, the economic data for
May has been bullish. Even manufacturing, which is struggling with the lingering effects of dollar strength and lower energy prices, is starting to
stabilize. Though a report on Thursday showed some cooling in services sector activity in June,
businesses continued to view
economic conditions as improving . Economists had forecast consumer spending rising 0.7 percent last month. U.S. stocks
traded higher, with healthcare shares enjoying a broad rally after the U.S. Supreme Court
issued a ruling upholding tax subsidies crucial to President Barack Obama's signature 2010
healthcare law. Prices for longer-dated U.S. government debt fell, while the dollar was little
changed against a basket of currencies. LABOR MARKET TIGHTENING Last month, spending on long-lasting manufactured goods
such as automobiles jumped 2.2 percent and outlays on services like utilities rose 0.3 percent. When adjusted for inflation, consumer spending
increased 0.6 percent, the largest jump since last August, after being unchanged in April. The rise in real consumer spending prompted economists at
Barclays to bump up their second-quarter GDP estimate by one-tenth of a percentage point to a 3.1 percent annual rate. Personal income increased 0.5
percent in May after a similar gain in the prior month. Income is being boosted by a tightening labor market, which is starting to push up wage growth.
A separate report from the Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 271,000 for
the week ended June 20. But it was the 16th straight week that claims had held below 300,000, a threshold usually associated with a firming labor
market. The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell last
week. The
strengthening jobs market could be bolstering confidence in the economy,
encouraging households to tap into savings that have been boosted by lower gasoline prices.
The saving rate fell to 5.1 percent last month from 5.4 percent in April. Still, savings remain at
lofty levels. That, together with rising wages, suggests more fuel for consumer spending for
the rest of the year. "The labor market is tight, wages and incomes are rising solidly, so we
should expect consumers to help lead the economy forward," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic
Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. Despite the acceleration in consumer spending, inflation pressures remained tame last month. A price index for
consumer spending increased 0.3 percent after being flat in April. In the 12 months through May, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price
index rose only 0.2 percent. Excluding food and energy, prices edged up 0.1 percent after a similar gain in April. The so-called core PCE price index rose
1.2 percent in the 12 months through May, the smallest gain since February 2014.
Economy is high now
Gillespie, 5-8 – [Patrick Gillespie, CNN reporter on the economy, covers many other topics like
the labor market and inflation, Good news U.S. economy adds 223,000 jobs.;
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/08/news/economy/april-jobs-report-economy-pickup/index.html?source=zacks] Jeong
America can breathe a sigh of relief. The
economy is improving with the spring weather. The U.S. added
223,000 jobs in April, a healthy pick up after a disappointing March and about in line with
what economists surveyed by CNNMoney projected. April's strong job gains reflect a trend the country saw last
year: job growth cooling in the winter months, then gaining momentum into the spring. "They are good numbers," says Kate Warne,
investment strategist at Edward Jones. "It's reassuring that we saw job growth rebound to above 200,000." The
good news
doesn't stop there. The unemployment rate dropped to 5.4%, its lowest mark since May 2008.
This is likely to be helpful to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Many believe she needs the economy to keep
growing until Election Day in order for her to win the presidency. Wall Street was very happy with the report.
The Dow is
soaring over 250 points (nearly 1.5%) in Friday trading, and the yield on the 10-year government
bond fell substantially as investors cease worrying so much about a slowdown. The one thing regular
Americans still want is better pay. There are finally signs it's picking up. Wages are now growing at 2.2%, above the
expectations from CNNMoney's survey. Experts say pay should continue to bump up if unemployment remains low.
Where the jobs are: Hiring has been strong in many industries with one big exception: Energy. About 15,000 energy jobs -- oil
drillers, coal miners and others -- were lost in April, the worst month for the sector since May 2009. Low gas prices are great for
Americans at the pump, but they're causing energy companies to cut jobs. Energy jobs "took it on the chin once again," says Sam
Bullard, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities. "It certainly suggests the stronger dollar and lower oil prices are having a
substantial impact." Despite the bad energy news, other industries picked up the slack. Construction
and health care
each added 45,000 jobs. Business services -- marketing, accountants, consultants -- was the
best performer in April, adding 62,000 jobs.
Jobs Report indicates that the economy is strong
CBS News, 6-11 – [CBS News, 6-11-2015, “After Early-year Skid, U.S. Economy Gains
Traction”, http://www.wsaw.com/home/headlines/After-Early-year-Skid-US-Economy-GainsTraction-307009801.html] Jeong
Americans are spending more on cars, clothing and other products, a sign the improving job
market and uptick in hourly wages is helping boost retail sales.¶ CBS NewsWASHINGTON - Americans are spending more on cars,
clothing and other products, a sign the improving job market and uptick in hourly wages is helping boost retail sales.¶ The Commerce Department says retail
sales climbed a seasonally adjusted 1.2 percent in May, following a 0.2 percent gain in April.
Sales have risen 2.7 percent over the past 12 months.¶ The upswing in shopping reflects
greater confidence in the economy. Consumers upped their spending by more than 2 percent
last month at auto dealers and building materials stores. Employers have added more than 3
million jobs over the past year, but until May many workers appeared to be saving as much of
their paychecks as they could.¶ "These data reinforce our view that the underlying trend in
growth remains solid -- more than solid enough to keep the unemployment rate trending
down," said Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist with High Frequency Economics, in a client
note.¶ Excluding the volatile categories of autos, gas, building materials and restaurants, sales rose a solid 0.7 percent.¶ The jump in retail spending and signs
of growth in the services sector shows that consumption in the first quarter was stronger than
previously thought, said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with Capital Economics. The U.S.
Commerce Department said last month that gross domestic product shrank 0.7 percent in the first three months of the year.¶ But Ashworth said in a note that the surge in retail spending means "it is now possible
that GDP didn't actually contract in the first quarter."¶ Consumers upped their spending by more than 2 percent last month at auto dealers and building materials stores, evidence that they're making longer-term
investments in their daily commutes and homes.¶ The figures confirm the strength seen in separate reports on autos and housing. People bought cars and trucks last month at an annual pace of 17.8 million, the
fastest rate since July 2005, according to industry analyst Autodata Corp. The number of newly built homes being purchased has surged nearly 24 percent year-to-date, according to the government.¶ More
Americans are also upgrading their wardrobes. Thursday's report showed that shopping at clothiers also rose 1.5 percent last month.¶ Sales at gasoline stations increased 3.7 percent, largely reflecting the higher
costs of gas since April. Prices at the pump rose by roughly 14 cents a gallon last month to $2.74 during Memorial Day weekend, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.¶ Excluding the volatile categories of
Spending growth at restaurants was subdued last month,
inching up just 0.1 percent. But over the past year, restaurant and bar receipts have surged 8.2
percent.¶ Economists watch the retail sales report closely because it provides the first indication each month of the willingness of Americans to spend. Consumer spending drives 70 percent of the
economy. Yet retail sales account for only about one-third of spending, with services such as haircuts and Internet access making up the other two-thirds.¶ Job gains over the past
year have driven down the unemployment rate to 5.5 percent from 6.3 percent in May 2014.
autos, gas, building materials and restaurants, sales rose a solid 0.7 percent.¶
Still, many Americans were hesitant to spend as their incomes were barely rising above inflation. Average hourly earnings grew 2.3 percent over the past 12 months, a pace that has recently accelerated but
remains below the 3 percent level typical in a healthy job market.¶
Environment
No Impact
The environment is improving now – Multiple reasons
Nyquist, 14 – [Scott Nyquist, Director of McKinsey & Company, 4-24-2014, Cheer up! 5 ways
the environment is getting better, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2014042920202753060352-cheer-up-5-ways-the-environment-is-getting-better] Jeong
There has been a lot of bad news about renewable energy technologies of late – even 60
Minutes joined the negative chorus, running a segment on the “cleantech crash.” It’s true that
there has been a shakeout, and that hundreds of companies have indeed gone bust. But
McKinsey notes that in important ways, the news is actually darn good. With prices falling,
global wind installations have risen 25% a year since 2006, and solar 57%--healthy rates of
growth by any standard. The International Energy Agency figures that renewables will account
for almost 60% of new power generation in the OECD for the next few years. The better way to
look at what is going on, argue the McKinsey experts, is to compare what is happening with
renewables to the history of other new technologies. Cars, elevators, and semiconductors, for
example, all suffered dramatic peaks and valleys before stabilizing. Cleantech is following the
identical trajectory. The despondency over cleantech is another example of the knee-jerk
pessimism too often associated with environmental issues. Doom-and-gloom can not only be
wrong, as it is in this case. But it can also be bad strategy because it makes it seem like going to
hell in a (hot) hand-basket is inevitable. And if something is hopeless, why bother trying to do
anything about it? In fact, progress is definitely possible. We know this because we have seen
(and are seeing) progress in many areas. Yes, there are challenges, and these matter. But there
are also success stories -- and these matter, too, because they generate the can-do spirit that
leads to change. Here are five: 1. Greenhouse-gas emissions in the US are declining: In 2012,
the latest year for which statistics are available, the US accounted for 6,526 million metric
tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e, the basic unit of greenhouse-gas accounting). That’s
way down from the 2007 peak of 7,325, and almost the same as in 1994 (6,520), according to
the Environmental Protection Agency. What happened? A few things. Recession cut into
economic activity, and cars got cleaner and more fuel efficient. Another crucial factor: the
conversion of coal plants to gas-fired, due to the gushers of shale gas that have flowed in the
last decade. Gas is significantly cleaner than coal, emitting less per unit of energy, and since
2005, has displaced a significant share of coal generation. I’m aware of environmental concerns
about shale. But it’s hard not to like the emissions trend. Consider: Coal accounted for 37% of
electricity generation in 2012—and 74% of carbon emissions in the power sector. Natural gas,
on the other hand, accounts for 30% of power, and just 24% of emissions. Can the US keep up
the emissions progress? Maybe, maybe not. Early estimates are that emissions went up in
2013, due to slightly higher growth and a brutal winter. Still, getting back to 1994 levels is
success, by any standard. 2. There has also been huge progress in US air quality: This is a much
longer-running story, dating back to the Clean Air Act of 1970. The EPA has air quality
monitoring stations all over the country, and the story they tell is stunning. Between 2000 and
2012, concentrations of carbon monoxide fell by 57%, ozone by 9%, sulfur dioxide by 54% and
lead by 52% (and 91% since 1980). In California, there were 74% fewer “unhealthy days” in 2012
compared to 2000, according to state regulators. New York City’s air is better than it’s been for
50 years. All this is not only good for aesthetic reasons but for public health; bad air contributes
to heart and respiratory disease. 3. There has been a global expansion in protected areas: As
of 2011, there were almost 160,000 of these, twice as many as in 1996, according to the World
Database on Protected Areas. They cover more than 12% of the earth’s land area and about
6% of the seas, or about 16 million square kilometers and 8 million square kilometers
respectively. (Check out this cool tool to see who has what, where.) 4. Deforestation in the
Amazon is slowing: That’s the word from the country’sNational Institute of Space Research;
from 2009 through 2012, deforestation slowed every year. In 2012-13, however, it appeared
to increase again (to 5,853 square kilometers), up 28% over the previous 12 months, but still
only a small fraction of the bad old days of 2004, when the Amazon lost 27,000 square
kilometers. From 2000 to 2012, Brazil cut forest loss in half. 5. Whales and tigers and bears: Oh
my, good news on all fronts. Let’s start with whales: The humpback is back in Brazil, in a big
way; the population has tripled in the last decade, to more than 10,000 (see one in action in
this video). So is thesouthern right whale in New Zealand. The number of wild tigers in Nepal
has risen more than 60% in the last five years, with increases in all the national parks. In early
2014, Nepal announced it had achieved“zero poaching of rhinos, tigers, and elephants” for the
previous year.Bears are making a comeback in Europe, thanks to hunting restrictions and legal
protections that have led to their numbers doubling; indeed, of 18 mammal and 19 European
bird species studied, the populations of all but one had increased in Europe since the 1960s.
“Conservation actually works,” notes Frans Schepers, themanaging director of Rewilding
Europe in this video, which truly bears watching. “If we have the resources, a proper strategy, if
we use our efforts, it works.” Again, perspective is required. Nepal still only has about 200 wild
tigers, and the illegal wildlife trade and habitat loss remain urgent issues; many whale species
are still in peril. But give humanity a pat on the back for getting some things right.
Hegemony
No Impact
No impact to heg – data
Fettweis, 11 Christopher J. Fettweis, Department of Political Science, Tulane University,
9/26/11, Free Riding or Restraint? Examining European Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy,
30:316–332, EBSCO
It is perhaps worth noting that there is no evidence to support a direct relationship between
the relative level of U.S. activism and international stability. In fact, the limited data we do
have suggest the opposite may be true. During the 1990s, the United States cut back on its defense spending fairly
substantially. By 1998, the United States was spending $100 billion less on defense in real terms than it had in 1990.51 To internationalists, defense
hawks and believers in hegemonic stability, this irresponsible “peace dividend” endangered both national and global security. “No serious analyst of
American military capabilities,” argued Kristol and Kagan, “doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America’s responsibilities
to itself and to world peace.”52 On the other hand, if
the pacific trends were not based upon U.S. hegemony but
a strengthening norm against interstate war, one would not have expected an increase in
global instability and violence. The verdict from the past two decades is fairly plain: The world grew more peaceful
while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to believe that its security was
endangered by a less-capable United States military, or at least none took any action that would suggest such a belief.
No militaries were enhanced to address power vacuums, no security dilemmas drove
insecurity or arms races, and no regional balancing occurred once the stabilizing presence of the U.S. military was
diminished. The rest of the world acted as if the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in U.S. capabilities. Most
of all, the United States and its allies were no less safe. The incidence and magnitude of global conflict declined while the United States cut its military
spending under President Clinton, and kept declining as the Bush Administration ramped the spending back up. No complex statistical analysis should
be necessary to reach the conclusion that the two are unrelated. Military spending figures by themselves are insufficient to disprove a connection
between overall U.S. actions and international stability. Once again, one could presumably argue that spending is not the only or even the best
indication of hegemony, and that it is instead U.S. foreign political and security commitments that maintain stability. Since neither was significantly
altered during this period, instability should not have been expected. Alternately, advocates of hegemonic stability could believe that relative rather
than absolute spending is decisive in bringing peace. Although the United States cut back on its spending during the 1990s, its relative advantage never
wavered. However, even if it is true that either U.S. commitments or relative spending account for global pacific trends, then at the very least stability
can evidently be maintained at drastically lower levels of both. In other words, even if one can be allowed to argue in the alternative for a moment and
suppose that there is in fact a level of engagement below which the United States cannot drop without increasing international disorder, a rational
grand strategist would still recommend cutting back on engagement and spending until that level is determined. Grand strategic decisions are never
final; continual adjustments can and must be made as time goes on. Basic logic suggests that the United States ought to spend the minimum amount of
its blood and treasure while seeking the maximum return on its investment. And if the current era of stability is as stable as many believe it to be, no
increase in conflict would ever occur irrespective of U.S. spending, which would save untold trillions for an increasingly debt-ridden nation. It is also
perhaps worth noting that if opposite trends had unfolded, if other states had reacted to news of cuts in U.S. defense spending with more aggressive or
insecure behavior, then internationalists would surely argue that their expectations had been fulfilled. If increases in conflict would have been
interpreted as proof of the wisdom of internationalist strategies, then logical consistency demands that the lack thereof should at least pose a problem.
As it stands, the
only evidence we have regarding the likely systemic reaction to a more restrained
United States suggests that the current peaceful trends are unrelated to U.S. military spending. Evidently the rest of
the world can operate quite effectively without the presence of a global policeman. Those
who think otherwise base their view on faith alone.
Deterrence Fails
Deterrence Fails – an effective US Nuclear arsenal is key, but is diminishing.
Monroe , 7-12 – [Robert R. Monroe, retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy and a former
director of the Defense Nuclear Agency, 7-12-2015, The Fading U.S. Nuclear Deterrent The next
president must restore America’s aging arsenal to face a world of new atomic threats. The Wall
Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fading-u-s-nuclear-deterrent-1436739871]
Jeong
None of the presidential candidates is talking about it, but one of the most important issues in
the 2016 election should be the precarious decline of America’s nuclear forces. When the Cold
War ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. began a debilitating
nuclear freeze, establishing ever-broader antinuclear policies and largely ignoring the growing
threat posed by these massively destructive weapons. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s military strategy focuses on early use of these weapons in conflicts large and small.
China is in the midst of an immense strategic modernization. India and Pakistan are expanding
and improving their nuclear arsenals. North Korea issues nuclear threats almost weekly. The
Mideast is dissolving into chaos, and Iran’s advanced nuclear-weapons program has been on
the front pages for two years. To address these multiplying threats, U.S. nuclear policy must
undergo radical changes. Because policies as important as this require White House and
congressional agreement and the support of the American people, a full-scale national debate
is essential. I propose we begin with the following five changes: • Discard President Obama’s
goal of a “world without nuclear weapons.” Such an impossible vision can be expressed as a
hope, but as U.S. policy it is nonsensical and terribly damaging. America’s pre-eminent national
goal—on which U.S. survival depends—must be paramount nuclear-weapons strength. Since the
dawn of the nuclear era, 12 U.S. presidents—six Democrats and six Republicans—have
specifically stated nuclear superiority as U.S. policy. Mr. Obama reversed it upon taking office
and has accelerated the deterioration of America’s nuclear arsenal. • A return to legitimate
deterrence in U.S. foreign policy. Deterrence is based on fear. You threaten your adversary
with intolerable consequences if he does not comply with your demands. Then, through
reinforcing actions, you convince him that you have the will and capability to carry out your
threat. For five Cold War decades the daily practice of deterrence kept the U.S. safe from Soviet
attack and the devastation of nuclear war. But for the past two decades nuclear deterrence has
been missing from the U.S. toolbox. Bring it back. • Establish effective, rather than
counterproductive, nonproliferation policies. The proliferation of nuclear weapons is a threat
like no other. Yet for decades U.S. nonproliferation policy has been misguided and inept. Our
leaders have passively allowed the valuable Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which entered into
force in 1970, to be distorted into a useless nuclear-disarmament treaty. Most important, we’ve
failed to emphasize—nationally and internationally—that nonproliferation requires
enforcement. Hand-wringing and sanctions won’t work. There must be a cop on the beat, and
military force must be used if necessary. Finally, our attempted nuclear agreement with Iran is
counterproductive; if signed it will trigger a global cascade of proliferation. • Modernize
America’s nuclear arsenal. President Obama’s policy doesn’t permit research, design, testing
or production of new, advanced nuclear weapons. Our current nuclear weapons—strategic
and tactical—were designed and built decades ago to meet different threats, and have gone
untested for decades. With great urgency, the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security
Administration must be freed to produce an entirely new nuclear-weapons stockpile, including
specialized low-yield advanced weapons. Production and testing facilities—atrophying for
decades—must also be built on an accelerated schedule. • Also with great urgency, recover the
Pentagon’s nuclear-weapons capabilities. These have also suffered from Mr. Obama’s policies.
Hundreds of nuclear-weapons specialists have left the U.S. government without replacement.
Research into the effects of nuclear weapons, a critical field of military study, is virtually
nonexistent. Nuclear-weapons strategy and tactics are rarely included in military exercises.
Worse, U.S. leaders have failed to plan and budget for the next generation of nuclear-delivery
systems—intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers.
If these policies seem tough, recall that the U.S. observed them all for a half-century, just a
generation ago. Today’s nuclear threats are as dangerous as those during the Cold War.
Change can’t wait. Even if reform begins in 2017 under the next administration, it will take
decades to regain America’s once dominant nuclear capabilities and re-establish a viable
policy of deterrence.
Deterrence is ineffective – Lacks modernization and credibility
Murdock and Karako, 7-13 – [Clark Murdock, Senior Advisor, Thomas Karako, senior fellow
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 7-13-2015, Commentary: Sustaining
Nuclear Deterrence Requires New Capabilities, Defense News,
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/commentary/2015/07/13/commentarysustaining-nuclear-deterrence-requires-new-capabilities/30084823/] Jeong
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently visited Berlin to assure allies that the US would
deter aggression. NATO leaders are worried that Russia might invade the Baltics in a Crimeastyle fait accompli, and then threaten nuclear escalation unless the alliance backs down.
Moscow's treaty violations and "nuclear sabre rattling," Carter warned, raise "questions about
Russia's commitment to strategic stability" and to "the profound caution that world leaders in
the nuclear age have shown over decades to the brandishing of nuclear weapons." This is but
the latest confirmation that we've entered a new nuclear age — one characterized by
different rules, more actors, less predictability and the paradox that America's conventional
superiority may make deterrence harder. After noting that opponents might be tempted to
employ nuclear weapons to overcome conventional inferiority, the 2014 Quadrennial Defense
Review observed that US nuclear forces should deter nuclear-armed adversaries from escalating
their way out of failed conventional aggression. "Escalate to de-escalate" tactics have already
been publicly embraced by Russia but could also be used by North Korea or China. Instead of
graduated rungs along an "escalation ladder," adversaries may well be tempted to lower their
nuclear thresholds to forestall conventional defeat. Last November, then-Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel called nuclear deterrence the department's "highest priority mission." But it is
official US policy to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and pursue a world without nuclear
weapons. This may weaken nuclear deterrence because allies and adversaries will wonder how
the US might respond to limited nuclear employment. Plotting to offset US conventional
superiority has prompted some states, like North Korea and Iran, to pursue nuclear weapons,
and others, like Russia, to increase their reliance on nuclear weapons. To keep the nuclear
threshold elevated in the minds of potential adversaries, the US must have more flexible and
credible means to control escalation. The distinction between strategic and nonstrategic nuclear
weapons is long obsolete. Any use of a nuclear weapon could have profound strategic effects. In
a new report, "Project Atom," we recommend that in addition to retaining our traditional
strategic deterrent, the US needs to acquire nuclear capabilities that enable it to respond
proportionately to employment of a nuclear weapon. Specifically, the US should develop
options for more forward-deployed assets and more discriminate weapons. Proliferation by
Iran or others could strain extended deterrence and invite allies to re-evaluate their nonnuclear status. During the Cold War, large-scale conventional aggression was not deterred by US
or NATO declaratory policy, but by the significant presence of nuclear weapons in Europe and
the Pacific. Establishing credibility may require greater nuclear burden-sharing and forwardbasing. Nuclear submarines and ICBMs should remain the highly survivable foundation of US
deterrence. Dual-capable F-35s on land and aboard carriers would provide forward-based or
rapidly deployable aircraft. Penetrating bombers remain a visible complement to both missions.
More discriminate weapons may be needed. The future B61 gravity bomb will retain loweryield options and no longer require a parachute for delivery, catching up to 1990s JDAM-like
guidance. Credibility would be further enhanced through low-yield weapons deliverable across
the triad, as well as additional nuclear-capable standoff cruise missiles from air, sea and land.
But new thinking from Washington is also required. Both statutory restrictions and policy
limitations prevent the US from developing new weapons, components, missions or capabilities.
The average weapon in today's stockpile is over 28 years old. Current modernization plans will
further limit options, since there is no path to replace the B61-11 earth penetrator. In the near
term, the national laboratories could be freed to begin researching new designs for lower cost;
more safety, security and reliability; lower yields; and other effects. After a long procurement
holiday, the US deterrent is now entering a bow wave of investment and recapitalization. Over
the next two decades, a new set of post-Cold War delivery systems will be built, and many of
today's weapons will be life-extended. Infrastructure modernization is also badly overdue;
uranium facilities in Tennessee, for instance, date to the Manhattan Project. Current
modernization plans are critical just to retain current capabilities, and avoid disarmament by
rust. While requiring 3 to 6 percent of the defense budget over the next decade, these
investments should be made with an eye to future geostrategic realities. Broadening options
available to a president would strengthen US extended deterrence, discourage proliferation
among allies and communicate that there are no potential gaps for adversaries to exploit.
This is not about "war fighting" or making weapons "more usable," but making deterrence
more credible. Failure to adapt to new realities could invite nuclear use by creating false
perceptions that the US would be self-deterred. Our conventional superiority tempts our
adversaries into lowering their nuclear thresholds. A newer, more flexible and more credible US
nuclear deterrent designed for 21st century challenges would raise that threshold and help
make nuclear employment less attractive.
Indo-Pak War
No Impact
Indo-Pak war doesn’t escalate – They won’t use nuclear weapons
Haniffa, 4-6 – [Aziz Haniffa, Graduate from George Washington University, Correspondent
with Rediff News, 4-6-2015, Pak general: No chances of India-Pakistan war,
http://www.rediff.com/news/report/pak-general-no-chances-of-india-pakistanwar/20150406.htm] Jeong
We have worked to create road blocks in the path of those who thought that there was space
for conventional war despite Pakistan's nuclear weapons.' 'Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme is not openended and aligned with India only.' 'In this unstable regional environment, one nuclear power is trying to teach lessons to another nuclear power
through the medium of small arms and mortar shells on the Line of Control, and bluster.' 'A historic opportunity of a lifetime beckons the leaderships of
India and Pakistan to grasp, sit together and explore the possibilities of conflict resolution.' Lieutenant
General Khalid Kidwai(retd),
who headed Pakistan's Strategic Plans Division for over 15 years and is adviser to the country's
National Command, said his country has blocked the avenues for serious military operations by India by introducing a
variety of tactical nuclear weapons in its arsenal. General Kidwai, one of Pakistan's most decorated generals,
argued that tactical nuclear weapons in Pakistan's arsenal made nuclear war with India less
likely, adding, " I am fond of calling them weapons of peace -- the option of war is foreclosed ." The
general was speaking at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference in Washington, DC. "For 15 years, I and my colleagues in
the SPD worked for deterrence to be strengthened in South Asia comprehensively so as to
prevent war, to deter aggression, and thereby for peace, howsoever uneasy, to prevail," General Kidwai added.
"We have," General Kidwai said, "worked to create road blocks in the path of those who thought that there was space for conventional war despite
nuclear weapons of Pakistan." "By introducing
a variety of tactical nuclear weapons in Pakistan's inventory,
and in the strategic stability debate," he reiterated, "we have blocked the avenues for serious
military operations by the other side." "The naivete of finding space for limited conventional war despite the proven nuclear
capabilities of both sides went so far as to translate the thinking into an offensive doctrine -- the Cold Start Doctrine -- equivalent to a pre-programmed,
pre-determined shooting from the hip posture, in quick time, commencing at the tactical level, graduating rapidly to the operational-strategic level,
strangely oblivious of the nuclear Armageddon it could unleash in the process." the general said, targeting the Indian Army's Cold Start doctrine. "It
clearly was not thought through," General Kidwai felt. "It was quite surreal when Kidwai was clinically talking about the needed range of Pakistan's
nuclear weapons to cover entire Indian land mass," one observer at the conference pointed out, "particularly vis-a-vis the Shaheen-3 with its 2,750
kilometres range, sufficient to hit the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which many believe may be developed as India's military bases." General Kidwai
strongly defended the Nasr 'Shoot and Scoot' system as "a defence response to the offensive Indian Cold Start posture." When asked by Peter Lavoy,
the moderator of the discussion and the newly-minted senior director for South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, if Pakistan "considered
the political impact of long-range nuclear weapons on non-Indian targets," General Kidwai shot back, "Did India and the other nuclear countries do so
too?" Asked if Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme would ever stop expanding, General Kidwai again invoked India, saying, " It
is not open-
ended and aligned with India only.
MAD ensures there isn’t a risk of Nuclear War
Haniffa, 4-6 – [Aziz Haniffa, Graduate from George Washington University, Correspondent
with Rediff News, 4-6-2015, Pak general: No chances of India-Pakistan war,
http://www.rediff.com/news/report/pak-general-no-chances-of-india-pakistanwar/20150406.htm] Jeong
"The two realities of today's South Asian strategic situation are, one, notwithstanding the
growing conventional asymmetries, the development and possession of sufficient numbers and
varieties of nuclear weapons by both India and Pakistan has made war as an instrument of
policy near-redundant," the general added. "The tried and tested concept of MAD (Mutually
Assured Destruction) has ensured that." "There was," General Kidwai said, "a time in the
aftermath of the nuclear tests of 1998, when some people unwisely experimented with the
idea that despite the nuclear overhang in South Asia, there was space for limited conventional
war and therefore, one nuclear power might be able to overwhelm another nuclear power."
"It could be attributed to an inability to grasp the changed strategic environments of a
nuclearised South Asia -- a learning curve perhaps," he said. "Besides being dangerous thinking,
it was also naive as the experience of the last 17 years has shown -- the idea didn't work in the
escalation of 2001-2002 nor during the tensions of 2008 nor is it likely to work in the future,"
the general argued. Secondly, he pointed out that "the historic coincidence of the near
simultaneous emergence of two strong democratically elected governments in India and
Pakistan with the advantages of comfortable majorities and the factor of reasonable time at
their disposal to address longstanding issues with a sense and understanding of history. This has
never happened before." "These then are the two self-evident realities or givens of the South
Asian situation today," he said, and noted, "When we look at the linkage of the two realities, it
would make it seem that this just might be the historic opportunity of a lifetime waiting for the
two leaderships to grasp, sit together, explore the possibilities of conflict resolution and, in a
supreme statesman-like act, go for it, in a manner that all parties to the conflict end up on the
winning side." "No zero sum games, no oneupmanship," he said, and declared, "History and
circumstance beckon. Whether history can be grasped remains to be seen." General Kidwai
could not resist throwing in the Kashmir imbroglio and taking pot shots at the US and the
international community for ignoring Pakistan's entreaties to take up this issue and put
pressure on India. "Unfortunately those who say that conflict resolution alone will lead to true
peace and stability leading to economic development are dismissed as revisionists -- as if
seeking resolution to conflict was unnatural and nations should learn to live with conflicts and
the status quo," he added. "In this unstable regional environment," General Kidwai said,
targeting India again, "one nuclear power is trying to teach lessons to another nuclear power
through the medium of small arms and mortar shells on the Kashmir Line of Control, and
bluster." "Well-meaning nudges from well-meaning friends would be most helpful in the
larger interest of international peace and stability in a region dubbed as a nuclear flashpoint,"
he said, and warned, "A hands-off approach, will be neither here nor there and, of course, the
fleeting opportunity of history would have slipped." The general also criticised the US for "onesided and discriminatory overtures" in South Asia. "My submission to friends who want to be
helpful -- please note the inadvisability of aggravating the existing delicate strategic balance in a
troubled South Asia by one sided and discriminatory overtures, he added." "Discriminatory
approach on issues like the Nuclear Suppliers Group exemption and NSG membership," he
asserted, "is already proving to be counter-productive, and it will never be acceptable to
Pakistan -- and will in no way contribute toward peace and stability." The general -- who
supervised the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons for many years -- acknowledged that
"something I know worries the international community all the time -- the safety and security
of Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the disturbed security environment of our region." "For the
last 15 years," he asserted, "Pakistan has taken its nuclear security obligations seriously. We
understand the consequences of complacency." "There is no complacency," General Kidwai
claimed. "We have invested heavily in terms of money, manpower, equipment, weapons,
training, preparedness and smart site security solutions." "I say with full responsibility that
nuclear security in Pakistan is a non-issue."
No risk of conflict – economic cooperation
Daily Times, 5-27 – [Daily Times, 5-27-2015, Pakistan-India relations,
http://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/
1683163858?accountid=14667] Jeong
Pakistan, May 27 -- This
article is an attempt to understand Pakistan-India relations, contemporary
developments, challenges and opportunities with special focus on the period after the Kargil
War. This study was conducted in the light of the Rational Choice Theoretical Framework of Douglass C North. There are a number of generalisations
that can be made regarding Pakistan-India relations. Over the years, incidents like the Liaquat-Nehru Pact,
Tashkent Agreement, Simla Agreement, cricket diplomacy, Lahore Declaration, MusharrafVajpayee joint declaration 2004 and Musharraf-Manmohan efforts show that there is a
realisation on both sides where they understand that they tend to cooperate with each other,
and they tend to cooperate because it is in their best interest. It is interesting that, accept for the Lahore
Declaration, all major agreements of cooperation were made after each war. Like the Liaquat-Nehru Pact right after the 1947-1948 war, the Tashkent
Agreement came after the 1965 war, Simla Agreement after the 1971 war and Zia's cricket diplomacy after Brasstacks. Musharraf also tried to ink a
similar agreement after the Kargil War in the form of the Agra Accord but he failed to do so. This mean that the leadership of both countries always
thought that war was not a good option.
Even military ruler General Perverz Musharraf, who fought in the
Kargil War, made efforts for cooperation. Though we mostly criticise General Ziaul Haq for different reasons, it would
be unjust if he were not credited for saving a conventional war in 1987. It was his brilliant
diplomacy during and after Brasstacks that he averted a war despite the fact that General
Sunderji was in full mood for war and, importantly, the young prime minister of India, Rajeev
Gandhi, was also ready for a full-fledged war with Pakistan. Moreover, the leaderships of both countries have learnt
that they cannot live in regional isolation, they cannot afford constant warfare, the nuclear factor is real and that there is a need for strategic and
economic consolidation.
No Impact – Nuclear Deterrence checks
Saleem, 1-10 – [Saba Saleem, Correspondent with the Statesmen, 1-10-2015, Pak-India
nuclear deterrence,
http://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/
1644474840?accountid=14667] Jeong
As international system is connected to power, prestige and security with the possession of nuclear weapons so nations go for the production of
nuclear weapons. In the same way India and Pakistan also indulge in nuclear arms race for almost fifty years. Any new weapon which India has made or
whatever she has done Pakistan has followed. Likewise whatever Pakistan has done or developed any new nuclear weapon was followed by India and
the cycle goes on. In recent times India
has made its anti missile defence system and Pakistan has
extended its counter measures attempts in reaction. This is how the nuclear arms race is going
on between India and Pakistan. Whether these nuclear weapons are a source to avoid IndoPak war or further fuel it? Will India and
Pakistan avoid a nuclear war due to these nuclear weapons and due to their massive damage? Most of the people believe that if nuclear weapons
multiply it causes insecurity and spoil the relations among states therefore possession of more nuclear weapons are worse. In the same way
construction and possession of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan would raise the level of accident, calamity, crisis and also nuclear war. People
believe that increasing of nuclear arsenals between India and Pakistan generates tensions, volatility, and anxiety and also halts the progress in the
relations of both countries. On the other hand some
people also believe that these weapons are the key to a
stable and secure relations between India and Pakistan and even these weapons are leading
towards peace among both countries. Deterrence is the main reason of having the nuclear
weapons because deterrence is the source of avoidance of military engagements. Nuclear
weapon states have a threat that military involvements escalate to the level of nuclear war
that is how deterrence works. India and Pakistan are nuclear weapon states and both clearly know that any exchange of nuclear
weapon between them would result in high devastating damage that forces both states to stay away from opening of any military clash so that there is
no need to use such destructive weapons. Hence
both states are deterred to start any military fight. This
creates the concept of mutually assured destruction between India and Pakistan. Mutual
deterrence between both aggressive states limits the violence.
No Indo-Pak War
Ali, 15 – [Dr .Muhammad Ali Assistant Professor ,Department of Political Science, University of
Karachi, February, 2015, PAKISTAN-INDIA RELATIONS: PEACE THROUGH BILATERAL TRADE,
MLibrary: ProQuest, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/1661320320?pqorigsite=summon] Jeong
Trade between nations directly contributes to peace and tranquility. Trade creates an
economic interest between nations and develops contacts between people which help them
in mutual understanding. Countries are less likely to involve in a war if they have mutual
economic benefits. Strong economic ties between Pakistan and India are essential for the
peaceful resolution of the territorial disputes . It is true that conflicts have hampered Pak-India bilateral trade but it is also
trade will be a significant confidence building measure which will facilitate
peace and reduce tension. Pak-India mutual trade can be promoted and enhanced by taking some major steps including a) elimination
equally true that more
of non-tariff barriers to trade; b) facilitation of the cross-border movement of goods; c) promotion of conditions of fair competition and equitable
benefits; d) creation of effective mechanism for the implementation and application of the agreement; e) simplification of customs clearance
procedure and banking procedures for import financing. Moreover,
development of communication systems and
transport infrastructure; simplification of procedures for business visas and establishment of a
framework will also facilitate the economic cooperation. Apart from that There is a dire need of drawing a rigorous
framework for trade that should be formulated independent of any political pressure.Both the countries need to discuss a roadmap for removing
bottlenecks in liberalization of bilateral trade and to remove all hurdles in the trade relations. Indian government needs to address concerns of business
community in Pakistan regarding non-tariff barriers and other issues which impact export of goods. Hence,
improved trade relations
between Pakistan and India are inevitable for stability and thus security in the Sub-continent.
Notwithstanding, these positive changes along with, several hurdles continue to exist due to
political differences between the two countries. Some policy makers in Pakistan insist that
unless the territorial disputes between two countries are resolved, trade and economic
cooperation will remain low. However, this is not the case. A relationship which is based on trust and willingness and is backed by
economic and commercial links can pave a way forward in the name of peace and prosperity. Enhancing mutual trade will not
only bring benefits to the whole region but will also prove a key determinant for lasting
relations between the two neighbours. It is, therefore, concluded that trade can play a soft
and positive role in conflict resolution between the two long standing adversaries.
War isn’t an option for Pakistan
Reuters, 14 – [Reuters, 10-10-2014, Pakistan says war with India ‘not an option,
http://www.gulf-times.com/pakistan/186/details/411668/pakistan-says-war-with-india%E2%80%98not-an-option%E2%80%99] Jeong
Pakistan said on Friday that war with India was not an option, but that it would respond with "full force" to any attempt
to challenge its sovereignty. Fighting between India and Pakistan paused on Friday after days of heavy
shelling and gun battles across their disputed Himalayan border in Kashmir, the worst skirmishes between
the nuclear-armed rivals in more than a decade. Pakistan's National Security Committee "stressed the fact that both countries are aware of each
other's capabilities.
War is not an option," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's office said in a statement
after chairing a committee meeting. "It is shared responsibility of the leadership of both
countries to immediately defuse the situation," it said. "The committee expressed the resolve
that any attempt to challenge Pakistan's territorial integrity and sovereignty will be responded
with full force. The Armed Forces assured the National Security Committee that they are fully
prepared to deal with any adversity at our borders." The lull came a day after a heated exchange of rhetoric, with New
Delhi warning Pakistan it would pay an "unaffordable price" if shelling and machinegun fire continued. Islamabad had said it was capable of responding
"fittingly" to aggression. Nine Pakistani and eight Indian civilians have been killed since both sides' security forces started firing more than a week ago
along a 200-km stretch of border in mostly Muslim Kashmir. "It
was calm along the Jammu border during the night,
there was no firing in any of the sectors," said Uttam Chand, an Indian police officer, referring to the southern, predominantly
Hindu part of the region. Almost 20,000 Indian civilians have fled their homes in the lowlands around India's Jammu region to escape the fighting,
taking refuge in schools and relief camps. Civilians living in the area hit hardest by the shelling expressed relief at the halt in firing. " We
hope
calm prevails and the border shooting ends," said Avtar Singh, 45, after taking refuge in a nearby school. "Our condition in
this school is very bad. We want to go back to our homes." Both countries have accused each other of starting the latest hostilities that have hit civilian
areas. India
says it will not talk to Pakistan or stop firing until its neighbour backs down first. An
Indian police official told AFP 10 civilians had been injured overnight on the Indian side of the de facto border due to the fighting, but there were no
deaths. Pakistan's army on Thursday confirmed that five more civilians had died on its side of the disputed northern Kashmir region and in eastern
Punjab province, doubling the toll to 10. Seven civilians have died on the Indian side this week. The
lull in fighting came after UN
chief Ban Ki-moon's spokesman urged the two sides to engage in dialogue to find " a longterm solution for peace and stability in Kashmir".
Recent breakthroughs mean no conflict
Pakistan Today, 14 – [Pakistan Today, 7-1-14, Pakistan Today, “India-Pakistan relations”,
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2014/07/01/comment/india-pakistan-relations-2/”] Jeong
Lately, the Prime Minister of Pakistan Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif wrote a letter to the
newly elected Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi. Naturally, what he wrote to the Indian
prime minister couldn’t have been different, in any manner, from what he has been stating
verbatim, time and again, vis-a-vis the mired bilateral relations between the two countries. PM
Nawaz Sharif took the initiative and broke the ice, once again, by writing to PM Modi despite
his detractors’ awfully critical stance on the recent overtures made by him to his Indian
counterpart for peace. PM Modi’s response to Pakistan premier’s letter was equally
encouraging. By expressing his government’s desire to work closely with PM Nawaz Sharif’s
government, in an atmosphere free from confrontation and violence in order to chart a new
course in bilateral relations, he has undeniably kindled a ray of hope for improvement in ties
between the two countries.
Indo-Sino War
No Impact
No escalation – The US will intervene to deter any conflicts
Uniyal, 4-25 – [Vijeta Uniyal, Graduate from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and
worked for more than 10 years in international organizations including the German Foreign
Office, Goethe-Institut and Humboldt-Foundation, Contributing Editor for the UK-based
Commentator and Fellow of the Lawfare Project, 4-25-2015, Don’t Worry, Obama, India’s Got
Your Back, http://www.whyisrael.org/2015/04/27/dont-worry-obama-indias-got-your-back/]
Jeong
India is now evacuating U.S. citizens from Yemen. Yes, Yemen, a country overrun by ans Iranianbacked militia, or as U.S. President Barack Obama likes to call it, “a counterterrorism success
story.” In a statement issued on April 9, 2015, the U.S. State Department asked the remaining
U.S. citizens in Yemen to contact the Indian Embassy in Sana’a or approach the Indian Navy
ship in the port of Aden. According to latest figures, India helped 1,000 foreign nationals from
41 countries to escape from Yemen. Two weeks ago, Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour
Hadi left the country on a boat from Aden, as the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi militia
consolidated their control of the country, bringing a fourth Arab capital under the direct
influence of Iran. If India’s rescue operation is a testament to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
success in turning India around, it is also an indictment of President Obama’s foreign policy.
Less than a year ago, Prime Minister Modi was elected to lead the country after a decade of a
stagnant economy and rising lawlessness. Under Modi’s leadership, India has seen a rise in
foreign investment; in 2014, the country’s economic growth was 7.5%, higher than that of
China. The mainstream media now begrudgingly acknowledges Modi’s success — the same
media that tried to smear his candidacy during the 2014 elections and, when everything else
failed, dubbed him “anti-Muslim.” Prime Minister Modi is rebuilding the Indian economy by
reducing government spending, deregulating industry, easing labour laws, and cutting taxes on
the middle-class and businesses — quintessential American values. President Obama on the
other hand inherited a country built on values in which he doesn’t believe. Only a
“fundamental transformation” could reconcile him with his country. The geopolitical vacuum
that President Obama is leaving behind has emboldened expansionist regimes and destructive
ideologies — from the Mediterranean to the South China Sea. Indians of my father’s
generation still fondly remember that President Kennedy had come to India’s aid to end the
Chinese war of aggression in 1962. In order to deter China from escalating the conflict, he
dispatched a U.S. aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal, in an apparent plan to deploy U.S.
troops stationed in the Philippines. As a result, China halted the offensive and apologized for
the “misunderstanding.” But those were different times and those were different presidents —
presidents who would not have idly watched their envoy slaughtered, traded the enemy’s top
brass for runaway soldiers, or outsourced the safety of U.S. citizens in war-ravaged foreign
lands. That the Obama Administration was not going to rescue stranded U.S. citizens in Yemen
should not come as a surprise. The Administration watched as Iranian-backed militias disarmed
U.S. Marines and seized embassy vehicles, before the diplomatic staff was let out of the country
in early February. However, the Indian government and defense forces deserve due credit for
conducting a well-organized rescue operation. Prime Minister Modi faces daunting challenges
as he sets about modernizing India. The economic success of his political agenda once again
proves that good old capitalism and industrialization are still the only way to lift millions of
people out of poverty. As President Obama refuses to lead the Free World, other world leaders
are rising up to speak for it — Canada’s Stephen Harper, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and now
India’s Narendra Modi.
India won’t go to war with China – US-Indo relations are high now
White, 3-15 – [Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National
University, 3-15-2015, Sorry, America: India Won't Go to War with China, The National Interest,
http://www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/sorry-america-india-wont-go-war-china-12415]
Jeong
In his latest contribution to our debate, Shashank Joshi raised some excellent points against my
skeptical view of the emerging India-U.S. strategic partnership. But I'm still unpersuaded. To
explain why, it helps to step back and clarify the question we are debating here. It is not
whether strategic relations between Delhi and Washington have grown closer in recent years,
because clearly they have. It is what these closer relations mean for the geo-political contest
between America and China. India's position is clearly important to this contest. Many
Americans, and many of America's friends in Asia, have long believed that India's growing
wealth and power will be vital in helping America counterbalance China's growing strategic
weight, and resist China's challenge to U.S. regional leadership. Indeed, the belief many people
have that India will play this role is central to their confidence that America can and will
preserve the status quo against China's challenge. It is therefore important to decide whether
the progress we have seen in U.S.-India relations justifies that confidence. I have argued that
in a geopolitical contest of the kind we see unfolding between America and China today, India's
relations with America will only make a difference to the extent that India is seen to be willing to
support America in a U.S.-China conflict. That is because who wins the contest between the
American and Chinese visions of Asia's future order ultimately depends on which is seen to be
more willing to fight for their vision. Each power wants the other to believe that it will go to war
to impose its vision, and hopes that, if all else fails, this will persuade the other to back off. This
way of describing what is happening will surprise those who think that this kind of old-fashioned
power politics disappeared after 1989, but it seems to me the only way to understand events in
Asia today. In fact, power politics never went away; people simply started to think that
America was the only power that was indulging in it. It has been taken for granted that
America will fight to support its vision of regional order, but that no one would be willing to
oppose them. Now China is proving that false. We can no longer assume that China isn’t any
more determined to change the current order than America is to preserve it. That is why
India's role in this contest depends on how far it appears willing and able to materially
support the U.S. in a conflict with China. In a game played for these stakes, nothing less counts
for much. As I read him, Shashank makes two key points about this question. One is that, while
India might not be willing to send combat forces to fight alongside America's in a coalition
against China, it would provide other, non-combat support such as basing and refuelling
facilities. That sounds like what the diplomats call “all support short of actual help.” It would do
very little either practically or symbolically to bolster America's position against China, and
certainly much less than American boosters of the relationship expect. His second key point is
that perhaps India would be willing to provide America with more substantial support if it saw
really fundamental issues of regional order at stake in a U.S.-China conflict. He cites the example
of the wide support given to America in opposing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 by countries
who saw basic questions of international order being tested there. I agree with Shashank that
very important issues for India would be at stake in a U.S.-China clash. But deciding to support
America against China would be much harder than joining the coalition against Iraq. In every
way China is both a much more valuable partner and a much more dangerous adversary. The
key question for India, and for America's other friends in Asia, is what would have to be at stake
for them to make that decision? So it boils down to this: would India go to war with China to
help America preserve the current order based on U.S. primacy? If the answer is no, then I
don't think the new warmth between America and India matters much to the future of Asia, and
America's position in Asia is rather weaker than most people assume.
Middle Eastern Instability
Alt Causes
Multiple alt causes to Middle Eastern Instability
HSNW, 4-30 – [Homeland Security News Wire, Homeland security industry’s largest daily
news publication online, 4-30-2015, Water scarcity increase Middle East instability,
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20150430-water-scarcity-increase-middle-eastinstability] Jeong
At least1.6 billion people worldwide face water scarcity because their countries lack the
necessary infrastructure to move water from rivers and aquifers. In the Middle East, this lack
of water infrastructure combines with the effects of global warming — including prolonged in
droughts — to make the entire region politically and economically unstable . Food supplies are
diminished as farmers find it difficult to find water for crops, and even basic sanitary
requirements are not met due to poor access to clean water, thus increasing the spread of
disease. During the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah War, the Shi’a organization, designated a terrorist
group by the United States, gained favor with many by distributing cans and bottles of fresh
water to residents in areas bombed by Israel; earlier this year, Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Iraq
seized water infrastructure, and controlled the Mosul and Fallujah dams to punish towns
which refused to fall under its rule; and today, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is building wells in the
Yemeni countryside just as Saudi airstrikes target Houthi rebel strongholds in urban areas. “Too often, where we need
water we find guns,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2008, urging the
world to put water scarcity at the top of the global agenda that year.
No Impact
Multilateral institutions are supporting the Middle East and North Africa –
Checks escalation and instability
Gov. UK, 5-8 – [Gov. UK, Department for International Cooperation, Foreign &
Commonwealth Office, and Ministry of Defense, 5-8-2015, 2010 to 2015 government policy:
peace and stability in the Middle East and North Africa,
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-government-policy-peace-andstability-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa/2010-to-2015-government-policy-peace-andstability-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa] Jeong
UK support to countries in the Middle East & North Africa continues to evolve in response to
developments in the region. We continue to build upon on the Arab Partnership Initiative, which was set up in October
2010 and formally launched in 2011 following the momentous changes brought about by the Arab uprisings. Our approach
means we work in partnership with people across the region on three main areas: tackling the
risk of conflict and responding to it; building capable, legitimate and inclusive institutions;
enabling inclusive and sustainable economic growth and recovery. We help deliver our
political objectives with targeted technical assistance through the Arab Partnership Fund , the
MENA Conflict Pool, and the expertise of the MENAStrategic Communications Team. Policy
We support reform and
stability in the Middle East and North Africa in several ways. In conjunction with our Embassies, we ensure
that conflict and reform issues remain key themes in UK dialogue with foreign governments. We also work within
multilateral organisations to further our objectives. For example, we work with our partners to ensure that EU
resources and support are correctly targeted. For example, we make sure that the approach agreed in 2012 - whereby countries
making the most progress receiving additional technical support and funding – is being implemented. We
are also working
with EU colleagues on the current review of the European Neighbourhood Policy, to make
sure EU assistance is able to be even more responsive to the situation and EU interests and
values in each country. We also work with our G7 partners, International Financial Institutions and regional partners
through the Deauville Partnership. The Partnership, founded in 2011, supports reform in the region by providing access to a multimillion pound Transition Fund, supporting access to funding from International Financial Institutions and encouraging public-private
sector cooperation. For reference, we maintain information on the UK’s 2013 Chairmanship of the Deauville Partnership and on
2013 events promoting the role of civil society. Programme We deliver UK bilateral funds through the Arab Partnership Fund and the
MENA Conflict Pool to resolve conflict and stimulate economic and political development across the region. The UK Government’s
Arab Partnership (AP) supports the development of legitimate and inclusive institutions to improve governance and enable inclusive
economic growth and reform. The total allocation for the Arab Partnership Fund for 2011-2015 is £166m. This includes £10 million
for FY 14/15 for political reform through the Arab Partnership Participation Fund (APPF), managed by the FCO. This fund supports
the development of stronger civil society, parliaments, media and judiciaries. £40 million for FY 14/15 is provided through the DFIDrun Arab Partnership Economic Facility (APEF), and supports reforms that deliver jobs, boost economic growth and create effective
and accountable institutions For example: With AP support, Morocco’s first MP constituency offices have been opened and a Council
of Youth has been established to increase participation of civil associations and young people in political processes. In Egypt, working
with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, we have trained over 300 Egyptian journalists in balanced and accurate reporting and
provided them with a space to publish stories anonymously. Through AP regional programmes, supporting scholarships for
outstanding individuals engaged in work to promote the rule of law in their country so they are able to improve the effectiveness
and accountability of institutions, access to justice and freedom of expression. AP regional programmes have also formed strong
networks of women leaders who are able to share experiences and best practice. Together with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and
the Department for International Development (DFID), we run the MENA Conflict Pool, which has £70 million for FY 2014/15 to
tackle conflict in the region. We
invest in conflict prevention and early warning systems to reduce the
effect of conflict on countries in the region. We also support the longer-term strengthening of
security and justice institutions to increase the capacity of the local populations to resolve the
conflicts which affect them. For example: In Bahrain, we have supported the establishment of the first independent
police ombudsman in the Gulf, providing essential independent oversight of the police force. Border watchtowers we built for the
Lebanese Armed Forces were instrumental in helping the LAF deter an ISIL breakout into Christian and Shia villages in the Beka’a
valley during fighting in August this year. We
are helping to reduce tensions between Syrian refugees and
their host communities in Jordan and Lebanon through projects which deliver better
educational and health facility capacity. We are providing counter-IED (Improvised Explosive Device) training to the
Iraqi security forces and the Peshmerga in the Kurdistan region in order to increase the rate of detection and making safe of
explosive devices and to reduce the number of civilian and military casualties. In Jerusalem we are funding the Jerusalem
Community Advocacy Network (JCAN), which assists and empowers Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to attain their legal,
economic and social rights. From April 2015, the Government’s £1bn Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), overseen by the
National Security Council will replace the Conflict Pool. Under the CSSF, we
will continue to address the short term
effects of conflict whilst also patiently continuing our work to build the political, economic
and security institutions that will bring enduring stability and ultimately prevent conflict reoccurring.
UK interests check instability
Gov. UK, 14 – [Gov. UK, Department for International Cooperation, Foreign & Commonwealth
Office, and Ministry of Defense, July 2014,
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/405025/APF_
13-14_Annual_Report_to_FAC.pdf] Jeong
With significant UK interests in the region, including bilateral trade worth approximately
£35bn annually, instability in MENA countries affects the UK’s domestic situation in many
ways - from energy prices, to investment in UK infrastructure and jobs, to the risks of terrorism
in the UK. The region in turn affects the prosperity of other parts of the world, 2 not least
through global energy markets. Our vision - to support a secure, prosperous MENA region with
political stability and inclusive economies and systems – seems longterm against events of the
last 12 months, but it remains as important as ever given these interests. 5. We have continued
to develop our approach since the uprisings of 2011, to meet the challenges of this volatile
and fast changing region. In particular, while violent conflict is not an inevitable part of the
change in social contracts being sought by populations in some countries of the region, we have
seen how quickly it can occur and escalate. During 2013 we revised the original Arab
Partnership strategy into a reform and conflict framework, to strike a balance between the
need to address short-term insecurity whilst laying the foundations for long-term stability.
We see three main complementary paths to the long-term vision:  Tackling the risk of - and
responding to - conflict;  Building capable, legitimate and inclusive institutions;  Enabling
inclusive and sustainable economic growth and recovery. 6. Our refined approach, viewing
conflict and reform work as a continuum, has brought together the practical work done on
reform and conflict, under the FCO-DFID Arab Partnership and the FCO-DFID-MOD Conflict Pool,
into a more coherent cross-HMG effort. We are delivering this approach through diplomatic
and political channels, both bilateral and multilateral (the EU and the G7), technical
programming support, and training and capacity building, differentiated to suit country
circumstances.
The upcoming Nuclear Deal will stabilize the middle east
Aliabadi, 7-1 – [Roozbeh Aliabadi, Managing partner of Global Growth Advisors GGA, a
strategic consulting firm and leading adviser on business and political strategies, and senior
adviser to Director of Strategic Initiatives Islamic Republic of Iran, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Institute for Political and International Studies, 7-1-2015, Nuclear negotiations: A prelude to
Middle East peace, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/246648-nuclear-negotiations-aprelude-to-middle-east-peace] Jeong
As the nuclear negotiations enters overtime, the optimism of a comprehensive accord is
becoming a reality to both sides of the negotiating table as well as the international
community. Certainly we must praise the diplomatic leadership of Secretary John Kerry and
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who in face of numerous domestic and international challenges have
succeeded in focusing on the common objectives and buffering the negotiations from the critics. Let us not get bogged down with
the number of centrifuges and the years the final accord would limit Iran’s ability of enrichment. This
development must
go beyond the current achievements and serve as a roadmap for stabilizing the Middle East
and potentially solving the most fundamental roadblocks of peace such as the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. By addressing this issue headwind, United States shall be able to repair its
image in Middle East tarnished since 9/11, and Iran will get a chance to solidify its role of a
responsible and constructive actor in Middle Eastern affairs. The failure to bring about a sovereign
Palestinian State continues to poison the relations throughout Middle East and beyond, and unless this issue is addressed, any type
of regional or bilateral compromise is destined to be precarious both for the immediate neighborhood and the West alike. Limited
platforms of dialogue and minor deals of peace are predetermined to remain on shaky grounds unless we continue to address the
over-arching issues. The
Middle East state system is imploding at its core and the fringe elements
like ISIS have come to haunt seemingly stable Persian Gulf monarchies and their sectarian
core. The non-state actors and terrorist groups together with unilateral actions of certain states have all but jeopardized the
regional political system and given way for the sectarianism and tribalism to fill in the power vacuum. The nuclear negotiations are
both a de-escalation of tensions and a platform to take the cooperation beyond the petty details of nuclear accord to the root
causes of instability. Since the signing of Joint Plan of Action in 2013, the public discourse of potential military conflict has given way
to anticipation of Iran rejoining the community of nations and foreign companies edging their way back into the last big frontier
market in the world. The alternative is a far worse scenario of potential military conflict, unpredictable consequences and
continuation of radicalization of politically awakened masses. Regional economies would continue to suffer, weakening the already
cash-strapped governments with youth unemployment and environmental issues remaining unmitigated. Last April, upon returning
home after concluding framework agreement in Lausanne, Switzerland, Zarif received a hero’s welcome. The joy and optimism of
Iranians was understandable in anticipation of long-awaited relief of economic pressures and speaks to the popular support and
political capital of current Iranian leadership. Such was the political platform that brought President Hassan Rouhani to power in
2013, and the negotiating team received a tacit support of Ayatollah Khamenei to protect Iran’s rights through a viable international
agreement. Kerry on his part traveled the World, assured the skeptics in the provisions of potential final deal and walked a fine line
in navigating domestic and international political landscape. Although
the fact that Iran and the U.S. are in
direct dialogue after three and a half decades of alienation is of earth shattering significance,
to say the least, it would be naïve to believe that negotiations would lead to normalization of
relations between Iran and United States or serve as a Gordian’s knot of Middle East
instability. The historical legacies and deep running distrust with legitimate roots in the mainstream politics of Iran still persist.
There are differences of opinion starting on the reasons of what actually brought Iran to the negotiating table, not to mention the
dramatically divergent worldview of negotiating countries to the level of identity. The
Middle East needs a much more
concerted and inclusive effort of stakeholders to strengthen its political order. This requires
both United States and Iran to seek new avenues for providing such effort that is both
inclusive of all stakeholders and has a potential to be applied to other regional challenges
such proliferation or conflict resolution. The significance of current nuclear negotiations
therefore lies not in the success of final nuclear accord. Rather it serves as a testimony that in
spite of differences, cooperation is possible and is actually happening . International
diplomacy thus should be celebrated and leveraged to further promote the actors of peace
and stability in the region, whether it is in the form of Nobel Peace Prize or broad-based
efforts to bring in the stakeholders of frozen conflicts to the table. An example of a well
thought award shall keep attention of the policymakers on the topic for decades to come and
will lead to a positive development not only on the subject matter but in wider international
politics. Because any impartial assessment of Iran’s geopolitics would speak to the potential role it can play in regional and global
order, there is a need for recognition and encouragement of current dialogue that would help transcend current affair challenges of
the day. The current negotiations are a window of unique opportunity for the West and Iran. To meaningfully take advantage of such
opportunity would mean to open the doors of addressing the larger issues of regional security. Doing
so will not derail
the current negotiations but will in turn enhance the viability and seriousness of it in spirit of
ultimately bringing peace to the region. The recognition of current negotiations as a success
and promotion of venues of dialogue in tackling the root causes of Middle Eastern shall serve
the cause worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. But the ultimate responsibility falls on United States and Iran, in decisively
taking on this chance further to promote the platform for peace and stability. This alley of opportunities must be viewed as a chance
for Iran to resolutely re-join the community of nations and for United States to re-emerge in Middle East as a player who
understands the extraordinary complexities rather than a promoter of other countries’ interests. Until Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
resolved there will be no permanent peace in the Middle East.
Proliferation
Nuclear Proliferation
No Chance of Nuclear arms race because of the Iran Deal
Talev and Keane, 7-14, - [Margaret Talev, award-winning journalist who specializes in
writing about American politics, White House Correspondent for Bloomberg News, Angela
Keane, Reporter for Bloomberg News, Iran Deal Ends Possibility of Mideast Arms Race, Obama
Says, Bloomberg Politics, http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-14/iran-dealcloses-possibility-of-mideast-arms-race-obama-says] Jeong
A historic deal with Iran will close off any possibility the country can develop nuclear
weapons, President Barack Obama said, vowing to veto any congressional effort to block its
implementation. The accord, which will take months to put in place, will stand as one of the
chief foreign policy accomplishments of Obama’s two terms. He said the agreement will halt a
potential arms race in the Middle East. “This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can
bring about real and meaningful change, change that makes our country safer and more
secure,” Obama said Tuesday at the White House, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden. In
exchange for lifting painful economic sanctions on Iran, which holds the world’s fourth-largest
oil reserves and second-largest natural gas deposits, the Islamic Republic is agreeing to
restrictions and inspections intended to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Before
taking effect, the agreement must survive a political battle in the U.S. Opponents will press
Congress to block it, while Republicans want to weaken Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016
presidential bid by linking the former secretary of state with an agreement they say offers too
many concessions to Iran, endangering the U.S. and Israel. In his remarks, Obama admonished
lawmakers to “consider the alternative.” War Risk “No deal means no lasting constraints on
Iran’s nuclear program,” he said. “No deal means a greater chance of war in the Middle East.”
He spoke in the White House’s Cross Hall, a wide, red-carpeted hallway in the middle of the
mansion. Obama has chosen the setting for several major public addresses, including the
announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death in 2011. The sanctions relief is contingent on Iran
complying with terms of the agreement, according to a copy of the accord obtained by
Bloomberg News. Iran agreed to cut 98 percent of its enriched uranium stockpile and eliminate
two thirds of its centrifuges. “That stockpile will be reduced to a fraction of what would be
required for a single nuclear weapon,” Obama said. Provisions of the agreement allowing
inspections of Iranian nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency are permanent,
he said. Opposition Mounts Even before the deal was finalized, opposition mounted in Congress.
Criticism escalated Tuesday after details were released. “I would like a diplomatic solution to
Iran’s ambitions, but this is not a solution, this is pouring gas on a fire,” Senator Lindsey Graham,
a South Carolina Republican running for president, said in a phone interview. “The deal will not
stand scrutiny. Anyone who votes for this deal is voting to give Iran money for their nuclear
war machine.” A Graham spokeswoman didn’t respond to an e-mail asking whether he had
read the agreement before drawing his conclusions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who warned against deal-making with Iran in a March address to Congress,
excoriated the agreement soon after its announcement on Tuesday. “World powers have made
far-reaching concessions in all areas that were supposed to prevent Iran from obtaining a
nuclear weapons capability,” he said on Twitter.
No risk of nuclear prolif – Multiple reasons
Bano, 6-12 – [Saira Bano, PhD candidate in the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the
University of Calgary, 6-12-2015, A Nuclear Iran will not Lead to an Arms Race, International
Policy Digest, http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2015/06/12/a-nuclear-iran-will-notlead-to-an-arms-race/] Jeong
George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State, once said, “Proliferation begets proliferation .”
The possession of nuclear weapons
or nuclear capability by a rival state is a constant stimulus to other states to acquire them. It is
often argued that possession of a nuclear capability by Iran would lead to a nuclear cascade in the region. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are likely to
acquire nuclear technology if Iran is allowed to have sensitive nuclear technology – enrichment and reprocessing technology.
This argument
overlooks the international and domestic factors that point to the fact that the nuclear
domino rarely falls. Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons failed to bring about a nuclear
arms race in the Middle East and Iran’s nuclear capability is also unlikely to have a domino
effect in the region . Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are often cited as likely to proliferate, but
all of them either lack domestic capability or are bound by international factors that prevent
them from acquiring nuclear capability. Saudi Arabia is often cited as likely to acquire nuclear capability after the Iranian
nuclear deal. Of the three most frequently identified potential proliferators, Riyadh is perhaps the most likely one. Saudi Arabia and Iran have a
relatively antagonistic relationship. The Shiite mullahs who came to power in Iran’s Islamic revolution and the Sunni Saudi rulers have long been
antagonistic toward each other. Saudi Arabia provided substantial financial assistance to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. It opposed the United States’
invasion of Iraq in 2003, to remove Saddam Hussian because Riyadh saw Saddam as a counter balance against Tehran and his removal would likely
result in Iran’s domination of the region. Riyadh is against the Obama administration’s nuclear negotiation with Tehran because a nuclear Iran will
become increasingly aggressive with its regional hegemony. Saudi King Salman did not attend the summit hosted by President Obama to build Arab
support for Iran’s nuclear deal to demonstrate his displeasure. Saudi Arabia is threatening to acquire nuclear technology if Iran is allowed to have
enrichment technology. These concerns were further fueled when Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence warned, “I’ve always said
whatever comes out of these talks, we will want the same” and “if Iran has the ability to enrich uranium to whatever level, it’s not just Saudi Arabia
that’s going to ask for that.” In 2008 Riyadh signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States in which it agreed not to pursue
enrichment technology. Now
if Riyadh wants to obtain enrichment technology it either has to build it
domestically or get it from the international market. Saudi Arabia has little nuclear
infrastructure. For this reason, it is often suggested that were Saudi Arabia to attempt to
obtain nuclear weapons, it would be more likely to obtain nuclear technology and perhaps
even weapons outright from Pakistan. Saudi Arabia provided substantial funds to Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons program. Recently, Pakistan adopted a neutral position in the Yemen crisis, as aligning with Saudi Arabia would have
risked sectarian conflicts within Pakistan because of its minority Shi’ite population, approximately twenty percent. Pakistan also shares a border with
Iran and it is unlikely to antagonize its neighbor with a Shi’ite population at home. Pakistan
is already under immense
pressure to ensure the nonproliferation of its nuclear weapons after Pakistani nuclear
scientist A Q Khan’s involvement in the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North
Korea. Pakistan’s nuclear program is India-centric and Islamabad has a strong strategic
incentive not to transfer its weapons to Riyadh and avoid opening up a second front by
becoming involved in the Saudi-Iranian conflict. This means either Saudi Arabia has to build its own enrichment technology
or buy if from somewhere else. In the first option, Riyadh has a rudimentary nuclear infrastructure and it might take two to three decades to build this
technology. In the second option, it is hard for Saudi Arabia to buy enrichment technology from the international market. The Nuclear Suppliers Group
(NSG) prohibits its 49 members from selling enrichment technology to a state that might risk the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is evident that
Riyadh is interested in obtaining nuclear weapons and any would-be nuclear-seller would be under intense international pressure not to sell this
technology. There are four states with enrichment technology outside the NSG: India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. India is bidding for NSG
membership and has always been proud of its impeccable record of not transferring its nuclear technology. New
Delhi is highly unlikely
to jeopardize its NSG membership for Saudi Arabia. Pakistan is also demanding a NSG waiver
like India and has a strong interest in improving its international image already plagued by the
A Q Khan revelations. There are rumors in the media that Israel might transfer its nuclear weapons to Riyadh after Iran’s deal, but such
prospects are highly unlikely. Israel maintains nuclear opacity and by transferring its technology would further deteriorate its relations with the United
States. At the 2015 NPT review conference Washington again blocked the resolution for a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (MENWFZ) that
would have singled out Tele Aviv to give up its nuclear weapons. In the case of North Korea there is no self-evident link between Riyadh and Pyongyang.
North Korea is already under tight international scrutiny and any transfer would prompt intelligence interception and international action. Egypt is
another likely proliferator after the Iranian deal. If Egypt did little in response to Israel’s nuclear weapons, especially in the 1960’s when the rivalry was
particularly intense, it is not clear why it should be expected to respond more robustly to Iran now. Cairo’s main security concern is Israel’s nuclear
weapons.
It explored the nuclear weapons program of its own, but ultimately abandoned it. It
realized that its security is better served by pursuing a MENWFZ instead of involving itself in a nuclear arms race. Relations between Tehran and Cairo
gradually improved through the 1990’s and there is little question that Egypt is extremely concerned about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology. Cairo’s
main concern is Israel’s nuclear weapons and to counter that threat it is advocating for a MENWFZ. In addition to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Turkey is
often cited as likely to proliferate in response to Iran. It
does not have an outright antagonistic relationship with
Iran and relations are presently more constructive than antagonistic. Ankara also has limited
nuclear infrastructure, and a strong security relationship with Washington as a NATO member.
In the near term this appears an exceptionally unlikely outcome for Ankara to acquire nuclear weapons. Turkey certainly appears to be concerned by
Iran’s nuclear capability, not because of its direct security or prestige ramifications for Ankara, but because of its potential to provoke regional conflict
and instability. Turkey has a close relationship with the United States, as a member of NATO, with U.S. nuclear weapons on its soil, and possessing a
formal nuclear security guarantee from the United States. Given
Turkey’s not outright antagonistic relationship with
Iran, its limited nuclear infrastructure and still good alliance relationship with the United
States, Ankara appears to be unlikely to acquire nuclear weapons in response to Iran. There are
strong chances that Iran and P5+1 will conclude a comprehensive nuclear deal in which Tehran is allowed to have limited enrichment technology with
intrusive IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections. If Iran violates the negotiated agreement and develops nuclear weapons there are
ample chances that it would result in a nuclear arms race in the region.
Iran’s nuclear program constrained by a nuclear
deal with the international community is unlikely to cause a nuclear cascade in the region.
No nuclear prolif – US and Russia check
Gelb, 6-9 – [Leslie H. Gelb, Former correspondent and columnist for The New York Times, a
former senior Defense and State Department official, and is currently President Emeritus of
the Council on Foreign Relations, PhD from Harvard, Russia and America: Toward a New
Détente, The National Interest, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/russia-america-toward-newdetente-13077?page=3] Jeong
Maintaining nuclear parity with the United States was the first and last priority of the plan. It
was also relatively easy because Moscow had the nuclear missiles and technology in hand. To
compensate for weakened conventional capabilities, in 1993, Moscow revoked the Soviet
Union’s long-standing promise of no first use. During this time, however, Russian leaders
continued to work with the West on mitigating the risk of nuclear accidents, on securing socalled loose nukes, and especially on consolidating the nuclear weapons that were spread
around former Soviet republics into Russia’s hands. Significantly, Moscow and Washington
continued to coordinate closely to prevent nuclear proliferation.
No prolif – NPT solves
Horovitz 14 [Liviu, PhD Candidate at the ETH Zurich, he held a research position within the
nuclear-policy working group at the Center for Security Studies in Zruich, "Beyond Pessimis: Why
the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Will Not Collapse", Journal of Strategic
Studies, Volume 38, Issue 1-2, 2015, www-tandfonlinecom.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2014.917971] // SKY
*NPT = Non-Proliferation Treaty
This article has built a case against prevailing pessimistic assumptions. It argued that the NPT is
unlikely to be fundamentally affected by, for example, the continuous absence of nuclear
disarmament, discontent with limited sharing of nuclear technology, or political
discrimination against the treaty’s members. However, nuclear proliferation, rising challengers
and a deterioration of its enforcement have the potential to compromise the treaty.
Nevertheless, this article argued that such developments are improbable in the foreseeable
future. This in turn has a number of implications for (1) policy and (2) research. From a policy
perspective, it is suggested that while current difficulties may derail the diplomatic process,
they will not fundamentally impact upon the treaty itself. Unfulfilled promises do generate
both genuine discontent and enable potential spoiler states to exploit NPT meetings for their
own ends. For instance, the disappointing level of progress on disarmament steps following the
US President’s Prague speech and Washington’s reluctance to deliver the regional disarmament
meeting agreed upon in 2010 not only resulted in widespread disillusionment with the NPT
process, but also allowed Egypt to use the NPT to express its own dissatisfaction with US policy
in the Middle East.99 In the current context, a successful 2015 conference seems doubtful.100
Repeated failure of NPT meetings might endanger a diplomatic process useful to most treaty
members. However, despite various actors fretting over the survival of the treaty in order to
further their own political agendas, in practice the future of the NPT appears to be much less
dependent on the diplomatic process than most observers suggest. Therefore, whether the
current US-Iran negotiations succeed or fail will have little impact on the NPT’s existence.
Nevertheless, when asking whether the NPT is set to ‘die’, this article set a high threshold of
disaster for assessing the treaty’s failure: mere survival. Yet, while most states benefit from its
mere existence, many might not be content with having the treaty solely survive. Once their
diplomats concluded the treaty was here to stay, they might desire an effective instrument
serving their often conflicting goals: for instance, some might want a legitimate nonproliferation tool; others a solid reassurance instrument; and again others a credible platform
for advancing tertiary interests. To all these ends, this article suggests that states would be
best served by a well-functioning process. Thus, they are better advised to strive for a lessambitious agenda, populated by carefully negotiated compromises over deliverable minutiae,
and not by empty declarations of intent. On the one hand, optimistic rhetoric and the promise
of future action can deliver agreement at a review conference. On the other hand, the damage
generated by subsequent scarce results and unfulfilled promises might outweigh the previously
achieved diplomatic gains. These findings also suggest a number of avenues for future research.
First, while pessimistic assessments often form the basis of most research on the NPT, this does
not need to be the case. Indeed, there are few reasons for scholars to assume that a pressing
need to devise new reform strategies or alternatives to the treaty exists. To the contrary,
scholars concerned with the dangers posed by the continuous existence of nuclear weapons can
rest assured the NPT is stable and focus on developing bolder solutions towards nuclear
disarmament.101 Second, this article makes clear how limited our knowledge on the origins of
past and current interactions within the NPT is. Thus, more detailed historical research into this
area is long overdue, particularly when it comes to why various states joined the NPT, why they
continue to adhere to the treaty, and what diverse interests they pursue within the agreement’s
framework. Such work would hopefully enable international relations scholars to further refine
their theories attempting to explain the complex functioning of this agreement.
Resource Insecurity
Food Insecurity
Alt cause – Rising fuel prices will collapse food security
HSNW, 7-2, - [Homeland Security News Wire, Homeland security industry’s largest daily news
publication online, 7-2-2015, Rising fossil fuel energy costs risk global food security
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20150702-rising-fossil-fuel-energy-costs-riskglobal-food-security] Jeong
Ongoing efforts to feed a growing global population are threatened by rising fossil-fuel energy
costs and breakdowns in transportation infrastructure. Without new ways to preserve, store,
and transport food products, the likelihood of shortages looms in the future. In an analysis of food
preservation and transportation trends published in this week’s issue of the journal BioScience, scientists warn that new sustainable technologies will
be needed for humanity just to stay even in the arms race against the microorganisms that can rapidly spoil the outputs of the modern food system. “It
is mostly a race between the capacity of microbe populations to grow on human foodstuffs and evolve adaptations to changing conditions and the
capacity of humans to come up with new technologies for preserving, storing, and transporting food,” wrote lead author Sean T. Hammond, a
postdoctoral researcher and interdisciplinary ecologist in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. OSU reports that Hammond developed the
analysis with colleagues at the University of New Mexico, Arizona State University, and Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos in Mexico. The
authors note that increased energy use in food-preservation systems does not always prolong shelf life. For
example, drying and
canning tend to use less energy than freezing, which requires ongoing energy consumption.
Moreover, as cities expand and food is produced by fewer people, dependence grows on
fossil-fuel transportation systems. The cargo ships, trucks and trains that carry most of the
world’s food run almost exclusively on oil. “ Getting food from the field to your table is a
matter of production, storage and transportation ,” said Hammond. “It sounds trivial to say that, but if there’s a problem
with any of those – a drought, problems with roads or problems keeping foods cool and dry for storage during transport – the system breaks down and
people starve. “More people moving to cities means there are fewer people working to produce food, which means we need to use more energy in the
form of machinery to grow and harvest things,” Hammond noted. “Problems with bridges, rail and port infrastructure increase the time needed to
transport food and lead to even more energy needed to keep food from spoiling while it is transported.” Technological advances in preservation and
transportation systems have improved the diversity and nutritional qualities of food over what was available to pre-industrial societies.
Nevertheless, it’s been estimated that up to 40 percent of the food produced in the United
States is lost or wasted. The estimate is lower in developing countries, about 10 percent, due to different diets and cultural norms. In
their analysis, Hammond and his colleagues considered the growth of microorganisms on food products as temperatures increase in storage; the shelf
life of foods such as fish, potatoes, strawberries and wheat; the amounts of energy used in preservation methods; and historical advances in the
transportation of different foodstuffs. “As humans push up against the limits of the finite Earth,” they wrote, “ food
security is a major
concern.” To meet future needs, decreasing numbers of farmers, ranchers and fishermen will
need to become more efficient and productive. In short, they will need to produce more food per acre and use less fossilfuel energy, Hammond and his co-authors write. Innovations that use other energy sources will be required in preservation, storage and transportation
systems. The
issue is particularly acute in tropical areas where higher average temperatures and
humidity translate into faster rates of food spoilage than in temperate climates. “We can
transport any food, even foods that spoil quickly like fish or fruits, to any point on the surface
of the planet before it goes bad,” Hammond said. “That’s pretty amazing, but I think we need to question whether we should.
Maybe the local-food movement is less of a trend in modern society and more of a necessity.”
Squo solves Food Insecurity
International Food Policy Research Institute 14 ["Food Security in a World of Natural
Resource Scarcity: The Role of Agricultural Technologies", 2/12/14,
reliefweb.int/report/world/food-security-world-natural-resource-scarcity-role-agriculturaltechnologies] // SKY
Increased demand for food due to population and income growth and the impacts of climate
change on agriculture will ratchet up the pressure for increased and more sustainable
agricultural production to feed the planet. A new report by the International Food Policy
Research Institute (IFPRI) measures the impacts of agricultural innovation on farm productivity,
prices, hunger, and trade flows as we approach 2050 and identifies practices which could
significantly benefit developing nations. The book, Food Security in a World of Natural Resource
Scarcity: The Role of Agricultural Technologies, released today, examines 11 agricultural
practices and technologies and how they could help farmers around the world improve the
sustainability of growing three of the world’s main staple crops – maize, rice, and wheat. Using a
first-of-its-kind data model, IFPRI pinpoints the agricultural technologies and practices that can
most significantly reduce food prices and food insecurity in developing nations. The study
profiles 11 agricultural innovations: crop protection, drip irrigation, drought tolerance, heat
tolerance, integrated soil fertility management, no-till farming, nutrient use efficiency, organic
agriculture, precision agriculture, sprinkler irrigation, and water harvesting. Findings from the
book indicate: No-till farming alone could increase maize yields by 20 percent, but also
irrigating the same no-till fields could increase maize yields by 67 percent in 2050. Nitrogenuse efficiency could increase rice crop yields by 22 percent, but irrigation increased the yields
by another 21 percent. Heat-tolerant varieties of wheat could increase crop yields from a 17
percent increase to a 23 percent increase with irrigation. Yet, no single silver bullet exists. “The
reality is that no single agricultural technology or farming practice will provide sufficient food for
the world in 2050,” said Mark Rosegrant, lead author of the book and director of IFPRI’s
Environment and Production Technology Division. “Instead we must advocate for and utilize a
range of these technologies in order to maximize yields.” However, it is realistic to assume that
farmers in the developing world and elsewhere would adopt a combination of technologies as
they become more widely available. If farmers were to stack agricultural technologies in order
of crop production schedules, the combination of agricultural technologies and practices could
reduce food prices by up to 49 percent for maize, up to 43 percent for rice, and 45 percent for
wheat due to increased crop productivity. The technologies with the highest percentage of
potential impact for agriculture in developing countries include no-till farming, nitrogen-use
efficiency, heat-tolerant crops, and crop protection from weeds, insects, and diseases. The
anticipated negative effects of climate change on agricultural productivity as well as projected
population growth by 2050, suggest that food insecurity and food prices will increase. For
example, climate change could decrease maize yields by as much as 18 percent by 2050–making
it even more difficult to feed the world if farmers cannot adopt agricultural technologies that
could help boost food production in their regions. “One of the most significant barriers to
global food security is the high cost of food in developing countries,” Rosegrant explained.
“Agricultural technologies used in combinations tailored to the crops grown and regional
differences could make more food more affordable – especially for those at risk of hunger and
malnutrition in developing countries.” However, based on current projections, stacked
technologies could reduce food insecurity by as much as 36 percent. Making this a reality,
however, depends on farmers gaining access to these technologies and learning how to use
them. This underscores the need for improved agricultural education to ensure that farmers are
able to use the best available technologies for their region and resources. IFPRI highlights three
key areas for investments prioritizing effective technology use: Increasing crop productivity
through enhanced investment in agricultural research Developing and using resource-conserving
agricultural management practices such as no-till farming, integrated soil fertility management,
improved crop protection, and precision agriculture Increasing investment in irrigation
Resource Insecurity
No resource scarcity – technology solves
Ridley 14 [Matt, "The World's Resources Aren't Running Out", 4/25/14, The Wall Street
Journal, www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579517862612287156] // SKY
How many times have you heard that we humans are "using up" the world's resources, "running
out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or
"approaching the carrying capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population? The
assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff—metals, oil,
clean air, land—and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption. "We are using 50%
more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we change course, that
number will grow fast—by 2030, even two planets will not be enough," says Jim Leape, director
general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund). But
here's a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and again. After
all, as a Saudi oil minister once said, the Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone. Ecologists call
this "niche construction"—that people (and indeed some other animals) can create new
opportunities for themselves by making their habitats more productive in some way.
Agriculture is the classic example of niche construction: We stopped relying on nature's
bounty and substituted an artificial and much larger bounty. Economists call the same
phenomenon innovation. What frustrates them about ecologists is the latter's tendency to think
in terms of static limits. Ecologists can't seem to see that when whale oil starts to run out,
petroleum is discovered, or that when farm yields flatten, fertilizer comes along, or that when
glass fiber is invented, demand for copper falls. That frustration is heartily reciprocated.
Ecologists think that economists espouse a sort of superstitious magic called "markets" or
"prices" to avoid confronting the reality of limits to growth. The easiest way to raise a cheer in a
conference of ecologists is to make a rude joke about economists. I have lived among both
tribes. I studied various forms of ecology in an academic setting for seven years and then
worked at the Economist magazine for eight years. When I was an ecologist (in the academic
sense of the word, not the political one, though I also had antinuclear stickers on my car), I very
much espoused the carrying-capacity viewpoint—that there were limits to growth. I nowadays
lean to the view that there are no limits because we can invent new ways of doing more with
less. This disagreement goes to the heart of many current political issues and explains much
about why people disagree about environmental policy. In the climate debate, for example,
pessimists see a limit to the atmosphere's capacity to cope with extra carbon dioxide without
rapid warming. So a continuing increase in emissions if economic growth continues will
eventually accelerate warming to dangerous rates. But optimists see economic growth leading
to technological change that would result in the use of lower-carbon energy. That would allow
warming to level off long before it does much harm. It is striking, for example, that the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent forecast that temperatures would rise by
3.7 to 4.8 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels by 2100 was based on several
assumptions: little technological change, an end to the 50-year fall in population growth rates, a
tripling (only) of per capita income and not much improvement in the energy efficiency of the
economy. Basically, that would mean a world much like today's but with lots more people
burning lots more coal and oil, leading to an increase in emissions. Most economists expect a
five- or tenfold increase in income, huge changes in technology and an end to population
growth by 2100: not so many more people needing much less carbon. In 1679, Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek, the great Dutch microscopist, estimated that the planet could hold 13.4 billion
people, a number that most demographers think we may never reach. Since then, estimates
have bounced around between 1 billion and 100 billion, with no sign of converging on an
agreed figure. Economists point out that we keep improving the productivity of each acre of
land by applying fertilizer, mechanization, pesticides and irrigation. Further innovation is
bound to shift the ceiling upward. Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University calculates that the
amount of land required to grow a given quantity of food has fallen by 65% over the past 50
years, world-wide. Ecologists object that these innovations rely on nonrenewable resources,
such as oil and gas, or renewable ones that are being used up faster than they are replenished,
such as aquifers. So current yields cannot be maintained, let alone improved. In his recent book
"The View from Lazy Point," the ecologist Carl Safina estimates that if everybody had the living
standards of Americans, we would need 2.5 Earths because the world's agricultural land just
couldn't grow enough food for more than 2.5 billion people at that level of consumption.
Harvard emeritus professor E.O. Wilson, one of ecology's patriarchs, reckoned that only if we all
turned vegetarian could the world's farms grow enough food to support 10 billion people.
Economists respond by saying that since large parts of the world, especially in Africa, have yet
to gain access to fertilizer and modern farming techniques, there is no reason to think that the
global land requirements for a given amount of food will cease shrinking any time soon.
Indeed, Mr. Ausubel, together with his colleagues Iddo Wernick and Paul Waggoner, came to
the startling conclusion that, even with generous assumptions about population growth and
growing affluence leading to greater demand for meat and other luxuries, and with
ungenerous assumptions about future global yield improvements, we will need less farmland
in 2050 than we needed in 2000. (So long, that is, as we don't grow more biofuels on land that
could be growing food.) But surely intensification of yields depends on inputs that may run out?
Take water, a commodity that limits the production of food in many places. Estimates made in
the 1960s and 1970s of water demand by the year 2000 proved grossly overestimated: The
world used half as much water as experts had projected 30 years before. The reason was
greater economy in the use of water by new irrigation techniques. Some countries, such as
Israel and Cyprus, have cut water use for irrigation through the use of drip irrigation. Combine
these improvements with solar-driven desalination of seawater world-wide, and it is highly
unlikely that fresh water will limit human population. The best-selling book "Limits to Growth,"
published in 1972 by the Club of Rome (an influential global think tank), argued that we would
have bumped our heads against all sorts of ceilings by now, running short of various metals,
fuels, minerals and space. Why did it not happen? In a word, technology: better mining
techniques, more frugal use of materials, and if scarcity causes price increases, substitution by
cheaper material. We use 100 times thinner gold plating on computer connectors than we did
40 years ago. The steel content of cars and buildings keeps on falling. Until about 10 years ago,
it was reasonable to expect that natural gas might run out in a few short decades and oil soon
thereafter. If that were to happen, agricultural yields would plummet, and the world would be
faced with a stark dilemma: Plow up all the remaining rain forest to grow food, or starve. But
thanks to fracking and the shale revolution, peak oil and gas have been postponed. They will
run out one day, but only in the sense that you will run out of Atlantic Ocean one day if you take
a rowboat west out of a harbor in Ireland. Just as you are likely to stop rowing long before you
bump into Newfoundland, so we may well find cheap substitutes for fossil fuels long before
they run out.
Water Insecurity
Alt Cause
Water variability is the cause of water wars, not water scarcity.
Hendrix, 14 – [Cullen Hendrix, Associate professor of International Security and Democracy, 92-2014, Opportunity Costs: Evidence Suggests Variability, Not Scarcity, Primary Driver of Water
Conflict, NewsSecurityBeat, http://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/09/opportunity-costsevidence-suggests-variability-scarcity-primary-driver-water-conflict/] Jeong
Nearly 1 billion people lack reliable access to clean drinking water today. A report by the
Water Resources Group projects that by 2030 annual global freshwater needs will reach 6.9
trillion cubic meters – 64 percent more than the existing accessible, reliable, and sustainable
supply. This forecast, while alarming, likely understates the magnitude of tomorrow’s water
challenge, as it does not account for the impacts of climate change. While the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts an increase in total precipitation at
the global level, regional patterns will vary significantly. Rainfall is projected to decline by more
than 20 percent across North Africa, the Middle East, central Mexico, Central America, the
Caribbean, Southern Africa, the eastern Amazon basin, and western Australia. The IPCC also
forecasts a 90 percent likelihood that rainfall variability will increase, leading not only to more
numerous dry spells, but also more extreme precipitation events and flooding. Water’s critical
role in the survival of human life, combined with imminent changes in its relative abundance,
has understandably generated concern that it will be a cause of future conflict. The prospect of
conflict over water is most clear in river basins where surface freshwater is shared between
two or more states. In these cases, water constitutes a common pool resource whose
consumption is rival: Uganda’s increasing consumption of Nile waters necessarily leaves
downstream countries like Egypt and Sudan with less. But contrary to popular belief, a new
study by Colleen Devlin and I finds that water variability, rather than scarcity, may be the
biggest climatic driver of interstate conflict. Trends and Triggers Devlin and I tested a range of
water changes and their effects on conflict outcomes at the international level. Pushing beyond
simple theories about resource-based conflict, we tested changing rainfall mean levels,
variability, and acute scarcity (when pairs of countries face below-mean rainfall in a given year).
Importantly, this research distinguishes between trends– longer-term mean states that may
affect the baseline probability of conflict – and triggers – acute scarcity or abundance, that may
affect the probability of conflict in the short run. It also explores how climatic factors may affect
bargaining between states more generally, as opposed to just those interactions taking place
over shared resources. We assessed whether rainfall scarcity has different effects at different
time scales. For example, while over the long term more scarce rainfall may be associated with
greater probability of conflict due to increasing resource strain, over the short term acute
scarcity should have a pacifying effect due to states’ attention being diverted to addressing the
economic and social effects of below-average rainfall. The same model yields the expectation
that conflict will be more likely in pairs of countries characterized by higher variation in
rainfall. Implicitly or explicitly, states form bargains over co-management of shared water
resources. When precipitation in these countries is more variable, their withdrawal needs from
the shared basin are as well. This variability complicates the creation of contracts governing
shared use, making conflict more likely.
Squo solves – tech companies
Clark 14 [Pilita, "World Without Water: Six Solutions to a Shortage", ft. com,
www.ft.com/cms/s/2/87064ea8-7a52-11e4-a8e1-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3fugnnmL1] // SKY
The World Bank is planning to devote up to $5bn a year to try to fix it. Goldman Sachs says it
poses a risk to economic growth. And Matt Damon, the actor, has tipped a bucket of toilet
water over his head to bring attention to it. The problem is water — a vital resource that has
long been poorly managed or taken for granted in much of the world and that has rising
populations driving competition for supplies. The search for solutions to uneven and
inadequate water supply has already led to improvements in irrigation, desalination and
wastewater recycling, and is spurring development of innovative technologies such as
waterless fracking in the energy industry and more water-saving devices at home. But the
scale of the problem remains vast. There are already 2bn people living in countries with
absolute water scarcity, according to the World Bank, which estimates the number will rise to
4.6bn by 2080. The dilemma is especially acute in China, India and other large emerging
economies, which companies are relying on for future growth. Hence the growing attention of
banks such as Goldman Sachs. These countries are also home to many of the 780m people who
still lack readily available clean and safe drinking water, the predicament that charities such as
Mr Damon’s Water.org are trying to highlight. As he said this year, just before being filmed
dousing himself in toilet water: “For those of you who, like my wife, think this is really
disgusting, keep in mind that the water in our toilets in the west is actually cleaner than the
water that most people in the developing world have access to.” Even in wealthier regions, the
time may come when the idea of using fresh water for such a purpose will seem bizarre. In
drought-stricken California, hundreds of people in East Porterville have had dry taps for months
this year. People in Hong Kong have been flushing with seawater for decades as authorities try
to preserve scarce fresh supplies. But poorer countries are still struggling to make such
improvements. If only there was a way to, say, produce water from thin air. Or stop -farmers,
the biggest users of water, drenching fields with old-fashioned irrigation systems. Or ship
water from a place like Iceland (population: 320,000) to somewhere like Iran (population: 76m),
where officials think more than a third of the country’s 31 provinces may have to be evacuated
because of water shortages over the next 20 years. These are just some of the ideas that are
starting to make their way from drawing board to factory floor, as investors show more
interest in ventures that preserve or enhance water supplies. “We are seeing the emergence
of a surprising constellation of different types of investors, such as oil and gas companies, and
very wealthy families -putting their money into water technologies,” says Tom Whitehouse,
chairman of the London Environmental Investment Forum, an advisory business that connects
investors with new clean technologies. “There are huge water scarcity problems across the
world which have to be solved and water is also becoming a strategic issue.” Energy companies
are driving investment in treatment and desalination technologies, as they expand in regions
with scarce supplies. They are among the biggest contributors to the $84bn that companies
around the world have spent since 2011 to improve the way they obtain, manage or conserve
water. Food and beverage groups are also spending more to cut their water use. In October,
Nestlé unveiled a milk plant in Mexico it has spent more than $15m upgrading that it claims is
the first of its kind: it does not need external water sources but recycles waste fluid extracted
from milk when powdered. Domestically, the shower, the washing machine and the toilet are
also being reinvented.
Soft Power
No Impact
Soft Power is ineffective
Glassman, 13 – [James K. Glassman, former under secretary of state for public diplomacy and
public affairs, is executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, 5-7-13, President Obama
surprisingly ineffective at using soft power, The Hill, http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/298077president-obama-surprisingly-ineffective-at-using-soft-power-] Jeong
In an article in The New Yorker two years ago, reporter Ryan Lizza famously quoted an
anonymous adviser to President Obama characterizing the president’s strategy in Libya as
“leading from behind.” That’s not a bad way to describe the president’s foreign policy in
general. Obama takes great pains not to lead too conspicuously, not to step on toes, not to
offend allies or enemies. Libya, in fact, was the ideal: Let the Europeans and the Arabs take the
lead, and we’ll quietly help out. Or not. Lizza wrote, “It’s a different definition of leadership than
America is known for, and it comes from two unspoken beliefs: that the relative power of the
U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world.
Pursuing our interests and spreading our ideals thus requires stealth and modesty as well as
military strength.” He quoted Benjamin Rhodes, one of the president’s deputy national security
advisers. “If you were to boil it all down to a bumper sticker, it’s ‘Wind down these two wars,
reestablish American standing and leadership in the world, and focus on a broader set of
priorities, from Asia and the global economy to a nuclear-nonproliferation regime.’ ” So how’s it
working for you? In my view, not particularly well. Look at the last 100 days. The revolt against
the Syrian regime has become one of the most brutal repressions in decades. The situation
has grown worse, with the almost certain use of chemical weapons crossing what the
president drew as a “red line.” North Korea, developing nuclear weapons and the capacity to
deliver them over long distances, has denigrated America and threatened to attack us. And,
speaking of nukes — and the goal of nuclear nonproliferation — Iran remains undeterred as
well, with its own “red line” in doubt. Meanwhile, the United States suffered its first terrorist
bombing since 9/11, with three killed and more than 200 wounded — an event that occurred
eight months after the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where a U.S. ambassador
was killed for the first time in 33 years. The problem of America being “reviled in many parts of
the world” is vastly overblown, but it has surely not been remedied. Europeans and the
Japanese like us more, but they were pretty fond of us to start with. Muslims, according to the
Pew Research Center, like us less. In Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, the average
favorability rating for the United States in 2012 was 21 percent; in 2008, it was 26 percent.
Foreign policy is not easy. The challenges are unpredictable, which is why the best policy rests
on a solid foundation of principle and a clear strategy. The George W. Bush administration’s
national security strategy was simple: keep America safe and promote freedom. These goals are
linked; free nations rarely threaten the United States or their own neighbors. Achieving both
these goals requires leadership — a consistency that reassures our allies and deters our
enemies. The Obama administration suffered from a common foreign policy disease: a fierce
aversion to whatever policies the previous administration adopted. Its strategy has been
reactive and timid: pull out, repair alleged damage, lead from behind. Thus, the war of ideas
that Bush waged against terrorist ideologies was jettisoned, as was stand-up support for
democratic movements and freedom advocates. It is hard to see the evidence that abandoning
these approaches has made the United States more secure or the world less volatile. The good
news is that, also within the last 100 days, the United States is starting to lead in one
important foreign policy sphere: trade. The administration, in a 180-degree shift, has gotten
serious about a free-trade pact with Europe and a separate Pacific agreement that now
includes Japan. If it is successful, these trade agreements, affecting countries representing
three-fifths of the world’s economic output, could be Obama’s greatest legacy. Perhaps the
greatest disappointment is the president’s surprising reluctance to use the tools, not of hard
power but of soft — especially the aggressive deployment of social media to win foreign policy
ends, such as persuading Iranians to oppose their regime’s attempts to develop nuclear
weapons or supporting democratic elements in Egypt and other nations of the Arab spring. The
president knows these tools well and deployed them successfully in his domestic political
campaigns. There, at least, he has not been reluctant to lead from the front.
Soft power doesn’t work
Shah, 14 – [Ritula Shah, Correspondent at BBC and journalist and news presenter, 11-19-2014,
Is US monopoly on the use of soft power at an end?, BBC News,
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-29536648] Jeong
The term soft power was coined by Harvard professor Joseph Nye in 1990. He wanted to dispute
"the then prevalent view that America was in decline". Instead, Prof Nye saw a US that "was the
strongest nation not only in military and economic power, but also in a third dimension, I called
soft power". He defined soft power as getting the outcome you want using persuasion rather
than coercion - in contrast to hard power, the use of force or military action. Although the idea
of soft power has gained currency in the worlds of diplomacy and journalism, the concept has
its critics. Some have rejected it altogether, arguing that it is only hard, military power that
counts on the international stage. Historian Niall Ferguson has dismissed soft power as "nontraditional forces such as cultural and commercial goods", by which he means the influence of
big brands like Coca Cola or Levi's. These may be enjoyed by people who don't then love the
US in return. But Prof Nye argues that this fails to allow for context; soft power or hard power
can only be effective in the right situation. "Tanks are not a great military power resource in
swamps or jungles." The Marshall Plan is an example that fits Prof Nye's soft power theory.
Immediately after World War Two, US President Truman was reluctant to help fund
reconstruction in Western Europe. But by 1947, containing Communism had become America's
foreign policy priority. The US put $13bn into war-ravaged Western Europe in less than four
years, that's worth about $100bn today. Spending money on building a strong, democratic
Europe was seen as investing in a buffer against the power of the Soviet Union. Nowadays,
providing emergency relief and humanitarian assistance after a natural disaster might count as
soft power. A current example is the deployment by the US of more than 3,000 troops to Africa
to help with the Ebola crisis. Power of the cinema Perhaps one of the most powerful examples
of soft power in action is the US film business. Hollywood may be reluctant to get too close to
Washington: it was notably burned by the communist purges of the 50s under Senator Joseph
McCarthy. But the movies made on the west coast depict an American view of the world
which can be powerfully attractive to others - as Iryna Orlova can testify. I meet her in a
homely church hall in East Hollywood, where she's rehearsing with the Balalaika Orchestra of
LA. During a break, we sit and chat about her childhood in Kiev. Irina smiles as she remembers
the American films she watched growing up in the Soviet Union. As a child, Irina was enthralled
by Spartacus and the Wizard of Oz and later, she saw ET and Disney films with her own
daughter. It was these American movies that contributed to her impression of the US as a
happy, sunny, place. Eventually, Iryna left Ukraine and brought her family to live in America.
The US military has long recognised the power of the cinema and has a Pentagon Film Liaison
Unit based in Hollywood. This provides facilities for film-makers to use military equipment and
even real troops as extras if required. However, access is subject to script approval. Lt Col Steven
Cole, deputy director of the unit, says its main concern is accuracy. But he concedes there are
some storylines it simply won't co-operate with if they present the military in what it
considers to be an unflattering or unrealistic light. He says the primary aim is to help educate
Americans on what their Army does. But with global box-office takings at almost $36bn in 2013,
he recognises there is a significant audience in the rest of the world too.
US soft power is insufficient – They can’t use it effectively
Shah, 14 – [Ritula Shah, Correspondent at BBC and journalist and news presenter, 11-19-2014,
Is US monopoly on the use of soft power at an end?, BBC News,
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-29536648] Jeong
Technology front A new source of US soft power has come from the recent innovations in
technology, many of which have emerged from Silicon Valley in California. Millions of people
want a smartphone or access to Google. Social media has given a voice to ordinary people and
has been co-opted into fuelling revolutions and uprisings, even if the aims do not always
chime with "American" values. Facebook and Twitter are global brands with American origins,
burnishing the country's reputation for creativity and transformation and possibly creating more
space for free speech along the way. Twitter insists that it is only a conduit for its users and not
a tool of soft power or anything else. But Luis Villa of Wikipedia thinks US soft power is
integral to the internet: "It's sometimes difficult to disentangle the values of the internet and
the values of the US, particularly, freedom of speech, but that does sometimes clash with how
people think of speech in the rest of the world." Soft power, via the internet or the cinema, is
one way to persuade people that your values are universal values. But the limits of soft power
are also apparent everywhere. If you look back across the period since the end of the Cold
War, the US has actually deployed rather a lot of "hard power" around the world; two wars in
Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan and the current airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, to name a
few and not to mention the use of drones. In all these cases, soft power wasn't enough to avert
a conflict or military intervention. Also, as Prof Nye concedes, soft power can only work when
people are receptive to the messages it's peddling. So the movies may help to spread a US vision
of what a free, democratic life might look like, but only if the people watching, recognise the
importance of those values to them. It seems unlikely that the violent jihadists of Islamic State
will be persuaded to abandon their anti-Western vision. But despite its brutal hard power
approach to spreading its ideology through war, IS isn't averse to also exploiting soft power
tactics, like using social media to disseminate their uncompromising views. In fact it may be
that the distinction between "hard" and "soft" power may be morphing into a new concept put
forward by Prof Nye, that of "smart power". He points to the World War Two as an example: the
enemy was defeated with hard power but then brought back into the fold with the creation of
institutions and alliances (soft power) which have lasted until now. A similar case is made by
some in relation to IS in Iraq and Syria. Former US Assistant Secretary of State PJ Crowley
argues that while military power can degrade IS, it can't defeat or destroy the ideology behind
it. He says that will take soft power - although once again, that raises the question of whether
you can successfully deploy soft power against an ideology which actively rejects Western values
and ideas. There is another complicating factor, the US may still be the only superpower but
there are now new, competing visions of what the world should look like. The success of China's
economy provokes both fear and admiration though China would like more of the latter. The
2008 Beijing Olympics probably marked the beginning of the Chinese government's efforts to
nurture a soft power message. Since then, things have stepped up. There has been an
expansion of Chinese Central Television, with the broadcaster producing English language
programming from Washington and Nairobi. The Education Ministry is funding more than 450
Confucius Institutes which aim to spread Chinese language and culture. Their locations include
some 90 universities in North America. But this attempt at building soft power has gone awry.
Earlier this year, the American Association of University Professors wrote a report criticising
the presence of Confucius Institutes on US campuses. The academics argued the Institutes
were an arm of the Chinese state, which worked to "advance a state agenda in the
recruitment and control of academic staff, in the choice of curriculum, and in the restriction of
debate". Tibet, Taiwan, and Tiananmen are said to be among the subjects that aren't open for
discussion in the Institutes. And in recent weeks, two prominent US universities have suspended
their affiliated Confucius Institutes, as concerns about them grow. So for now, China's state
funded soft power message, is treated with some suspicion and has nothing like the impact of
the more grassroots US version. China is still feared rather than admired by most of its Asian
neighbours (not least because of its military or hard power capacity) but over time, who is to say
that Beijing's economic success, regardless of its political system, won't win over global
admirers? So does soft power really matter? Governments seem to value it even though soft
power alone won't prevent wars or silence your critics - although it may help to win support for
your point of view. For now, US soft power, remains pre-eminent, America continues to
succeed in selling us its culture, its ability to innovate and its way of life. But there are
competing economic powers and competing ideologies, all demanding to be heard, all
wanting to persuade you to see it their way. Wielding soft power effectively is set to get more
complicated.
South China Sea
No Impact
No risk of SCS conflict – Multiple Reasons
Li and Yanzhuo, 6-19 – [Xie Li, Director of the Department of International Strategy at the
Institute of World Economics and Politics, Xu Yanzhuo, Doctorate from Durham University (UK in
studies international responsibility, South China Sea disputes, and Chinese foreign policy, 6-192015, The US and China Won't See Military Conflict Over the South China Sea, The Diplomat,
http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/the-us-and-china-wont-see-military-conflict-over-the-southchina-sea/, The United States and China both have an overriding interest in keeping the peace.]
Jeong
In a recent piece on the South China Sea disputes, I argued that “the
ASEAN claimants are largely staying behind
the scenes while external powers take center stage.” Based on recent developments on the South China Sea
issue, it seems the U.S. will not only be a ‘director’ but an actor. We saw this clearly on May 20, when the U.S. military sent
surveillance aircraft over three islands controlled by Beijing. However,
this does not necessary mean the South
China Sea will spark a U.S.-China military conflict. As a global hegemon, the United States’ main
interest lies in maintaining the current international order as well as peace and stability .
Regarding the South China Sea, U.S. interests include ensuring peace and stability, freedom of
commercial navigation, and military activities in exclusive economic zones. Maintaining the current
balance of power is considered to be a key condition for securing these interests—and a rising China determined to strengthen its
hold on South China Sea territory is viewed as a threat to the current balance of power. In response, the U.S. launched its “rebalance
to Asia” strategy. In practice, the
U.S. has on the one hand strengthened its military presence in AsiaPacific, while on the other hand supporting ASEAN countries, particularly ASEAN claimants to
South China Sea territories. This position has included high-profile rhetoric by U.S. officials. In 2010, then-U.S. Secretary
of State Hilary Clinton spoke at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi about the South China Sea, remarks that aligned the U.S. with
Southeast Asia’s approach to the disputes. At the 2012 Shangri-La Dialogue, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta explained how
the United States will rebalance its force posture as part of playing a “deeper and more
enduring partnership role” in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2014, then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagelcalled out
China’s “destabilizing, unilateral activities asserting its claims in the South China Sea.” His remarks also came at the Shangri-La
dialogue, while China’s HY-981 oil rig was deployed in the waters around the Paracel Islands. In 2015, U.S. officials have openly
pressured China to scale back its construction work in the Spratly islands and have sent aircraft to patrol over islands in the Spratly
that are controlled by China. These
measures have brought global attention to the South China Sea.
However, if we look at the practical significance of the remarks, there are several limiting
factors. The interests at stake in the South China Sea are not core national interests for the United
States. Meanwhile, the U.S.-Philippine alliance is not as important as the U.S.-Japan alliance, and U.S. ties with other ASEAN
countries are even weaker.
Given U.S.-China mutual economic dependence and China’s
comprehensive national strength, the United States is unlikely to go so far as having a military
confrontation with China over the South China Sea. Barack Obama, the ‘peace president’ who
withdrew the U.S. military from Iraq and Afghanistan, is even less likely to fight with China for
the South China Sea. As for the U.S. interests in the region, Washington is surely aware that China has not affected the
freedom of commercial navigation in these waters so far. And as I noted in my earlier piece, Beijing is developing its stance and
could eventually recognize the legality of military activities in another country’s EEZ (see, for example, the China-Russia joint military
exercise in the Mediterranean). Yet when it comes to China’s large-scale land reclamation in the Spratly Islands (and on Woody
Island in the Paracel Islands), Washington worries that Beijing will conduct a series of activities to strengthen its claims on the South
China Sea, such as establishing an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) or advocating that others respect a 200-nautical mile (370
km) EEZ from its islands. Meanwhile, the 2014 oil rig incident taught Washington that ASEAN claimants and even ASEAN as a whole
could hardly play any effective role in dealing with China’s land reclamation. Hence, the
U.S. has no better choice than
to become directly involved in this issue. At the beginning, the United States tried to stop
China through private diplomatic mediation, yet it soon realized that this approach was not
effective in persuading China. So Washington started to tackle the issue in a more aggressive way, such as encouraging
India, Japan, ASEAN, the G7, and the European Union to pressure Beijing internationally. Domestically, U.S. officials from different
departments and different levels have opposed China’s ‘changing the status quo’ in this area. Since 2015, Washington has increased
its pressure on China. It sent the USS Fort Worth, a littoral combat ship, to sail in waters near the Spratly area controlled by Vietnam
in early May. U.S. official are also considering sending naval and air patrols within 12 nautical miles of the Spratly Islands controlled
by China. Washington
has recognized that it could hardly stop China’s construction in Spratly
Islands. Therefore, it has opted to portray Beijing as a challenger to the status quo, at the
same time moving to prevent China from establishing a South China Sea ADIZ and an EEZ of 200
nautical miles around its artificial islands. This was the logic behind the U.S. sending a P-8A surveillance plane with reporters on
board to approach three artificial island built by China. China issued eight warnings to the plane; the U.S. responded by saying the
plane was flying through international airspace. Afterwards, U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Army Col. Steve Warren, said
there could be a potential “freedom of navigation” exercise within 12 nautical miles of the artificial islands. If this approach were
adopted, it would back China into a corner; hence it’s a unlikely the Obama administration will make that move. As the U.S.
involvement in the South China Sea becomes more aggressive and high-profile, the dynamic relationship between China and the
United States comes to affect other layers of the dispute (for example, relations between China and ASEAN claimants or China and
ASEAN in general). To
some extent, the South China Sea dispute has developed into a balance of
power tug-of-war between the U.S. and China, yet both sides will not take the risk of military
confrontation. As Foreign Minister Wang Yi put it in a recent meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, “as for the
differences, our attitude is it is okay to have differences as long as we could avoid misunderstanding, and even more importantly,
avoid miscalculation.” For
its part, China is determined to build artificial islands and several airstrips
in the Spratlys, which I argue would help promote the resolution of SCS disputes. But it’s worth
noting that if China establishes an ADIZ and advocates a 200 nautical miles EEZ (as the U.S. fears), it would push ASEAN claimants
and even non-claimants to stand by the United States. Obviously, the potential consequences contradict with China’s “One Belt, One
Road” strategy. In February 2014, in response to reports by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun that a South China Sea ADIZ was imminent,
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hinted that China would not necessarily impose an ADIZ. “The Chinese side has yet to feel any air
security threat from the ASEAN countries and is optimistic about its relations with the neighboring countries and the general
situation in the South China Sea region,” aspokesperson said. Since the “Belt and Road” is Beijing’s primary strategic agenda for the
coming years, it is crucial for China to strengthen its economic relationship with ASEAN on the one hand while reducing ASEAN
claimants’ security concerns on the other hand. As
a result, it should accelerate the adjustment of its South
China Sea policy; clarify China’s stand on the issue, and propose China’s blueprint for resolving
the disputes. The South China Sea dispute has developed a seasonal pattern, where the first
half of the year is focused on conflicts, and the second half tends to emphasize cooperation .
Considering its timing at the peak of ‘conflict season,’ the Shangri-La Dialogue serves as a hot spot. Since 2012, the Shangri-La
Dialogue has become a platform for the U.S. and China to tussle on the South China Sea, with the U.S. being proactive and China
reactive. (Incidentally, this partly explains why China is upgrading Xiangshan Forum as an alternative dialogue platform). This year
was no exception, as the U.S. worked hard to draw the world’s attention to the Shangri-La Dialogue this year. But audiences should
be aware that aggressive statements at the Shangri-La Dialogue are not totally representative of U.S.-China relations. After
all,
these statements are made by military rather than political elites. Cooperation will be the key
when the U.S. and China have their Strategic and Economic Dialogue in late June, with the
ASEAN Regional Forum and other meetings following later this summer.
No risk of SCS conflicts – Globalization checks
Jenny, 15 – [Nicolas Jenny, Masters at Fudan University in Shanghai, 1-28-15, Trade Goes on as
Usual in the South China Sea,
www.realclearworld.com/articles/2015/01/28/trade_goes_on_as_usual_in_the_south_china_s
ea_110939.html] Jeong
International relations scholars and journalists have intensely debated the reasons behind
China's increased assertiveness in the South China Sea. But Beijing's foreign policy actions in
the region have made most countries suspicious if not completely resentful of China. ¶ This has led
some to claim that, ‘China today faces the worst regional environment since Tiananmen. Its relations with Japan are at a record low; China-ASEAN ties
have similarly deteriorated due to the South China Sea disputes and China's heavy-handed use of its clout to divide ASEAN.'¶ Despite this resentment,
analysts have largely overlooked the trade dynamics between China and other claimants in the South China Sea dispute. One would naturally assume
that deep suspicions or resentment of Beijing would translate into diminishing trade ties, yet the opposite has taken place.¶ For example, Vietnam
recorded an 18.9% increase in Chinese imports in 2014 despite Hanoi's attempts to broaden its import partners. The
issue became particularly relevant following China's decision to place an oil rig in disputed waters earlier in 2014.¶ The Philippines, no
stranger to Chinese pressure in the South China Sea, also reported a 12.4% increase of exports to China during the first
nine months of 2014. Coincidentally, China is also the Philippines' third largest, and Vietnam's largest
trading partner.¶ While smaller East Asian states continue to hedge their bets against China, there is a resounding pattern in their trade
statistics - they all present a strong trade deficit in China's favour. Vietnam's trade deficit with China reached a record high in 2014 while the
Philippines' highest trade deficit is with China, representing 16% of imports, a 35% increase from previous years.¶ Herein
lays the
conundrum of the South China Sea dispute: while claimant states rally against Beijing's ninedash line, economically, they need China more than China needs them. Access to China's
market has forced foreign companies and their governments to compromise on politics. While
European companies have compromised on issues such as internet censorship, Southeast Asia's governments have been
forced to compromise on sovereignty in the South China Sea.¶ This economic fact of life for Southeast Asian states
has produced ripple effects across policy. For example, following the deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam, Hanoi promised to reimburse and rebuild
China's factories damaged by the protests. Similarly, the Philippines' economy suffered tremendously in 2012 when China drastically cut banana
imports.¶ China will soon have successfully leveraged its economic power to reach political ends - the consolidation of the South China Sea as Beijing's
core interest. It will not have primarily been through vast military expansion as many had predicted, but rather through its economic might. Trade has
arguably been China's most widely used foreign policy tool and as China's wealth increases, this is only set to continue.¶ As it should be remembered,
the South China Sea dispute is not all about potential energy deposits in the region. It is a dispute over competing visions of the South China Sea and a
weary China who sees itself surrounded. Heightened trade flows between China and the claimant states can assure a certain amount of stability in the
region.¶ And although many are quick to remind us that trade cannot serve as a deterrent to conflict, today's globalised world stands in stark contrast
to the beginning of the 20th century. Even the Philippine president, Aquino, argued that territorial disputes in the South China Sea were unlikely to lead
to conflict because
no one was willing to sacrifice the huge trade flows in the region.¶ Therefore, despite
the issues over sovereignty and the occasional flare-ups between various claimants, peace, no
matter how precarious, will prevail - no country is ready, particularly China, to sacrifice trade
at the expense of stability.
Despite tensions, relations are stable now – Checks escalation
Lee, 5-16 – [Matthew Lee, Graduate from UCLA and Senior Social Media Fellow at the
Huffington Post, 5-16-2015, South China Sea Dispute Remains Sticking Point In U.S., China Talks,
The World Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/16/us-south-chinasea_n_7297848.html] Jeong
BEIJING (AP) — China and the United States are budging not a bit over Beijing's assertive development in disputed parts of the South
China Sea, with Chinese officials politely but pointedly dismissing Washington's push for U.S.-proposed ways to ease tensions. As
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wrapped up a visit to China on Sunday, both sides stressed
the importance of dialogue to resolve competing claims in the waterway. But neither showed any sign
of giving ground over Chinese land reclamation projects that have alarmed the United States and China's smaller neighbors. Kerry
met Sunday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will be making an official visit to the
United States this fall and sought to highlight U.S.-China cooperation. " In my view, U.S.-China
relations have remained stable overall ," Xi told Kerry at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, adding that he "look(ed)
forward to continue to grow this relationship" on his upcoming visit. Despite those words, which came shortly
before Kerry left Beijing and arrived in Seoul, South Korea, friction over China's construction in
the South China Sea was evident and clouded the start of Kerry's brief trip to Asia. The U.S. and
most members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations want a halt to the projects, which they suspect are aimed at building
islands and other land features over which China can claim sovereignty. "We
are concerned about the pace and
scope of China's land reclamation in the South China Sea," Kerry said on Saturday. He urged
China to speed up talks with ASEAN on guidelines for handling maritime activity in disputed
areas. The goal is to help "reduce tensions and increase the prospect of diplomatic solutions,"
Kerry said. "I think we agree that the region needs smart diplomacy in order to conclude the ASEAN-China code of conduct and not
outposts and military strips," Kerry told reporters at a news conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Wang indicated that
while China was prepared to talk, it would not back down on the construction that, he said, "is something that falls fully within the
scope of China's sovereignty." "The determination of the Chinese side to safeguard our own sovereignty and territorial integrity is as
firm as a rock, and it is unshakable," he said. "It
has always been our view that we need to find appropriate
solutions to the issues we have through communications and negotiations that we have
among the parties directly concerned with peaceful and diplomatic means on the basis of
respecting historical facts and international norms. This position will remain unchanged in the future." Wang
added that the differences between China and the U.S. could be managed "as long as we can avoid misunderstanding and, even
more importantly, avoid miscalculation." The
Chinese claims and land reclamation projects have rattled
the region where South China Sea islands and reefs are contested by China and five other
Asian governments. These activities have led to maritime clashes, accompanied by nationalistic protests and serious
diplomatic rows. The U.S. says it takes no position on the sovereignty claims but insists they must be negotiated. Washington also
says ensuring maritime safety and access to some of the world's busiest commercial shipping routes is a U.S. national security
priority. China has bristled at what it sees as U.S. interference in the region and wants to negotiate with the ASEAN countries
individually, something those much smaller nations fear will not be fair. In one disputed area, the Spratly Islands, U.S. officials say
China has reclaimed about 2,000 acres of dry land since 2014 that could be used as airstrips or for military purposes. The
U.S.
argues that man-made constructions cannot be used to claim sovereignty. Obama
administration officials have declined to comment on reports that it may deploy military
assets, or that it is considering a demonstration of freedom of navigation within 12 nautical
miles of the islands' notional territorial zone. But they have said many of the features claimed by China in the
disputed Spratlys are submerged and do not carry territorial rights, and maintained that China cannot "manufacture sovereignty"
with its reclamation projects. Despite
the clear disagreements over the South China Sea, Kerry and
Wang said they were on track to make progress in other areas, notably on climate change, the
fight against violent extremism, and preparations for the next round of the U.S.-China
Strategic and Economic Dialogue in June and Xi's visit to Washington in September. They
expressed pleasure with their cooperation in the Iran nuclear talks, their solidarity in trying to
denuclearize North Korea and combat diseases such as the deadly Ebola virus.
US-Chinese war won’t escalate – both are committed to peaceful negotiations
Taylor, 14 – [Brendan Taylor, Head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre at the
Australian and PhD from National Australian University, 2014, “The South China Sea is Not a
Flashpoint,” The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2014, Volume 34, Issue 1, Taylor & Francis,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0163660X.2014.893176?journalCode=rwaq20#.
VZrcJBNViko] Jeong
Brendan – Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian and PhD – National Australian
University, “The South China Sea is Not a Flashpoint,” The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2014, Volume 34, Issue 1,
Taylor & Francis
But doubts
remain over whether Beijing truly regards the S outh C hina S ea as a “core interest.” Michael
Swaine reports that his investigation of Chinese official sources “failed to unearth a single
example of a PRC official or an official PRC document or media source that publicly and explicitly identifies the
South China Sea as a PRC ‘core interest.’”25 By contrast, Chinese officials have not exhibited such reticence when
referring publicly to Taiwan or Tibet in such terms. Nor has Beijing shown any reluctance to threaten or to actually use military force
in relation to these. During the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Beijing twice fired ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan in an effort to
intimidate voters in advance of the island’s first democratic presidential election.26 China went further in March 2005 when the
National People’s Congress passed an “anti-secession law” requiring the use of “non-peaceful means” against Taiwan in the event its
leaders sought to establish formal independence from the mainland.27
Explicit threats and promises of this nature are absent in official Chinese statements on the S outh C hina S ea
even when, as in May 2012, the normally smooth-talking Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying ambiguously
warned the Philippines “not to misjudge the situation” and not to “escalate tensions without considering
consequences” at the height of the Scarborough Shoal standoff.28 Indeed, although Beijing appears eager to
demonstrate its growing naval capabilities by conducting military exercises in the South China Sea—as in
March 2013 when it controversially conducted exercises within 50 miles of the Malaysian coastline—it is striking that Chinese
efforts to actually exercise jurisdiction in this region continue to be confined, by and large, to the
use of civil maritime law enforcement vessels.29
Space Debris
Squo Solves
Squo solves – Lasers and space bins check
Griffin, 7-7 - [Andrew Griffin, Correspondent with the Independent, Technology Reporter, 77-2015, Giant bin satellite will fly around space eating space debris,
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/giant-bin-satellite-will-flyaround-space-eating-space-debris-10371906.html] Jeong
Swiss scientists are planning to launch a huge bin into space, which will fly around eating up
satellites to clean up the space above Earth. The country’s École polytechnique fédérale de
Lausanne (EPFL) launched its first satellites — the Swiss Cubes — into space in 2010. Now it is
launching a new project to go back and grab it, and stop it contributing to the huge amount of
“space junk” that is flying around Earth. It will grab the tiny Swiss Cube in its net, spotting it
with specially-developed cameras, and after it has done so the two will blow up together. The
scientists behind it hope that the same approach can be used to grab other space junk —
which is made up of used up objects like broken satellites and dropped rockets, and is increasing
quickly. The junk can fast become dangerous, since it flies around the Earth at 7km per second
and could pose a huge threat to the vast array of satellites and people sat in space. Nasa has to
monitor the bigger objects, to ensure that none of them crash into each other. Scientists and
engineers have proposed an array of solutions to the problem, including fitting the
International Space Station with huge lasers that could blast away the thousands of tons of
debris that is floating around. Other solutions have included sending out big nets or blasting gas
at the debris to push it away. The solutions are required fairly urgently — more and more
satellites are in use, potentially crashing into each other as in the film Gravity, which could bring
down communications as well as risk people’s lives.
Debris exists now, but the status quo solves
HSNW, 7-2 – [Homeland Security News Wire, Homeland security industry’s largest daily news
publication online, 7-2-2015, Making space safer by spotting, removing space debris,
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20150702-making-space-safer-by-spottingremoving-space-debris] Jeong
Scientists estimate that there are now some 20,000 particles of space junk measuring more
than ten centimeters in diameter hurtling around Earth at an average velocity of 25,000
kilometers per hour, not counting the 700,000 or so particles with a diameter of between one and ten centimeters. Although
small, these items of space debris are traveling so fast that they could easily damage or
destroy an operational satellite. A new German space surveillance system, scheduled to go
into operation in 2018, will help to prevent such incidents. Space debris poses a growing threat to satellites and
other spacecraft, which could be damaged in the event of a collision.. The tracking radar is being developed byFraunhofer researchers on behalf of DLR
Space Administration. Traffic
congestion is also an issue in space where, in addition to the dense
network of satellites, orbiting space debris is increasingly transforming the paths on which
they travel into a junkyard populated with burnt-out rocket stages and fragments of
disintegrated spacecraft. Farunhofer reports that scientists estimate that there are now some 20,000 particles of space junk measuring
more than ten centimeters in diameter hurtling around Earth at an average velocity of 25,000 kilometers per hour, not counting the 700,000 or so
particles with a diameter of between one and ten centimeters. Although
small, these items of space debris are
traveling so fast that they could easily damage or destroy an operational satellite. The situation is
exacerbated by the fact that space debris has a tendency to multiply exponentially through a kind of snowball effect. Whenever two
particles collide, they break up into a greater number of smaller particles. Unless preventive
measures are taken, the rapid multiplication of space debris could soon put an end to
spaceflight as we know it. There is urgent need for action. The Space Administration division of theGerman Aerospace Center (DLR) has
been tasked by the German government with designing the German space program. In turn, DLR Space Administration has
awarded a contract to the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar
Techniques (FHR) in Wachtberg to develop and build a radar system for monitoring and
tracking objects in low-Earth orbit. This is the region of space in which the risk of collisions is at its greatest — especially at an
altitude of 800 kilometers above Earth. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy
(BMWi) has granted a total of €25 million to finance the GESTRA (German Experimental Space
Surveillance and Tracking Radar) project over a four-year period.
US-China War
No Impact
No Impact to Asia War – Conflicts won’t escalate to great power wars
Hunzeker and Christopher, 7-11 – [Michael Hunzeker, postdoctoral fellow at Princeton
University and a major in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Mark Christopher, senior director and
head of the Asia practice at The Arkin Group and a fellow with the Truman National Security
Project, 7-11-2015, Why the Next ‘Great War’ Won’t Happen on China’s Doorstep,
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/07/why-next-great-war-wont-happen-chinasdoorstep/88549/] Jeong
This month marks the 100th anniversary of the July Crisis, the event that led to World War I, and
if you believe the alarmists then history is about to repeat itself. Sparked by Archduke Franz
Ferdinand’s assassination, the Crisis saw a regional confrontation escalate unchecked into a
continental war that consumed Europe’s great powers and drew in the United States. In the
lead-up to this tragic anniversary, critics of President Barack Obama’s noninterventionism argue
that we stand at the brink of another Great War for ignoring China, and its potential threat to
Asia. Historical analogies such as these are understandably seductive. They make complex
issues seem simple. However, they are also deeply misleading, drawing parallels that don’t
exist from a story that didn’t happen. History is not destined to repeat itself, unless those in
power create self-fulfilling prophesies by drawing from the wrong lessons. The first problem
with using the “2014 is 1914” analogy is that it doesn’t even get the present right. In all the
ways that matter, the Asia-Pacific region of today is unlike Europe a century ago. Although
some international relations theorists point to overarching similarities – China is a rising power
seeking to reassert regional dominance and the U.S. is a great power with a preference for the
status quo – the specific parallels simply aren’t there. Asia today lacks 1914 Europe’s competing
webs of rigid alliances. There is no Serbia-esque regime yearning to carve an ethnically unified
nation-state out of existing political boundaries. China is not encircled (the protestations of
some of its military planners notwithstanding), nor does an insane monarch lead it. Asia is not
swept up in a “Cult of the Offensive” – the shared belief that military technology makes it
easier to attack than to defend. If anything, Beijing’s acquisition of anti-access/area denial
weapons systems has convinced most strategists that defenders hold the upper hand.
Globalized trade and production chains have increased the economic costs of war. And finally,
for better or worse, we now live in a nuclear world. Nuclear deterrence makes unilateral
aggression much riskier for China than it ever was for Germany. Conversely, if the nuclear
balance were tipped by Japan, South Korea or – even more problematically – Taiwan acquiring
nuclear weapons, the region would likely become far more volatile than pre-war Europe. In
either case, nuclear weapons render the parallel obsolete. The other problem with “2014 is
1914” thinking is that it also gets the past wrong. World War I was neither an unpredictable
escalation nor the product of deliberate instigation. The war’s real cause was miscalculation.
When pundits suggest that 2014 Asia looks a lot like 1914 Europe, they are invoking one of
two explanations for the cause of World War I. One suggests that pre-war Europe was a
powder keg waiting to explode. The implication for today’s world is that a relatively minor
provocation in the Asia-Pacific region – like ships bumping in the South China Sea or artillery
exchanges on the Korean Peninsula — could lead to an unintended escalation like the one that
caused the First World War. The other explanation for the war compares today’s China to Kaiser
Wilhelm II’s Germany, stoking fears of rising undemocratic powers with revisionist agendas.
Here, the worry is that China will deliberately engineer and manipulate a minor crisis – possibly
in the South or East China Sea – to bring about a general conflagration it supposedly wants. Both
of these descriptions miss the mark. As the 1914 July Crisis got underway, there was willingness
on all sides to risk conflict due to the perceived benefits of a regional or continental war.
Tragically, although national leaders understood how the alliance dynamics would play out once
the fighting started, they could not foresee the effect of modern weapons, which bogged down
the fighting into a brutal stalemate. This point highlights the one lesson from 1914 that might be
relevant to today’s world, but which is lost in the punditry: rapid technological change increases
the risk of political miscalculation. In 1914, Europe’s leaders willingly risked war because they
did not – and could not – understand how such a war would unfold given the proliferation of
new weapons over the preceding decades. Today, the leading edge of a revolution in military
affairs gives rise to a similar dynamic. Precision, energy, and cyber weapons – not to mention
more esoteric tech like unmanned aircraft, space-based platforms and robot cheetahs – are
now displacing “traditional” arsenals in much the same way that rifles, machine guns, and
artillery replaced bayonets, cavalry, and muzzleloaders a century ago. Moreover, these
technologies are just starting to spread. If there is any lesson to be drawn, it is that the risk of
miscalculation grows as the pace of changing military technology increases. Moreover, these
technologies are just starting to spread. Can recent experience in wars where only one side
possesses advanced weapons (as was the case in Iraq and Afghanistan) really predict what war
will look like when all sides have them? Ultimately, the “2014 is 1914” parallel is alluring
because it speaks to inchoate fears that the U.S. and China are on an unavoidable collision
course. But a U.S.-China conflict is by no means inevitable, and even if it does eventually come
to pass, it won’t be in a way that those currently invoking the analogy expect. The centennial of
the Great War is a fitting occasion to revisit the lessons learned in one of the deadliest
conflicts in history. But it would be tragic indeed if, in seeking to learn from the mistakes of the
past, we unnecessarily doom ourselves to repeating them.
No China War scenario – Massive domestic problems, no ideological details,
and massive bias
Etzioni 14 – [ Amitai Etzioni. University professor and professor of international relations at The
George Washington University. Senior adviser to the Carter White House and taught at
Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkeley Overstating
the China Threat? Calls for substantial new investments in U.S. military hardware seem a little
hasty. http://thediplomat.com/2014/04/overstating-the-china-threat] Jeong
One of Washington’s leading members of Congress, J. Randy Forbes, and a brilliant analyst, Elbridge Colby,
sound the alarm. They believe that China has made precipitous gains against the United
States’ military power and that the U.S. must urgently increase its defense efforts to maintain its superiority.¶ Forbes and Colby assert
that “the balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific writ large is under serious and growing pressure from China’s military-modernization efforts,”
and the U.S. “edge in technology … is eroding.” They caution that China’s military buildup poses “critical” challenges “to achieving U.S. political-military
objectives in the areas that have traditionally been part of our defense umbrella,” namely “challenges to [the United States’] military superiority in the
crucial air, sea, space, and cyberspace domains.” Most alarming, Forbes and Colby hold that failure to act could have “tremendous strategic
consequences” for the United States and its allies.¶ To
support these claims, Forbes and Colby provide no new
details (or old ones, for that matter) about China’s military buildup, instead quoting prominent officials .
Their “evidence” consists of Commander of U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Locklear’s statement that “our historic dominance … is diminishing;”
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall’s assertion that the United States’ technological superiority in
defense “is being challenged in ways … not seen for decades, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region;” and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General
Martin Dempsey’s claim that “our technology edge [is eroding].” Forbes
and Colby seem not to mind that the job of
these officials is to cry wolf whenever they see any creature moving , lest they be charged with having ignored
a menace if said wolf does materialize. Forbes and Colby also ignore that
the military budget and the generals’ command
depend on finding a new enemy now that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down.
And they do not take into account the
military’s long record of overestimating the dangers posed by
America’s enemies, as notably occurred in the case of the former Soviet Union.¶ A careful reader notes that the two leading analysts do
recognize that China’s A2/AD defenses are full of holes, akin—in their words—to “a block of Swiss cheese,” and it is
incredibly difficult to protect a “ huge territory”.
Forbes and Colby should have to added that Chinese
submarines are noisy and pose little threat; China’s single aircraft carrier offers scant
opportunity to project power against the diminished but still-vast American fleet; and that China’s military buildup is dramatic only if
one ignores that it started the “race” from far behind. It is easy to achieve double-digit percent increases in military spending when one’s baseline
budget was $30 billion in 2000 and had scraped $160 billion in 2012. By
contrast, the United States’ defense budget in
2012 was more than 400 percent larger —about $682 billion— than China’s and remained $30 billion greater than the defense
budgets of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil combined.¶ Forbes and Colby’s
military shopping list includes:¶ Additional Virginia-class submarines and unspecified new technologies designed to “sustain our
undersea-warfare advantage.Ӧ Unspecified future aircraft with a host of novel capabilities designed to meet
“emerging threat environments in the Western Pacific.”¶ Additional long-range bombers that would improve on the B-2.¶ New, unspecified “credible
kinetic and nonkinetic means to deter potential adversaries from extending a conflict into space.”¶ “[A] new generation of offensive munitions.”¶
Greater spending, generally speaking, on “cutting-edge and next-generation technologies.”¶ Mark Gunzinger, who shares the same concerns, coauthored a document with Jan Van Tol, Andrew Krepinevich, and Jim Thomas on the Air-Sea Battle concept in which the authors recommended a host
of military expenditures, including several technological and material developments and increases. These include:¶
Unspecified “long-
range penetrating and stand-off EA-capable platforms (manned and/or unmanned).”¶ “Quantity obscurants, decoys,
and false target generators for both offensive and defensive [electronic warfare] missions.Ӧ Developing alternatives to GPS navigation and reducing
United States’ reliance on GPS for its “precision guided weapons.”¶ Directed-energy weapons (DEW)¶ Additional unmanned undersea vehicles for
intelligence purposes.¶ Developing new mobile mines “deployable by submarines and stealthy Air Force bombers.”¶ “Stockpiling” precision-guided
weapons.¶ Additional air tankers.¶ One
wonders what good these kinds of extra hardware would do in
light of the fact that China is engaging in a low-key strategy of salami tactics that relies on
enforcing its disputed maritime claims with mainly non-military assets. These include using civilian
patrol vessels , which are “ armed” with nothing more than water cannons and grappling hooks , and cutting the
cables of exploration vessels belonging to other countries. Most important, do these analysts really presume that the
United States should threaten China with war if it persists in claiming that several piles of
uninhabited rocks and the waters around them are within China’s exclusive economic zone or air defense
identification zone?¶ More needs to be heard about China’s actual intentions and interests
before it is appropriate to conclude that the U.S. government should invest large sums in technologies that have strategic value only in outright war.
Why would China seek to “eat our lunch,” as Pentagon officials are fond of saying, or replace the United States as a global power? It has no
ideology that calls for bringing its regime’s ideals to the rest of the world. And it is under enormous pressure to attend to
a host of serious domestic concerns, including an aging population, persistent environmental
challenges, and an economic slowdown .
Interdependence checks Rising Tensions
Follett, 14 – [Andrew Follett, George Mason University, 6-24-14, The Diplomat, China and the
US: Destined to Cooperate?, http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/china-and-the-us-destined-tocooperate] Jeong
The 21st century will be defined by the relationship between the American superpower and rising China. A new Cold War would
threaten the world order while a mutually beneficial association could bring all prosperity. The latter scenario is more likely. The
geography, economies, and energy resources of the U.S and China align their “core interests.” First, geography. The
U.S. is
located on the most resource and capital-rich continent, North America. The American Midwest
consists of valuable arable land and is bisected by the world’s largest navigable rivers, allowing the export of food and products at
bargain prices. Nearby nations have either historically been on friendly terms (Canada) or lack the ability to present a threat (Central
America and the Caribbean) without an external sponsor. This
benign environment has allowed America to
focus on projecting power and dominating global merchant marine traffic. Since China lies
across an ocean dominated by the American Navy, neither directly threatens the other. China,
meanwhile, is a populous and vast land power with a long coastline. Yet China’s focus has
historically turned inward, with only sporadic efforts to build a naval presence. China’s heartland is exposed to Russia
from the north, Japan to the east, various fractious states to the west, and the rising powers of Thailand, India, and Vietnam to the
south. In other words, China is surrounded, and its biggest threats are from other land-based powers, particularly Russia and India.
China therefore cannot afford to antagonize America, since it would require American support
or tacit neutrality in any conflict with Russia or India. Geography ensures that China does not
see American naval dominance on its shores as a comparable threat. A Chinese move against American
interests would open it to aggression from its neighbors while simultaneously cutting off a needed ally. No Chinese government is
foolish enough to risk multiple high-intensity wars. The
geography of China and the U.S. dictate their “core
interests” as mutually non-threatening states, and make cooperation more likely since both
have an interest in opposing Russia. Secondly, the American and Chinese economies are destined
to become more interdependent, and integrated economies usually lead to geostrategic
alliances. The U.S. follows a laissez-faire economic model, entailing a boom-and-bust cycle that is harsher than in more planned
systems. When the free market dictates economic apportionment, at the height of the cycle resources are often applied to unwise
projects. During recessions, companies either downsize or go out of business, resulting in short spurts of high unemployment.
America tolerates these fluctuations because she long ago decided to trade economic stability
for higher long term growth. This has succeeded over the past century. This growth, combined
with other advantages, ensures the U.S. will endure as a superpower. America utilizes its advantages to
maintain a global maritime “trade order” in the form of organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World
Trade Organization, resulting in economic growth for the world and a successful consumption-based economy at home.
Contrastingly, China’s
economy is a sort of “state capitalism” distinct from the European “state champion” model. The
economy is based around exporting finished manufactured goods to America, further integrating
both economies. China’s two-decade-plus surge in economic growth will soon end, yet given the lack of progress in
transitioning to a more consumption-based economy, China has not achieved what its large population
considers an equitable distribution of resources and benefits. Such imbalances foster domestic
tensions. The growth constraints facing China’s economy will only create additional problems with fewer new resources at
Beijing’s disposal. The Chinese slowdown has already led to political infighting, and this is likely to continue in the future.
Addressing this problem while transitioning to a consumption-based economy may reduce the
ability of the ruling Communist Party to project power abroad while retaining it at home.
Economically, America is strong in areas like food production, education, technology, and
precision industrial manufacturing. China, by contrast, is strong in areas like heavy industry,
light manufacturing, and cheap labor. This presents a recipe for complementary economic
interdependence. Finally, both countries will move closer geopolitically due to their
complementary energy interests. Most of China’s foreign policy centers on attempts to acquire new energy resources,
particularly oil. Over the following decades,
China will seek to become more self-sufficient by expanding
its hydropower capacity and coal plants. America shares this goal, and with the shale
revolution will likely end up exporting energy to China , including oil and liquid natural gas. This gives
America a geopolitical “lever” over China by increasing economic interdependence. The American
situation on energy resources, particularly oil and natural gas, outclasses China’s. Oil is non-renewable, and OPEC
nations will likely be unable to meet China’s growing demand. However, America now controls the world’s largest
untapped oil reserve, the Green River Formation. This formation alone contains up to 3 trillion barrels of
untapped oil-shale, roughly half of which may be recoverable. This single geologic formation could contain more
oil than the rest of the world’s proven reserves combined. As Chinese demand rises, Beijing will likely
become the top importer of this oil. No other oil source can supply China’s needs as
efficiently. Eastern European and Russian oil shale reserves are smaller and less politically and economically extractable than
America’s emerging sources. If America invests a comparatively small portion of its new energy-based
wealth into a larger Navy to secure a Pacific trade route to China, the economic integration of
the two nations will be virtually irreversible. Already foreign investments are pouring into the
“new Middle East” of America and Canada, despite strong opposition from the current administration. American control
over future markets for natural gas is almost as certain as for oil. The U.S. produces natural gas abundantly and is building the
facilities to export it to foreign markets, including China. China imports roughly 56 percent of its oil and this number grows each
year. Beijing plans to increase reserves by acquiring new offshore resources and “secure” reserves abroad. Since between 60-70
percent of its imported oil originates in Africa or the Middle East, the only way to inexpensively transport it is by sea. This makes
China vulnerable to economic warfare from India, which can sever much of its supply at will. This is a strategic concern and makes
war with India more likely. China
doesn’t have many other domestic energy options with the
exception of coal, which carries high health and environmental risks. Renewable energy is too
expensive, hydraulic power creates instability in rural areas, and social biases prohibit nuclear
power. For technical reasons, China’s untapped oil shale reserves, though large, would be
prohibitively expensive to process. They are estimated to be economically recoverable at $345 a barrel, more than
triple the price of American oil shale. An American boom in natural gas cannot fully “bail out” China;
nonetheless it will certainly be part of the solution. Domestic political pressures, environmental concerns and
rising demand for portable fuels mean the crux of Chinese foreign policy for the foreseeable future will
be aimed at acquiring new oil supplies and protecting existing supply lines across the Indian Ocean.
The South China Sea is critical to China’s goals because most imported oil from Africa must cross it and the sea contains its own
marginal reserves close to China. Inadequate naval forces guarantee
China will continue to depend upon the
American Navy to protect its oil trade. The dispute surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
does not change that. In any case, heightened regional competition for energy assets will diminish
as American reserves come online over the next five to ten years. In the energy sector,
America will ultimately transition to an energy and fuel exporter and China will ultimately
import American resources. This will further connect their economies and build strong
economic ties. Both China and America hope for a mutually beneficial arrangement to meet their
security and development goals. Geographic, economic, and energy considerations ensure these two nations will
become more interdependent throughout this century.
Disputes won’t escalate – No chance it’ll go nuclear
Gurtov, 14 – [Mel Gurtov, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University,
Editor-in-Chief of Asian Perspective, China-US Focus, 3-10-2014, "Back to the Cold War? The USChina Military Competition", http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/back-to-the-coldwar-the-us-china-military-competition/] Jeong
Nevertheless,
the military side of US-China relations is not worry-free . Eminent PRC and US security
experts recently characterized the relationship as one of “strategic distrust.” Mutual assurances , a
multitude (around 90) of Track 1 dialogue groups, and a high level of economic interdependence
have not been sufficient
to offset suspicions . Some of the language used by influential people in both countries resembles Cold War rhetoric. Even
those Chinese specialists who value the relationship with the United States and say conflict would be disastrous also believe the
United States is the one country that stands in the way of China’s full rise to major-power status. Meantime, US leaders regularly
assure China that they wish it peace and prosperity, but feed Chinese anxieties by “rebalancing” forces in ways that raise the specter
of “containment” and by conditioning acceptance of China as a “responsible stakeholder” on support of US policy preferences.
Nationalism is fanning the fires in both countries : China is determined to assert itself as a “responsible great
power” on territorial and strategic issues, while the US is equally determined to maintain its paramount position in the Pacific.
These are not the ingredients for confidence building. And confidence building is what is badly needed now. One
piece of good news , revealed at a US Naval Institute conference earlier this year, is that US-China military
engagement on security issues will increase 20 percent this year , and that China will attend the
RIMPAC exercises for the first time in 2014. This is occurring despite concern among the navy brass about a China-Japan war,
which might trigger US involvement under its security treaty with Japan. More such military-to-military ties, both bilateral and
multilateral (with Japan and South Korea), are essential, in particular if they lead to a PRC-US code of conduct to guard against
further incidents at sea that might result in an exchange of fire. At
the height of the US-USSR Cold War, both
countries took steps to ensure that the competition never again reached the stage of a nuclear
showdown such as occurred over Cuba. Today, US-China relations are far more developed at every
level —Tracks I, II, and III— than was ever the case between Washington and Moscow. Nor have USChina relations reached the stage of an expensive and dangerous arms race such as bankrupted
the USSR and permanently unbalanced the US budget. Both countries’ leaders need to stay focused on the importance of the
relationship while opportunities still exist to sustain deep cooperation on common interests, such as restraining North Korea’s and
Iran’s nuclear ambitions, keeping the South China and East China Seas disputes from turning violent, working together on
peacekeeping missions and humanitarian assistance, and agreeing to meaningful targets on carbon emissions before climate change
becomes irreversible.
Relations are improving now – They don’t want to go to war
McKelvey, 6-18 – [Tara McKelvey, White House Reporter, 6-18-2015, Trying to avoid war, US
and China build uneasy alliance, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33104127] Jeong
As US and China officials meet in Washington for high-level talks, the relationship between
the countries is increasingly tense and awkward, even as they try to build an alliance. America
and China of are playing a high-stakes game in the South China Sea. Things are tense in Washington, too. After
building islands, lighthouses and a runway in disputed areas of the South China Sea, Beijing officials say they're ready to stop construction. Lu Kang, a
spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, issued a statement on 16 June, saying the work - or at least some of it - would soon be "completed". US
officials sound underwhelmed. (They "noted" the Chinese announcement, according to Reuters.) Still the timing is good - and is not accidental. Next
week Chinese officials will meet with Americans in Washington for a conference, the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The subject of the South China
Sea is likely to come up. It'll also be on the agenda in September when President Xi Jinping of China comes to Washington. Americans say the Chinese
have created more than 2,000 acres (809 ha) of new territory in the South China Sea, claiming these areas as their own. Chinese officials say they've
built the islands so they can save people who've become lost at sea and for other humanitarian reasons. The islands will be used for military purposes
they haven't fully explained. The construction work has upset people in the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries in the region - and in the United
States. Americans have pushed back. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says US warships and aircraft will continue to use the South China Sea, no matter
what the Chinese say. One US surveillance aircraft that made its way through the area carried a CNNcrew, a manoeuvre by the US military that Cato
Institute's Doug Bandow describes as "pretty provocative". Meanwhile US officials, speaking anonymously, blame China for stealing personnel files, a
security breach that's affected millions of government workers. Chinese officials say they played no part in the crime. No wonder things between
Chinese and American officials are tense. You could see it in the faces of military officers who'd gathered one afternoon last week for an event at the
National Defense University in Washington. They
were attending a ceremony that celebrated cooperation
between the two militaries, American and Chinese. This includes combined efforts to provide
assistance to victims of natural disasters. Not everyone looked pleased, though. Before the
ceremony began, a Chinese officer stood in the front of the room and stared at two empty
chairs towards the end of the aisle. One had a sign - "GEN ODIERNO". It was for Gen Raymond Odierno, the US army chief of staff.
Another was marked "GEN FAN" for Gen Fan Changlong, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission. The Chinese officer called over an
American officer. "We would like to propose that you put Gen Odierno and Gen Fan in the middle," he said. The American officer said he didn't want to
move the chairs. The Chinese officer looked at the chairs again. He said: "We don't think it's appropriate." Someone took one of the nametags off a
chair. You could hear tape being peeled from the fabric. The sticker was attached to another chair. The Chinese officer nodded. "That's good," he said.
An American officer in the back of the room said they try to be flexible. "Like jazz," he said. "We improvise." Their
leaders are
improvising, too, as they find their way in a world with two super-nations, both with fearsome
militaries and economies. "Although there are times when our nations have differences, it's
important that our countries come together," Gen Odierno said that afternoon at the National Defense University. Still
maintaining a balance of power is hard, and negotiations, whether over chairs or sea lanes, are marked by tension and sometimes silliness. The Chinese
and US officers who argued about the chairs brought to mind Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film, Dr Strangelove: "Gentleman, you can't fight in here. This is
the war room." Yet the Chinese have a point, says Andrew Oros, a professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, who writes about Asia
security policies. Americans are used to setting the agenda - and arranging the chairs. Now the Chinese have something to say. "China believes it is reemerging as a dominant power, and it deserves respect," he says. "It asserts that in lots of ways, including the seating."
Mutual accommodations avoid escalation
Brzezinski 15 – [Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former US National Security Adviser, Professor of
American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University, Project Syndicate, 1-21-2015, “America’s
Global Balancing Act”, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/american-foreign-policyasia-pivot-by-zbigniew-brzezinski-2015-01] Jeong
The post-Cold War era was not really an “era,” but rather a gradual transition from a bilateral Cold War to a more complex
international order that still involves, in the final analysis, two world powers. In brief, the decisive axis of the new order increasingly
involves the United States and the People’s Republic of China. The
Sino-American competition involves two
significant realities that distinguish it from the Cold War: neither party is excessively
ideological in its orientation; and both parties recognize that they really need mutual
accommodation.
America’s supposed “pivot to Asia” took a back seat in 2014 to the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East. To
what extent has uncertainty about the US commitment in Asia stoked tension between China and America’s Asian allies? I disagree
with the premises of the question. I do think America
has made it quite clear that it is in the interest both of
America and China to avoid situations in which they will be pushed toward a collision. The recent indications of
some initial dialogue between China and India, and between China and Japan , suggest that China
realizes that escalating old grievances is not in its interest. The more serious problem with the “pivot to
Asia” was its actual wording, which implied a military posture designed to “contain” or “isolate” China. The Chinese have
come to realize more clearly that we were not deliberately attempting to isolate them , but that
we had a stake in the avoidance of collisions in the Far East that could produce a wider
spillover.
also
US-EU Relations
Uniqueness
EU-US relations high now
USMEU 14 [United States Mission to the European Union, "US-EU Summit in Brussels",
3/26/14, useu.usmission.gov/useu_summit_brussels_032614.html] // SKY
President Obama was in Brussels on March 26, 2014, for the U.S.-EU Summit, a press
conference with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission
President José Manuel Barroso, and a speech on transatlantic relations. The joint U.S.-EU
summit statement reaffirmed the “strong partnership” between the European Union and the
United States, and addressed a number of issues, most notably the crisis in Ukraine. In his
speech at the Palais des Beaux Arts (BOZAR), the President discussed the history shared by the
United States and Europe, and how best to preserve the values and ideals that are central to
the relationship. “I come here today to insist that we must never take for granted the progress
that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world,” because the contest of
ideas continues, President Obama said. “And that’s what’s at stake in Ukraine today.” The
President also met NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and senior Belgian officials
and visited a World War I Flanders Field Cemetery.
No Impact
EU-US relations resilient
Dahodwala 14 [Sophia, "Partnering for Prosperity: The State of U.S.-EU Relations", American
Security Project, 11/17/14, www.americansecurityproject.org/partnering-for-prosperity-thestate-of-u-s-eu-relations/] // SKY
In the wake of Russian aggression, ISIL, climate change, Ebola, trade negotiations, elections in
the European Union and the United States, and new leadership in the European Commission,
U.S.-EU cooperation comes at a time when partnership is more important than ever. ASP’s
panel on The U.S.-EU Strategic Partnership featured a comprehensive and compelling
discussion on the state of trade, energy and security between both entities. The speakers
conversed regarding a variety of issues including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment
Partnership (TTIP), relations between the U.S. and EU, and provided insight on how this key
global partnership can be strengthened. The discussion was spearheaded by the Deputy
Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Europe and Eurasian Affairs Julieta Valls Noyes, who began
by emphasizing the importance of the U.S.-EU partnership. “Today we are carrying out words
and policies rather than war. The U.S. and EU partnership is a peace project…the path to
prosperity entails that we work together.” Owing to recent events, this new partnership is
being tested. There is new leadership, a new parliament, and a newly-elected US Congress. Paul
Hamill, ASP’s Director of Strategy and Communications, and the panel’s moderator, asked the
speakers how the U.S. and EU should face Russia during such an intense diplomatic situation. In
the face of Russian aggression. Valls Noyes said that the U.S. and EU are working together to
support Ukraine. They have jointly imposed successive rounds of sanctions on Russia. Paul
Adamson, editor-in-chief and founding publisher of E! Sharp, like Valls Noyes, endorsed the
sanctions, commenting that the U.S. and EU have done a “good job on sanctions” and have
“forced everyone to work together.” Both the U.S. and the EU recognize that “security is
undergirded by prosperity,” highlighting the need to focus on energy security and trade. The
TTIP, Ms. Valls Noyes said, “links the world’s two largest and most prosperous economies.” That
the U.S. and EU are open for a resilient trade partnership like TTIP, underscores the depth of
both entities’ commitment.
US-Russia War
No Impact
US Russia war won’t go nuclear – Ukraine Proves
Shukla, 5-15 – [Vikas Shukla, Reporter, value investor, and correspondent with ValueWalk, 515-2015, Russia-US Tension Over Ukraine Won’t Lead To Nuclear War,
http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/05/russia-us-tension-nuclear-war/ ] Jeong
In February, Russia was rated among the most unfavorable countries by Americans in a Gallup poll. Tensions
between the U.S. and
Russia have escalated over the Ukraine crisis. The United States as accused Russia of backing
separatists in eastern Ukraine. But there is no threat of a nuclear war between Moscow and
Washington, says a senior U.S. State Department official. Neither Russia nor U.S. desire to use
nukes In an interview with Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, Rose Gottemoeller, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International
White House did not believe the Ukrainian conflict would
trigger a nuclear crisis. Though the two countries have different opinions regarding the
Security for the US State Department, said that the
Ukraine crisis, neither Russia nor the U.S. desire to use nuclear weapons to back up their
arguments. Gottemoeller told the Russian newspaper that the two countries have a "stable relationship" on nuclear issues. The State
Department official added that the two countries have taken a series of steps over the past few decades to reduce their nuclear arsenal. Gottemoeller's
statement comes as many other security experts have proclaimed that Russia and the U.S. are heading towards a nuclear war. Some experts spreading
fears of a nuclear war Earlier this week, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, said that Russia
and China will never accept the U.S. hegemony. Beijing
and Moscow are coming closer to challenge the U.S.
dominance. China and Russia are also conducting joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean
Sea, right in the backyard of Western Europe. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has
also expressed concern that the conflict may escalate into a full-fledged nuclear war. During his visit
to France on Wednesday, Yatsenyuk said Ukraine and Russia were on the verge of a nuclear crisis. When asked whether the
Ukraine crisis could trigger a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, Gottemoeller said it's
not going to happen. She said the world war still far from a nuclear crisis.
No US-Russia War – Polls proves
Koplowitz, 1-29, - [Howard Koplowitz, Bachelor's degree in political science, 1-29-2015, US
And Russia Going To War? Ukraine Crisis May Lead To Military Conflict, Mikhail Gorbachev
Warns, Others Not So Sure, http://www.ibtimes.com/us-russia-going-war-ukraine-crisis-maylead-military-conflict-mikhail-gorbachev-warns-1798992] Jeong
Tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine are tantamount to a “new Cold War”
that has the possibility of escalating to a military conflict, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told the Russian Interfax
News Agency Thursday. Gorbachev’s comments were not in line with Russian scholars in the United States, a
large majority of whom say war between the U.S. and Moscow is unlikely in the next 10
years. "I can no longer say that this 'cold war' will not lead to a 'hot war.' I fear that they could risk it,"
Gorbachev told Interfax, according to the Associated Press. He said Western nations supporting Ukraine “dragged” Russia into a new cold war. The
crisis in Ukraine boiled over when Russia annexed Crimea last year. Kiev accused Moscow of supporting pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine that
have been battling the Ukrainian military for control of key cities and sites. Meanwhile, Russia accuses the West of supporting Ukraine’s effort to take
back areas of eastern Ukraine that are strongholds of the separatists. The conflict has led to 5,100 deaths, according to the Associated Press. While
Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's head of state from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991, warned of war, most
academics surveyed in a
snap poll released Sunday don’t envision the U.S. and Russia going to war in the next decade.
On a scale of zero to 10, with zero meaning no likelihood of going to war and 10 meaning high
likelihood, a plurality of scholars -- 23 percent -- rated the chance at 2. Nearly 20 percent rated
the chances as a 3, another 20 percent as a 1 and about 12 percent said there was zero
chance, according to the poll conducted by the Teaching, Research and International Policy
Project at the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations at the College of
William & Mary in Virginia. Only .14 percent of scholars rated the chances of war at a 10. A
plurality of scholars also disagreed that the U.S. and Russia were heading back toward a new
cold war.
More than 48 percent, or 273 scholars, said that was the case, while 38 percent said the two countries are heading back toward a cold
war and about 13 percent weren’t sure.
No risk of US-Russia War – Most recent studies prove
Shukla, 1-30 – [Vikas Shukla, reporter, value investor, and correspondent with ValueWalk, 130-2015, A War Between U.S. And Russia Or China Unlikely, Say Scholars, Value Walk,
http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/01/war-us-and-russia-or-china/] Jeong
Yesterday, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with Interfax
that the United States was dragging Russia into a new Cold War. Gorbachev warned that it could eventually turn
into an armed conflict. Amid escalating tensions over the Ukraine conflict, European Union is considering further sanctions on Russia. On Wednesday,
Russia sent two of its nuclear bombers very close to the British airspace, which defense experts say was an act of aggression.
Scholars differ
from the mainstream public opinion Meanwhile, China is involved in a conflict with most of
its neighbors, including Japan, which has a security pact with the United States. If a war breaks out between
China and Japan, the U.S. will have to jump in to protect its ally. Rising tensions in these
geographies have sparked fears that a war is imminent. But international relations scholars
believe that a war is unlikely between the U.S. and Russia or China. Foreign Policy conducted
a survey in collaboration with Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP). They
interviewed 1,395 international relations scholars across the United States. Findings of the
study revealed that the opinion of scholars was dramatically different from the mainstream
public opinion. What experts say about a new Cold War with Russia When asked how likely was a war between
the U.S. and Russia or China in the next 10 years, they said that war between these powers
was unlikely. They added that war between the U.S. and China was far less likely than
between the U.S. and Russia. Foreign Policy also surveyed scholars in Russia and East Asia. On a
scale of 0 to 10, for all scholars, the average perceived risk of war with China was 1.91. The figure was a little higher at 2.55 for the likeliness of a war
with Russia. Then
they asked scholars whether the U.S. and Russia were headed back to a Cold
War. Less than 38% scholars believed that the two countries were on the verge of a new Cold
War. Over 47% said a Cold War was unlikely, while about 15% were uncertain.
No US-Russia War – 7 Reasons
Peck, 14 – [Michael Peck, Contributor on defense and national security for Forbes, 3-5-2014,
“7 Reasons Why America Will Never Go To War Over Ukraine”,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpeck/2014/03/05/7-reasons-why-america-will-never-goto-war-over-ukraine/] Jeong
America is the mightiest military power in the world. And that fact means absolutely nothing
for the Ukraine crisis. Regardless of whether Russia continues to occupy the Crimea region of
Ukraine, or decides to occupy all of Ukraine, the U.S. is not going to get into a shooting war with
Russia. This has nothing to do with whether Obama is strong or weak. Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan
would face the same constraints. The U.S. may threaten to impose economic sanctions, but here is why America
will never smack Russia with a big stick: Russia is a nuclear superpower. Russia has an estimated 4,500
active nuclear warheads, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Unlike North Korea or perhaps Iran, whose nuclear
arsenals couldn’t inflict substantial damage, Russia
could totally devastate the U.S. as well as the rest of the
planet. U.S. missile defenses, assuming they even work, are not designed to stop a massive
Russian strike. For the 46 years of the Cold War, America and Russia were deadly rivals. But they
never fought. Their proxies fought: Koreans, Vietnamese, Central Americans, Israelis and Arabs. The one time that U.S.
and Soviet forces almost went to war was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Neither Obama nor
Putin is crazy enough to want to repeat that. Russia has a powerful army. While the Russian military is a
shadow of its Soviet glory days, it is still a formidable force. The Russian army has about 300,000 men and 2,500 tanks (with another
18,000 tanks in storage), according to the “ from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Its air force has almost 1,400
aircraft, and its navy 171 ships, including 25 in the Black Sea Fleet off Ukraine’s coast. U.S. forces are more capable than
Russian forces, which did not perform impressively during the 2008 Russo-Georgia War. American troops would enjoy better
training, communications, drones, sensors and possibly better weapons (though the latest Russian fighter jets, such as the T-50,
could be trouble for U.S. pilots). However,
better is not good enough. The Russian military is not
composed of lightly armed insurgents like the Taliban, or a hapless army like the Iraqis in 2003. With advanced
weapons like T-80 tanks, supersonic AT-15 Springer anti-tank missiles, BM-30 Smerch multiple rocket launchers and S-400 Growler
anti-aircraft missiles, Russian
forces pack enough firepower to inflict significant American losses.
Ukraine is closer to Russia. The distance between Kiev and Moscow is 500 miles. The distance
between Kiev and New York is 5,000 miles. It’s much easier for Russia to send troops and
supplies by land than for the U.S. to send them by sea or air. The U.S. military is tired. After
nearly 13 years of war, America’s armed forces need a breather. Equipment is worn out from long
service in Iraq and Afghanistan, personnel are worn out from repeated deployments overseas, and there are still
about 40,000 troops still fighting in Afghanistan. The U.S. doesn’t have many troops to send. The U.S.
could easily dispatch air power to Ukraine if its NATO allies allow use of their airbases, and the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush and
its hundred aircraft are patrolling the Mediterranean. But for a ground war to liberate Crimea or defend Ukraine, there is just the
173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit sailing off Spain, the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Germany
and the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. While the paratroopers could drop into the combat zone, the Marines
to travel overland
through Poland into Ukraine. Otherwise, bringing in mechanized combat brigades from the U.S. would
be logistically difficult, and more important, could take months to organize. The American people are
tired. Pity the poor politician who tries to sell the American public on yet another war, especially some complex conflict in a
would have sail past Russian defenses in the Black Sea, and the Stryker brigade would probably have
distant Eastern Europe nation. Neville Chamberlain’s words during the 1938 Czechoslovakia crisis come to mind: “How horrible,
fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country
between people of whom we know nothing.” America‘s
allies are tired. NATO sent troops to support the
American campaign in Afghanistan, and has little to show for it. Britain sent troops to Iraq and
Afghanistan, and has little to show for it. It is almost inconceivable to imagine the Western
European public marching in the streets to demand the liberation of Crimea, especially
considering the region’s sputtering economy, which might be snuffed out should Russia stop exporting natural gas.
As for military capabilities, the Europeans couldn’t evict Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi without American help. And Germans
fighting Russians again? Let’s not even go there.
Warming
No Impact
Impacts are improbable hyperbole and innovation checks
Ridley, 14 – [Matt Ridley, Author of The Rational Optimist & member of the House of
Lords,“Junk Science Week: IPCC commissioned models to see if global warming would reach
dangerous levels this century. Consensus is ‘no’, Special to Financial Post, 6-19-2014
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/06/19/ipcc-climate-change-warming/] Jeong
The debate
over climate change is horribly polarized. From the way it is conducted, you would think that only two positions are
possible: that the whole thing is a hoax or that catastrophe is inevitable. In fact there is room for lots of intermediate positions, including the view I
hold, which is that man-made
climate change is real but not likely to do much harm, let alone prove
to be the greatest crisis facing humankind this century. After more than 25 years reporting and commenting on this topic for
various media organizations, and having started out alarmed, that’s where I have ended up. But it is not just I that hold this view. I share it with a very
large international organization, sponsored by the United Nations and supported by virtually all the world’s governments: the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) itself. The IPCC
commissioned four different models of what might happen to the
world economy, society and technology in the 21st century and what each would mean for the climate, given a certain assumption about the
atmosphere’s “sensitivity” to carbon dioxide. Three of the models show a moderate,
slow and mild warming, the hottest of
which leaves the planet just 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer. Now two degrees
[above pre-indistrial levels] is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous, according to the scientific consensus. That is to say, in three of
the four scenarios considered by the IPCC, by the time my children’s children are elderly, the earth will still not have experienced any harmful warming,
let alone catastrophe. But what about
the fourth scenario? This is known as RCP8.5, and it produces 3.5 degrees of warming
in 2081-2100 [or 4.3 degrees above pre-industrial levels]. Curious to know what assumptions lay behind this model, I decided to look up the original
paper describing the creation of this scenario. Frankly, I was gobsmacked. It is a world that is very, very
implausible. For a start, this is a
world of “continuously increasing global population” so that there are 12 billion on the planet.
This is more than a billion more than the United Nations expects, and flies in the face of the fact that
the world population growth rate has been falling for 50 years and is on course to reach zero – i.e., stable population – in
around 2070. More people mean more emissions. Second, the world is assumed in the RCP8.5 scenario to be burning an
astonishing 10 times as much coal as today, producing 50% of its primary energy from coal, compared with about 30% today.
Indeed, because oil is assumed to have become scarce, a lot of liquid fuel would then be derived from coal. Nuclear and renewable technologies
contribute little, because of a “slow pace of innovation” and hence “fossil fuel technologies continue to dominate the primary energy portfolio over the
entire time horizon of the RCP8.5 scenario.” Energy efficiency has improved very little. These
are highly unlikely assumptions.
With abundant natural gas displacing coal on a huge scale in the United States today, with the price of solar
power plummeting, with nuclear power experiencing a revival, with gigantic methane-hydrate gas
resources being discovered on the seabed, with energy efficiency rocketing upwards, and with
population growth rates continuing to fall fast in virtually every country in the world, the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is
that it is very, very implausible. Notice, however, that even so, it is not a world of catastrophic pain . The per capita
income of the average human being in 2100 is three times what it is now. Poverty would be history. So
it’s hardly Armageddon. But there’s an even more startling fact. We now have many different studies of climate sensitivity
based on observational data and they all converge on the conclusion that it is much lower than
assumed by the IPCC in these models. It has to be, otherwise global temperatures would have risen much faster than they have over
the past 50 years. As Ross McKitrick noted on this page earlier this week, temperatures have not risen at all now for more than 17 years. With these
much more realistic estimates of sensitivity (known as “transient climate response”), even
RCP8.5 cannot produce dangerous
warming. It manages just 2.1C of warming by 2081-2100 [see table 3 in the report by Lewis and Crok here] That is to say, even if you pile
crazy assumption upon crazy assumption till you have a n edifice of vanishingly small probability,
you cannot even manage to make climate change cause minor damage in the time of our grandchildren, let
alone catastrophe . That’s not me saying this – it’s the IPCC itself. But what strikes me as truly fascinating about these scenarios is that they
tell us that globalization, innovation and economic growth are unambiguously good for the
environment . At the other end of the scale from RCP8.5 is a much more cheerful scenario called RCP2.6. In this happy world, climate
change is not a problem at all in 2100, because carbon dioxide emissions have plummeted thanks to the rapid
development of cheap nuclear and solar, plus a surge in energy efficiency. The RCP2.6 world is much, much richer. The average
person has an income about 16 times today’s in real terms, so that most people are far richer than Americans are today.
And it achieves this by free trade, massive globalization, and lots of investment in new technology. All the things the green movement
keeps saying it opposes because they will wreck the planet. The answer to climate change is, and always has been,
innovation. To worry now in 2014 about a very small, highly implausible set of circumstances in 2100 that just might, if climate sensitivity is much
higher than the evidence suggests, produce a marginal damage to the world economy, makes no sense. Think of all the innovation
that happened between 1914 and 2000. Do we really think there will be less in this century? As for how to deal with that small
risk, well there are several possible options. You could encourage innovation and trade. You could put a modest but growing
tax on carbon to nudge innovators in the right direction. You could offer prizes for low-carbon technologies. All of these
might make a little sense. But the one thing you should not do is pour public subsidy into supporting old-fashioned existing technologies that produce
more carbon dioxide per unit of energy even than coal (bio-energy), or into ones that produce expensive energy (existing solar), or that have very low
energy density and so require huge areas of land (wind).
Not Real
Global warming claims are all hype – the earth is cooling
Newsmax 15 [7/3/15, "New Reports: There Is No Global Warming", Newsmax,
www.newsmax.com/MKTNews/global-warming-hoax-facts/2014/10/17/id/601458/] // SKY
The liberal media machine has spent decades bulldozing anyone who tells you global warming
is a sham. They even came up with a clever little title — “deniers.” Every time a heat wave hits,
every time a picture of a lone polar bear gets taken . . . the left pounds the table for
environmental reform, more policy, more money to combat climate change. But how much
has the world really warmed? Their message is simple: Get on the man-made global warming
bandwagon . . . or you’re just ignorant. But how much has the world really warmed? It’s an
important question, considering the U.S. government spends $22 billion a year to fight the
global warming crisis (twice as much as it spends protecting our border). To put that in
perspective, that is $41,856 every minute going to global warming initiatives. But that's just the
tip of a gargantuan iceberg. According to Forbes columnist Larry Bell, the ripple effect of global
warming initiatives actually costs Americans $1.75 trillion . . . every year. That's three times
larger than the entire U.S. federal budget deficit. So, has anyone stopped to ask . . . how much
has the globe actually warmed? Well, we asked, and what we found was striking. According to
NASA’s own data via Remote Sensing Systems(RSS), the world has warmed a mere .36 degrees
Fahrenheit over the last 35 years (they started measuring the data in 1979). Hardly anything to
panic about; however, that does mean the world is warmer, right? The problem with that
argument is that we experienced the bulk of that warming between 1979 and 1998 . . . since
then, we’ve actually had temperatures DROPPING! As can be seen in this chart, we haven’t
seen any global warming for 17 years. Weakening the global warming argument is data
showing that the North Polar ice cap is increasing in size. Recent satellite images from NASA
actually reflect an increase of 43% to 63%. This is quite the opposite of what the global
warming faction warned us. In 2007, while accepting his Nobel Prize for his global warming
initiative, Al Gore made this striking prediction, “The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff. It
could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.” Al
Gore could not have been more wrong. However, despite this clear evidence that the
temperatures are not increasing, the global warming hysteria only seems to be increasing. For
example: President Obama himself tweeted on May 16, 2014: “97% of scientists agree: climate
change is real, man-made and dangerous.” John Kerry, Al Gore, and a host of others have
championed this statistic. Since then, it has become clear that this statistic was inaccurate. The
Wall Street Journal went as far as to say, “The assertion that 97% of scientists believe that
climate change is a man-made, urgent problem is a fiction.” Forbes headlined “Global Warming
Alarmists Caught Doctoring ’97% Consensus’ Claims.” Come to find out, the study President
Obama was citing was botched from the start. A host of other problems for the global warming
crowd are emerging, such as . . . Leaked emails from global warming scientists state that the
Earth is not warming, such as this one from Kevin Trenberth that states, “The fact is that we
can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can’t.” Claude
Allegre, the founding father of the man-made global warming ethos, recently renounced his
position that man has caused warming. Proof is emerging that Al Gore and even President
Obama have financially benefited from fueling the global warming hysteria (click here for an
internal report on this). It is becoming harder and harder for the global warming community to
ignore some of the scientific data that show the Earth is not getting warmer . . . instead, the
world is getting cooler. Which makes one wonder — why are we still spending $22 billion a year
on global warming initiatives, and where is the money going?
No Warming – past 18 years prove
Hollingsworth 14 [Barbara, "Upcoming Anniversary: October 1st Will Mark 18 Years of No
Global Warming", cnsnews.com, 9/24/14, www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbarahollingsworth/upcoming-anniversary-october-1st-will-mark-18-years-no-global] // SKY
According to the datasets used last year, October 1st will mark the 18th year of “no significant
warming trend in surface average temperature," says Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato
Institute’s Center for the Study of Science. And even if the current 18-year trend were to end, it
would still take nearly 25 years for average global temperature figures to reflect the change,
said Michaels, who has a Ph.D. in ecological climatology and spent three decades as a research
professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. Sooner or later, even Al Gore
and the numerous scientists, academics and politicians who agree with him that “Earth has a
fever” will have to admit that their climate models predicting catastrophic global warming
were off by a long shot, said Michaels, who was also a contributing editor to the United Nations’
second Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. “It has to be admitted
eventually that too much warming was forecast too fast. That just has to happen. You can’t go
on and on and on,” he told CNSNews.com. “If the surface temperature resumed the warming
rate that we observed from, say 1977 through 1998, we would still go close to a quarter of a
century without significant net warming because there’s such a long flat period built into the
record now. “ But there’s no indication that after 18 years, global warming will resume
anytime soon. Michaels pointed to record Antarctic ice, which “is at its highest extent
measured by the current microwave satellite sounding system” since 1978, according to data
from the University of Illinois’ Polar Ice Research Center. “And if you take a close look at the
Arctic data, it appears the decline stopped somewhere around 2005/2006, which means we’ve
almost had ten years without any net loss in Arctic ice,” he told CNSNews.com. Nor does it
look likely that the next El Nino, which Michaels says is “really weak,” will have much of an
effect on global temperatures. “The much vaunted and predicted El Nino, which would
[ordinarily] spike global temperature, is not going according to plan,” Michaels pointed out.
“That’s the major known oscillation in global temperature, and we can’t even get that one
right in the near term.” In an El Nino, trade winds suppress the upwelling of cold water. “But
that doesn’t mean the cold water isn’t still down there,” Michaels explained. “So what happens
after an El Nino suppresses the cold upwelling, all that cold water that was sitting down there,
which normally would have been dispersed into the tropical Pacific, comes up and so the
temperature drops pretty substantially after a major El Nino. “In fact, you can see that in 1999.
We had a very large El Nino in 1998, maybe the biggest one in the 20th century, it’s not
completely clear, but it was really, really big. And the next year, the temperatures were way
down. “And so what an El Nino will do is it will give you a one-year or perhaps two-year spike [in
temperature]. But the net change is not very much. Now it turns out the lack of warming has
gone on for so long that even throwing in a one or two-year spike into it is not going to induce
a significant warming trend in that data,” Michaels noted. Pointing to a Pew survey earlier this
year in which Americans listed global warming 19th out of a list of 20 issues they considered as
top priorities, Michaels responded to Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent statement that
climate change is “the biggest challenge of all that we face right now.” “I would say that his
order of needs is a little bit out of whack,” Michaels told CNSNews.com. “Given that a cogent
political analysis indicates that the loss of control of the House of Representatives by the
Democratic Party was the result of their passing the unpopular cap-and-trade bill in 2009 - in the
2010 election they lost 64 seats- you would think that this is kind of a political hot potato," he
continued. “And in fact, our friends in Europe, who are certainly leftier and greenier than we
tend to be as a country, are trying to back away from this issue,” he noted, adding that the
major heads of state of China, India, Australia, Canada and Germany all declined to join
President Obama at the United Nations’ Climate Summit held in New York this week. “Angela
Merkel, the German prime minister, wrote the Framework Convention on Climate Change when
she was an East German," Michaels pointed out, but “Germany has resumed building coal-fired
power plants because they can’t get enough electricity out of solar energy and windmills. “We
told you so,” he said with a laugh. “I would also say that the administration’s pronouncement
about three weeks ago that the climate agreement that the president would be seeking at the
United Nations would not require a majority of two-thirds of the Senate for ratification is on
very thin ice… If they are hellbent on going in this direction, they may be headed to legal hell.”
Warming isn’t real – your models are wrong and the earth is currently cooling
Ferrara 14 [Peter, "The Period Of No Global Warming Will Soon Be Longer Than the Period of
Actual Global Warming", Forbes, 2/24/14, www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2014/02/24/theperiod-of-no-global-warming-will-soon-be-longer-than-the-period-of-actual-global-warming/2/]
// SKY
If you look at the record of global temperature data, you will find that the late
20th Century period of global
warming actually lasted about 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Before that, the
globe was dominated by about 30 years of global cooling, giving rise in the 1970s to media discussions of the
return of the Little Ice Age (circa 1450 to 1850), or worse. But the record of satellite measurements of global
atmospheric temperatures now shows no warming for at least 17 years and 5 months, from
September, 1996 to January, 2014, as shown on the accompanying graphic. That is surely 17 years and 6 months now,
accounting for February. When the period of no global warming began, the alarmist global warming establishment responded that
even several years of temperature data does not establish a climate trend. That takes much longer. But when
the period of
no global warming gets longer than the period of actual global warming, what is the climate
trend then? Even worse for the theory of catastrophic, anthropogenic (human caused), global warming is that during this
now extended period of no global warming mankind’s emissions of the carbon dioxide (CO2)
that are supposed to be predominant in causing global warming continued to explode, with
one third of all CO2 added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution occurring during
this period. The Economist magazine shocked the global warming establishment with an article in March, 2013 that began with
this lede: “OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while
greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the
atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750.” That one quarter is
actually now one third since the industrial revolution, which is now increasingly at stake in this debate. We are not going to be able
to power anything remotely like the modern industrial revolution, which is actually straining even now to burst out of the
“Progressive” bonds holding it back (at least in America), using the wind sources that powered the Roman economy, plus dancing on
sunbeams. Moreover, the
now extended trend of no global warming is not turning around any time
soon. That increasingly established trend is being produced by long term natural causes. Even
rank amateurs among the general public can see that the sun is the dominant influence on the Earth’s
temperatures. Even the most politicized scientists know that they cannot deny that solar activity such as sun spot cycles, and
variations in solar magnetic fields or in the flux of cosmic rays, have contributed to major climate changes of the past, such as the
Little Ice Age, particularly pronounced from roughly 1650 AD to 1850 AD, the Medieval Warm period from about 950 AD to 1250 AD,
during which global temperatures were higher than today, and the early 20th century Warming Period from 1910 to 1940 AD. That
solar activity, particularly sunspot cycles, is starting to mimic the same patterns that were
seen during the Little Ice Age, as I discussed in a previous column. As a result, outside politically correct Western circles,
where science today has been Lysenkoized on this issue, there is a burgeoning debate about how long of a cooling trend will result.
Britain’s Met Office, an international cheerleading headquarters for global warming hysteria, conceded in
December, 2012 that there would be no further warming at least through 2017, which would
make 21 years with no global warming. The German Herald reported on March 31, 2013 regarding Russian scientist
Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov from the St. Petersburg Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory, “Talking to German media the scientist who
first made his prediction in 2005 said that after studying sunspots and their relationship with climate change on Earth, we
are
now on an ‘unavoidable advance towards a deep temperature drop.’” His colleague Yuri Nagovitsyn is
quoted in The Voice of Russia saying, “we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years.”
Skepticism over the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is increasingly embraced in China and elsewhere in Asia as
well. In addition, every
20 to 30 years, the much colder water near the bottom of the oceans cycles
up to the top, where it has a slight cooling effect on global temperatures until the sun warms
that water. That warmed water then contributes to slightly warmer global temperatures, until
the next churning cycle. Known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO),
these natural causes are also contributing to the stabilized and now even slightly declining
natural global temperature trends. The foundation for the establishment argument for global
warming are 73 climate models collected by the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
But the problem is that the warming trends projected by these models are all diverging farther
and farther from the real world trend of actual temperature observations discussed above, as I
showed in a previous column, with another graphic. Because none of these models have been scientifically
validated based on past temperature observations, they constitute a very weak scientific argument that does
not remotely establish that the “science is settled,” and “global warming is a fact.” The current data discussed above establishes
indisputably that global warming is not a fact today. The politicians seeking to browbeat down any continuing public
debate are abusing their positions and authority with modern Lysenkoism, meaning “politically correct” science not established by
the scientific method, but politically imposed. The science behind all of this is thoroughly explained in the 1200 pages of Climate
Change Reconsidered II, authored by 50 top scientists organized into the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change
(NIPCC), and published by the Heartland Institute in Chicago. You will want to own this volume if for no other reason than that it says
here that future generations of scientists will look back and say this is the moment when we took the political out of the political
science of “climate change,” and this is how we did it. Real scientists know that these 50 co-authors are real scientists. That is
transparent from the tenor of the report itself. The publication is “double peer reviewed,” in that it discusses thousands of peer
reviewed articles published in scientific journals, and is itself peer reviewed. That is in sharp contrast to President Obama’s own EPA,
which issued its “endangerment finding” legally authorizing regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, without submitting the
finding to its own peer review board, as required by federal law. What were they so afraid of if 97% of scientists supposedly agree
with them? The conclusion of the report is that the U.N.’s
IPCC has exaggerated the amount of global
warming likely to occur due to mankind’s emissions of CO2, and the warming that human
civilization will cause as a result “is likely to be modest and cause no net harm to the global
environment or to human well-being.” The primary, dominant cause of global climate change
is natural causes, not human effects, the report concludes. The fundamentals of the argument are that
carbon dioxide is not some toxic industrial gas, but a natural, trace gas constituting just 0.038% of the atmosphere, or
less than 4/100ths of one percent. The report states, “At the current level of 400 parts per million, we still live in a CO2starved world. Atmospheric levels (of CO2) 15 times greater existed during the pre-Cambrian period (about 550 million years
ago) without known adverse effects,” such as catastrophic global warming. Much was made of the total atmospheric concentration
of CO2 growing past 400 parts per million. But one percent of the atmosphere would be 10,000 parts per million. Moreover, human
emissions of CO2 are only 4% to 5% of total global emissions, counting natural causes. In addition, CO2
is actually essential
to all life on the planet. Plants need CO2 to grow and conduct photosynthesis, which is the natural
process that creates food for animals and fish at the bottom of the food chain. The increase of CO2 in the
atmosphere that has occurred due to human emissions has actually increased agricultural
growth and output as a result, causing actually an increased greening of the planet. So has any
warming caused by such human emissions, as minor warming increases agricultural growth. The report states, “CO2 is a vital
nutrient used by plants in photosynthesis. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere ‘greens’ the planet and helps feed the growing human
population.” Furthermore, the temperature impact of increased concentrations of CO2 declines logarithmically. Or as the report
says, “Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)…exerts a diminishing warming effect as its concentration increases.” That means there
is a natural limit to how much increased CO2 can effectively warm the planet, as the effect of
more and more CO2 ultimately becomes negligible as CO2 concentration grows. Maybe that is why
even with many times more CO2 in the atmosphere in the deep past, there was no catastrophic global warming. The Obama
Administration is busily at work on a project to define what it is calling “the social cost of carbon.” But the
only documented
effect of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide so far is the resulting
increased agricultural output, valued in one study at $1.3 trillion. The Obama Administration is effectively conducting a
cost-benefit analysis with no consideration of the benefits. Note that this project is being conducted on a planet populated by what
is known as “carbon-based” life forms. That includes plants, animals, and marine life.
at: Squo Solve
The most recent studies conclude climate change is reaching a flat-line – Status
Quo emissions are decreasing even with increasing production.
Zeller, 15 – [Tom Zeller Jr. American reporter and writer who has covered poverty, technology,
energy policy and the environment for the New York Times, Forbes, and Huffington Post,
Recieived Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, Graduated from Columbia University, 313-2015, In Historic Turn, CO2 Emissions Flatline in 2014, Even as Global Economy Grows,
Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomzeller/2015/03/13/in-historic-turn-co2-emissionsflatline-in-2014-evan-as-global-economy-grows/] Jeong
A key stumbling block in the effort to combat global warming has been the intimate link between greenhouse gas emissions and
economic growth. When times are good and industries are thriving, global
energy use traditionally increases and
energy-related carbon dioxide emissions also go up. Only when economies stumble and
businesses shutter — as during the most recent financial crisis — does energy use typically decline, in turn
bringing down planet-warming emissions . But for the first time in nearly half a century, that synchrony
between economic growth and energy-related emissions seems to have been broken,
according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, prompting its chief economist to
wonder if an important new pivot point has been reached — one that decouples economic
vigor and carbon pollution . The IEA pegged carbon dioxide emissions for 2014 at 32.3 billion metric tons — essentially
the same volume as 2013, even as theglobal economy grew at a rate of about 3 percent. “This gives me even more hope that
humankind will be able to work together to combat climate change, the most important threat facing us today,” the IEA’s lead
economist, Fatih Birol, said in a statement accompanying the findings. Whether the disconnect is a mere fluke or a true harbinger of
change is impossible to know. The
IEA suggested that decreasing use of coal in China — and upticks in
renewable electricity generation there using solar, wind and hydropower — could have
contributed to the reversal. The agency also cited the ongoing deployment of energy-efficiency and renewable power
policies in Europe, the U.S. and other developed economies as additional factors. Speculation that fossil fuel use overall is fast
approaching a peak has been percolating for some time. A
recent study published in the journal Fuel and
conducted by a team of resource geologists and environmental engineers in Australia and
China suggested that global fossil fuel use would likely top out within the next 10 years, and
decline precipitously thereafter. They attributed much of this projection to decreased reliance
on coal in China, which reported this week that overall greenhouse gas emissions for the country
went down in 2014 — the first such decline in more than a decade. Mindful of such trends, the peak fossil-fuel study
suggested that the most dire scenarios contemplated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most recent
assessment of global warming science and economics are unlikely to be realized, given changes in energy consumption patterns in
various countries and the status of ultimately recoverable fossil fuel resources globally. “In a business-as-usual situation, it is unlikely
that fossil-fuel-depleted industrial economies in Europe and parts of Asia will strategically position themselves to be dependent on
fossil fuel imports,” said Gary Ellem, a biophysicist and lecturer at the University of Newcastle and a co-author of the study. “Rather,
as part of business-as-usual, they will seek to accelerate the development and installation alternative energy generation
technologies to improve their energy and economic security. There
is clear evidence of this already occurring in
Europe and China especially.” According to the IEA, global greenhouse gas emissions have
stalled or fallen only three times in the 40 years since the agency began tracking them. All of
these instances, which occurred in the early 1980′s, 1992, and again in 2009, accompanied
periods of global economic stagnation. “The latest data on emissions are indeed encouraging,
but this is no time for complacency,” IEA’s executive director, Maria van der Hoeven,” said in announcing the
emissions news, “and certainly not the time to use this positive news as an excuse to stall further
action.” The agency suggested the findings provided “much-needed momentum” for international climate negotiators, who will
meet in Paris later this year in an attempt to vhammer out a global climate agreement.