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365,400 | 379,397 | PTOC r3 | Open Sourced like usual | 904,454 |
365,401 | 379,406 | Updated MARCH AFF | os | 904,464 |
365,402 | 379,424 | 0 - Contact Info | text me: 9546960680 | 904,483 |
365,403 | 379,413 | 1- UK Aff Private Investment and Reform | Teddy Ng, 19' (Teddy Ng - "China’s belt and road criticised for ‘wasteful’ spending", South China Morning Post, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3014214/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-criticised-poor-standards-and )/MA
The initiative has
AND
Its geopolitical influence
Elmer, 19' (Keegan Elmer - "", South China Morning Post, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3007878/eus-connectivity-plan-more-sustainable-beijings-belt-and-road )/MA
Vice President said
AND
On the public
Lee, 19' (Amanda Lee - "Belt and road: ‘Transparency is the enemy of corruption’, ex-US diplomat says", South China Morning Post, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3018185/china-must-ensure-transparency-boost-credibility-belt-and )/MA
China must ensure
AND
Are figured out
Herrero, 17' (Herrero - "", Breugel, http://bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CHHJ5627_China_EU_Report_170912_WEB.pdf )/MA
The success of
AND
In the BRI.
Xueqing 19' (Jiang Xueqing - "Private investment crucial for BRI", No Publication, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201905/08/WS5cd23f1fa3104842260ba7e0.html )/MA)
The program can
AND
A large role in the belt and road initiative
European Parliament, 18' (European Parliament - "REPORT on the state of EU-China relations", European Parliament, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2018-0252_EN.html )/MA
Calls on the
AND
China’s strategic interests
Broer 19' (Bart Broer, The Diplomat - "Is Europe Finally Rising to the China Challenge?", The Diplomat , https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/is-europe-finally-rising-to-the-china-challenge/ )/MA
This unity allowed
AND
Meaningful joint statement
EU Commission, 19' (Eu Comission - "EU-China: A strategic outlook", EU commission, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/communication-eu-china-a-strategic-outlook.pdf )/MA
The EU has
AND
Reforms more robustly
World Bank, 19' (Deep Policy - "Success of China’s Belt and Road Initiative Depends on Deep Policy Reforms, Study Finds", World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/06/18/success-of-chinas-belt-road-initiative-depends-on-deep-policy-reforms-study-finds )/MA
If implemented fully,
AND
Much 2.9 percent
CGD, 18' (By Robyn Dixonbeijing - "China has spent billions in Africa, but some critics at home question why", Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-china-africa-20180903-story.html )/MA
23 of 68
AND
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan
Chudik, 18' (Alexander Chudik - " Rising Public Debt to GDP Can Harm Economic Growth", Dallas Fed, https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/eclett/2018/el1803.pdf )/MA
Continuous debt accumulation
AND
And greater uncertainty
Stupak 18' (On Doaj - "The Effect of Government Debt and Other Determinants on Economic Growth: The Greek Experience", MDPI, https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/6/1/10/htm )/MA
For a panel
AND
In developed ones
Bruno, 10' (Gurtner, Bruno - "The Financial and Economic Crisis and Developing Countries", International Development Policy, https://journals.openedition.org/poldev/144 )/MA
Fall in growth
AND
Into absolute poverty | 904,472 |
365,404 | 379,416 | 3- Sunvite Neg Liberalization, Dollarization and Hot Money | Cusack 18
Asa Cusack (Al Jazeera). “Is socialism to blame for Venezuela's never-ending crisis?” May 31, 2018. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/socialism-blame-venezuelas-crisis-180530095418091.html
The underlying causes of Venezuela's hydra-headed crisis are economic, relating especially to oil and the foreign currency that it brings into the country. The proximate cause of the recent turmoil is undoubtedly the 70-percent drop in oil prices in 2014, but the same problems that got exacerbated at that point were already in evidence five years earlier. And then, as now, they were fostered by poor policy choices. Grave shortages are due largely to weak local production combined with a lack of foreign currency for imports, both of which relate to mismanagement of the local currency (the bolivar). Essentially, in an attempt to prevent capital flight and currency collapse while also protecting local producers and enforcing labour law, Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez introduced controls on access to foreign currency. Subsidies and price controls were also implemented for many food items in order to keep them affordable to the poor, and an extremely generous subsidy on gasoline was maintained.
Fohr’19
Kanishka Singh, 10-19-2019, "U.S. oil major Chevron says hopeful about maintaining Venezuela presence," U.S., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-usa-chevron/u-s-oil-major-chevron-says-hopeful-about-maintaining-venezuela-presence-idUSKBN1WY030, 1-9-2020
U.S. oil major Chevron Corp (CVX.N) said late on Friday it is optimistic about maintaining a presence in Venezuela even amid U.S. sanctions on the country and state oil company PDVSA as part of Washington’s effort to oust President Nicolas Maduro. The logo of Chevron is seen at the company's office in Caracas, Venezuela April 25, 2018. The company’s remarks follow an earlier report by Bloomberg that said the United States is considering extending Chevron’s waiver to operate in Venezuela with more limitations by granting the company a 90-day sanctions reprieve. “We are a positive presence in Venezuela, and we are hopeful that General License 8C is renewed so that we can continue operations in the country for the long-term,” Ray Fohr, a Chevron spokesman, told Reuters in an emailed statement. “We have dedicated investments and a large workforce who are dependent on our presence.” “General License No 8C” is the license that authorizes transactions in Venezuela involving PDVSA and entities it owns, according to the website of the U.S. Department of Treasury. Chevron’s future in Venezuela now depends on U.S. President Donald Trump, who must decide by Oct. 25 whether to renew the waiver allowing the company to keep operating in Venezuela despite U.S. sanctions. The Treasury Department aims to further limit Venezuela’s crude production and is concerned that Chevron’s joint venture projects in Venezuela are providing financing to help Maduro’s socialist government pay back its debt to Russian oil company Rosneft PJSC, Bloomberg reported on Friday. This could encourage more loans in the future. The report added, however, that the United States also wants to maintain a presence in Venezuela’s oil industry in case of a political transition.
The Economist’19
NA (The Economist). “More dollars and fewer protests in Venezuela.” December 18, 2019. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/12/18/more-dollars-and-fewer-protests-in-venezuela
The sanctions have had unintended consequences. Officials whose travel is restricted and whose foreign bank accounts are frozen spend more of their time and money at home, one explanation for the Humboldt blowout. More important, the oil sanctions were enough of a shock to force the government to retreat from socialism. Mr Maduro has lifted nearly all the economic controls first imposed by Hugo Chávez, the charismatic leader of the “Bolivarian revolution”, who died in 2013. Sanctions have “made the government more flexible”, says Luis Oliveros, an economist. It has stopped trying to dictate the exchange rate and control prices. Private firms can now import whatever they choose and set their own prices. Supermarkets in Caracas, nearly empty for much of 2017 and 2018, are again stocked with food. It is not just the rich who can afford it. Perhaps a third of Venezuelans have direct access to remittances from relatives living abroad. Since Mr Maduro took office in 2013 at least 4m people, 12 of the population, have left the country. Venezuelans abroad send back $4bn a year, roughly 3 of gdp, according to Econoanalitica, a consultancy. This supplements the government’s distribution of food, disproportionately to its supporters, and a discreet aid programme managed by foreign ngos. Dollars are elbowing aside Venezuela’s bolívar, the world’s most inflation-prone currency. Taxi drivers and cleaning ladies quote prices in dollars, even if they accept payment in bolívares. McDonald’s pays burger-flippers in Caracas a bonus of $20 a month, which is more than treble the minimum wage of 300,000 bolívares ($6). Prices at the Traki department store in central Caracas are in dollars, though the dollar sign itself does not appear on tags. Spaghetti (from Egypt) costs 50 cents for a 400-gram (14-ounce) pack. Queues at the tills suggest that ordinary shoppers can afford it. The value of dollar notes in circulation now exceeds that of bolívares. The Venezuelan currency itself, in which most people are still paid, is not depreciating quite as fast as it was. The government has tightened banks’ reserve requirements. According to the national assembly, the annual inflation rate has dropped from nearly 3m at the beginning of 2019 to 13,475 in November, which is still the highest in the world by far.
Aron’07
Janine Aron, 7-26-2007, "Trade openness and inflation," No Publication, https://voxeu.org/article/trade-openness-and-inflation, 1-9-2020
As the popularity of inflation targeting has spread, inflation forecasting has come to play a central element in many nations’ economic policy-making. Numerous emerging market and developing economies have undergone trade liberalisation Since lowering import barriers typically exerts a downward pressure on prices, evolving trade liberalisation represents a structural break from the inflation forecasting perspective. Omitting this factor can confuse modellers studying the determinants of inflation and output. For instance, a greater degree of openness due to trade liberalisation is likely to lower the rate of inflation and may alter the influence of the real exchange rate on growth1, Long time series of better measures of openness should improve the modelling and forecasting of output and inflation.Unfortunately, attempts to measure trade policy are fraught with measurement problems for observable components (such as tariffs), and by the presence of difficult-to-quantify components of policy (such as quotas and other non-tariff barriers). Several authors suggest that the sheer complexity of factors influencing trade - including tariffs and surcharges, drawbacks, quotas and licences, other non-tariff barriers such as differing international standards, exchange controls and occasionally, trade and foreign exchange sanctions – argues against any single measure adequately proxying for trade policy. From several critical surveys of empirical measures of trade policy2, the consensus appears to be that no measure of trade policy is free of methodological problems. Moreover, the measures often correlate poorly with trade volumesWe draw on this literature to evaluate existing trade policy measures, focusing on viable indicators for use in time series macro-modelling, particularly of inflation. The most commonly used measures of trade policy outcomes, such as trade flows to GDP (in real or nominal terms), are amenable to time series application. However, they are also influenced by a range of factors including country size and location, the tradable natural resource base and the extent and ease of capital inflows. In a cross-country context, there have been attempts to remove these other factors to give ‘purged’ measures of trade-openness3. However, this is not a useful methodology for time series work as the essentially static ingredients in these regressions allow insufficient time variation within countriesA second set of indicators, administrative or incidence-based indicators, such as nominal average tariffs and effective protection, and coverage of non-tariff barriers (NTB), can be used in time series studies. However, they suffer from measurement problems, especially severe for non-tariff barriers. Rodriguez and Rodrik4 argue these measures can effectively rank-order countries according to the restrictiveness of their trade regimes, but they and others emphasise several measurement biases. The use of unweighted average tariffs will weight too heavily those commodities that are only a small fraction of imports. On the other hand, trade-weighted average tariffs (e.g. aggregate import duties or trade taxes divided by the volume of imports) give negligible weight to prohibitive tariffs since the corresponding imports are typically low5. If statutory measures are used, these may not necessarily be binding due to poor enforcement or even corruption. Tariff averages will be poor proxies for overall restrictions where NTBs are important.
Cukierman’01
Alex Cukierman , 5-30-2001, "Central Bank Reform, Liberalization and Inflation in Transition Economies," No Publication, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=271698 //CL
This Paper develops extensive new indices of legal independence (Central Bank Independence, or CBI) for new central banks in 26 former socialist economies (FSEs). The indices reveal that central bank reform in the FSE during the 1990s has been quite ambitious. In spite of large price shocks, reformers in those countries have chosen to create central banks with levels of legal independence that are substantially higher, on average, than those of developed economies during the 1980s. The evidence in the Paper shows that CBI is unrelated to inflation during the early stages of liberalization. But with sufficiently high and sustained levels of liberalization, and controlling for other variables, legal CBI and inflation are significantly and negatively related. These findings are consistent with the view that even high CBI cannot contain the initial powerful inflationary impact of removing price controls. But once the process of liberalization has gathered sufficient momentum legal independence becomes effective in reducing inflation. The Paper also presents evidence on factors that affect the choice of CBI and it examines the relation between inflation and CBI in a broader sample.
World Bank’05
WBO, 2005, “Pro-Poor Growth in the 1990s: Lessons and Insights from 14 Countries” WBO http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPGI/Resources/342674-1119450037681/Part_1-Poverty_growth_and_inequality.pdf
The analysis uses an income-based measure of well being, although it does examine how certain nonincome dimensions of poverty affect the ability of poor households to take advantage of growth opportunities. The study complements much of the existing literature on the relationships among growth, poverty and inequality, which is heavily based on cross country empirics, by drawing on 14 country case studies of how poor households participated in growth in the 1990s. Overall trends for the 14 countries present a mixed picture for poverty reduction in the 1990s. Starting in the mid-1990s, growth recovered to produce annual GDP per capita growth rates of between 2 and 2.5 percent. The poverty rate fell in the 11 countries that experienced significant growth, and rose in 3 countries with low or stagnant growth. On average, a 1 percent increase in GDP per capita reduced poverty by 1.7 percent. But growth was more powerful in reducing poverty in some countries than others, reflecting different initial inequality, per capita income and patterns of distributional change. Moreover, despite the strong association between growth and poverty reduction in the 1990s, the tendency for inequality to rise in the high-growth countries suggests that some poorer households were not fully able to take advantage of rapid nonagricultural growth or productive rural activities most connected to markets. Two main messages emerge from this study. First, policymakers who seek to accelerate growth in the incomes of poor people, and thus reduce overall poverty levels, would be well advised to implement policies that enable their countries to achieve a faster rate of overall growth. A successful pro-poor growth strategy would thus need to have, at its core, measures for sustained and rapid economic growth. These include such recognized basics as macroeconomic stability, well-defined property rights, a good investment climate, an attractive incentive framework, well-functioning factor markets and broad access to infrastructure and education.
World Bank’06
Ataman Aksoy (World Bank). “GROWTH BEFORE AND AFTER TRADE LIBERALIZATION.” November 2006. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/622251468141266954/pdf/wps4062.pdf
The empirical study of the impact of trade liberalization has not convinced the skeptics about the economic gains after trade reforms. Some have even argued that trade reforms have led to economic collapse and to deindustrialization. Using a sample that excludes countries that were subject to major exogenous disruptions, we note that post-reform economic growth was 1.2 percentage points higher than before the reforms. This is remarkable considering that pre-reform periods were characterized by highly expansionary state policies and large external borrowing, and that we eliminate the crisis years that preceded trade liberalization in the comparisons. Through multivariate fixed effects estimations we calculate that annual per capita GDP growth rates increased by up to 2.6 percentage points after the trade reforms, compared to a counterfactual that takes into consideration the evolution of several growth determinants. Moreover, trade liberalization has been followed by an acceleration in investment, exports of goods and services, and manufacturing exports, and as opposed to common belief, outward orientation did not lead to significant deindustrialization and actually seems to have increased export diversification. Acceleration occurred irrespective of income per capita level and was indeed quite significant in Sub-Saharan Africa. As expected, small countries benefited most from the reforms.
Long 19
Gideon Long (OZY). “WHY SOCIALIST VENEZUELA IS COUNTING ON THE DOLLAR.” December 1, 2019. https://www.ozy.com/the-new-and-the-next/why-socialist-venezuela-is-counting-on-the-dollar/249318/
President Nicolás Maduro conceded as much in November when he sang the praises of dollarization during a local television interview. “This process which they call dollarization can be useful for the recovery and for unleashing the country’s productive forces and for the functioning of the economy,” he said. “It is an escape valve. Thank God it exists.” The socialist leader is usually scathing about anything that comes from the U.S. and has taken several steps to “liberate” his country’s economy from the Yankee dollar, by embracing the euro, the renminbi and a homespun cryptocurrency, the petro. But Maduro’s comments reflect a growing reality in Venezuela as the country’s economic decline gathers pace. Walk into many shops in Caracas these days and you can spend greenbacks. “I’d say around 70 percent of all our sales are now in dollars,” says Jennifer Bogarin, owner of a shop selling children’s clothes in a mall in Caracas. “It’s really taken off since the middle of this year. A few people use euros but hardly anyone buys in bolívares anymore.” A recent study by local consulting firm Ecoanalítica found that over half of all financial transactions in Venezuela are paid for in foreign currency — primarily dollars. In the country’s second-largest city, Maracaibo, close to the Colombian border, the figure is 86 percent. Venezuelans use dollars for big-ticket purchases — 95 percent of home appliances, for example — but also increasingly for smaller day-to-day items: More than half of food purchases were made in dollars, the study found.
Argus 19
NA (Argus). “Maduro government eyes turning point.” December 20, 2019. https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2038995-maduro-government-eyes-turning-point?backToResults=true
US sanctions imposed on PdV in January constricted oil revenues that historically accounted for up to 90pc of Venezuela's income. And while they have failed to dislodge Maduro, they have compelled his government to ease economic controls this year, modestly improving the country's 2020 economic outlook. Maduro's biggest economic achievement this year has been to curb hyperinflation. National assembly advisers estimate inflation in January-November at over 5,500pc, compared with the central bank's 2018 estimate of 130,000pc. And falling oil revenues have forced Maduro to phase out most domestic price controls and loosen capital controls in a bid to encourage foreign investment and facilitate remittances from Venezuelans abroad. Remittances are expected to jump to about $6bn next year, up from an estimated $4bn this year. This would be equivalent to almost 80pc of the central bank's hard currency reserves of $7.5bn. The trends are driving a robust black market in dollars and euros. Dollarisation is a necessary "pressure release valve" that is allowing private-sector companies to secure hard currency to finance imports, Maduro said in October, adding "thank God for dollarisation". Venezuelan business chamber Fedecamaras says that this year, for the first time in decades, the private sector will account for up to 25pc of GDP, and probably more in 2020.
Rodriguez 18
Francisco Rodríguez (America Quarterly). “Venezuela Should Consider Dollarization.” February 15, 2018. https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/venezuela-should-consider-dollarization
Venezuela’s future policymakers should take a close look at the case of Ecuador. In 2000, then-President Gustavo Noboa, implementing a decision of his predecessor Jamil Mahuad, replaced the sucre with the U.S. dollar after currency and banking crises had left the economy mired in a deep recession with quickly accelerating inflation. Much like Venezuela, Ecuador had not seen single-digit inflation for two decades at the time of dollarization. In contrast, during the most recent decade under dollarization, Ecuador’s inflation has averaged 3.8 percent. Perhaps most significant is the fact that Ecuador’s macroeconomic stability came with economic growth. Since dollarization in 2000, the country’s per capita income has grown by 114 percent – the fourth best growth performance among 11 countries in South America. By contrast, Ecuador’s per capita income had actually dropped by 17 percent in the two decades before dollarization. Most importantly, Ecuador’s headcount poverty rate has fallen by more than four-fifths since 2000, lifting more than 3 million Ecuadoreans out of extreme poverty. Ecuador is an interesting example precisely because, like Venezuela, it is an economy highly specialized in oil. In principle, these economies pay a high cost for dollarizing when they lose their capacity to adjust their exchange rates to terms of trade shocks. In practice, when they have their own currency they end up allowing interest groups to capture significant rents from management of the exchange rate system, accumulating large private sector hard currency surpluses at the expense of chronic public sector deficits and pervasive macroeconomic instability. Even worse, the state’s authority to decide the allocation of scarce foreign exchange creates huge incentives for corruption.
Karl’19
Carlos A. Rossi, “Oil Wealth and the Resource Curse in Venezuela,” file:///C:/Users/06sep/Desktop/a20summer/311rossi.pdf
Today oil accounts for over 95 of Venezuela’s exports, 50 of government revenues and 30 of GDP directly. According to official figures, imports tripled between 2000 and 2008 to the unheard of level of US$ 49.4 billion, before they collapsed 22.3 the following year due to policy instigated recessions6 . Venezuela’s populist president, Hugo Chavez, has presided over untold oil wealth and a recognizable reduction in Venezuela’s worst poverty levels (through ‘missions’ geared towards extreme hunger alleviation by handouts, free education and health care) has also presided over a collapse in the production of all of Venezuela’s agriculture and much of the industrial apparatus, including crude oil production and even some energy intensive sectors like steel and aluminium. In contrast to other socialist nations that focus on socialist distribution while leaving production issues to private enterprise, Venezuela has opted for the ill defined “productive socialism’’ were the state interferes with basic production decisions of key industries. This socialist production model has exacerbated rent seeking and Dutch disease, and the constant “expropriations’’ have scared off would be investors in virtually all economic sectors. It is not that his socialist production model is not working, but that it can’t work; it is socially-physically impossible for it to work (100 years of productive capitalism is enough time to teach us how companies must be managed to produce. A sudden influx of petrodollars are never easy to absorb productively, as Stanford University professor Dr. Terry Lynn Karl, in her landmark book, The Paradox of Plenty, found through her extensive research on petro-states like Venezuela: “Petro-states find themselves incapable of absorbing their surplus, even if they quickly generate new public-sector projects. But, facing the impending threat of massive inflation, worried about depletability, accustomed to seeing the state as the leader in development, and eager to put their new wealth to immediate use, oil governments rely on their standard operating procedures: they reach for large-scale, capital-intensive, long gestation projects, or if such projects are already underway, they increase their sale and accelerate their completion dates. These projects epitomize a resource-base industrialization strategy; they emphasize processing and refining, petrochemicals, and steel. Not surprisingly, in the face of a powerful push to absorb petrodollars rapidly and a general relaxation of fiscal discipline, they are often wasteful and poorly conceived. “The boom not only provokes a grander, oil-led economic model but also simultaneously generates new demands for resources from both the state and civil society. Policymakers, once torn between their twin preoccupations with diversification and equity, now think that they can do both. The military demands modernized weapons and improved living conditions; capitalists seek credit and subsidies; the middle class calls for increased social spending, labor for higher wages, and the unemployed for the creation of jobs. As demands rise, unwieldy and ineffective bureaucracies, suddenly thrust into new roles, find themselves incapable of scaling down expansionist public- sector programs or warding off private-sector requests. Thus they ultimately contribute to growing budget and trade deficits and foreign debt.”7 One of the crucial phrases of the above paragraphs is Dr. Karl’s reference to ‘accustomed to seeing the state as the leader in development’, which, of course, was not the case in Texas or Norway when they struck oil. Productive development occurs rarely, if at all, under non-competitive conditions, because it is competition that breeds the juices of innovation, inventiveness and creativity. Technological and productivity prowess is and has always been a product of company competition in a fair play and open market environment, and living standards have increased because of it
Karl
A sudden influx of petrodollars are never easy to absorb productively, as Stanford University professor Dr. Terry Lynn Karl, in her landmark book, The Paradox of Plenty, found through her extensive research on petro-states like Venezuela: “Petro-states find themselves incapable of absorbing their surplus, even if they quickly generate new public-sector projects. But, facing the impending threat of massive inflation, worried about depletability, accustomed to seeing the state as the leader in development, and eager to put their new wealth to immediate use, oil governments rely on their standard operating procedures: they reach for large-scale, capital-intensive, long gestation projects, or if such projects are already underway, they increase their sale and accelerate their completion dates. These projects epitomize a resource-base industrialization strategy; they emphasize processing and refining, petrochemicals, and steel. Not surprisingly, in the face of a powerful push to absorb petrodollars rapidly and a general relaxation of fiscal discipline, they are often wasteful and poorly conceived. “The boom not only provokes a grander, oil-led economic model but also simultaneously generates new demands for resources from both the state and civil society. Policymakers, once torn between their twin preoccupations with diversification and equity, now think that they can do both. The military demands modernized weapons and improved living conditions; capitalists seek credit and subsidies; the middle class calls for increased social spending, labor for higher wages, and the unemployed for the creation of jobs. As demands rise, unwieldy and ineffective bureaucracies, suddenly thrust into new roles, find themselves incapable of scaling down expansionist public- sector programs or warding off private-sector requests. Thus they ultimately contribute to growing budget and trade deficits and foreign debt.”7 One of the crucial phrases of the above paragraphs is Dr. Karl’s reference to ‘accustomed to seeing the state as the leader in development’, which, of course, was not the case in Texas or Norway when they struck oi
Faiola’19
Anthony Faiola, 12-25-2019, "A fake Walmart, cases of Dom Pérignon and the almighty dollar: Inside socialist Venezuela’s chaotic embrace of the free market," Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/a-fake-walmart-cases-of-dom-perignon-and-the-almighty-dollar-inside-socialist-venezuelas-chaotic-embrace-of-the-free-market/2019/12/23/ca4f2072-21c3-11ea-b034-de7dc2b5199b_story.html?arc404=true, 1-2-2020
Sections Democracy Dies in Darkness Get one year for $30 Sign In The Americas A fake Walmart, cases of Dom Pérignon and the almighty dollar: Inside socialist Venezuela’s chaotic embrace of the free market A security guard keeps watch at a mall decorated for Christmas in Caracas, Venezuela. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post) By Anthony Faiola , Rachelle Krygier and Mariana ZuñigaDecember 25, 2019 CARACAS, Venezuela — Last Christmas, devastated Venezuela saw shortages of everything from tinsel to toilet paper. This year, the socialist government has given a weary nation an unexpected holiday gift. A dose of the free market. President Nicolás Maduro is making tentative moves away from the socialist policies that once regulated the prices of basic goods, heavily taxed imports and restricted the use of the U.S. dollar. As a result, the South American nation’s economic free fall is beginning to decelerate. The national inflation rate — still the world’s highest — has slowed from a blistering 1.5 million last year to a relatively breezy annualized rate of 15,000 percent. The changes might be temporary, and amount largely to an economic Band-Aid. There are no signs, for instance, of a larger strategy to reverse the agricultural land grabs and company seizures that helped lay the groundwork for one of the worst economic implosions of modern times. But as the new measures take hold, once-empty store shelves have overflowed this holiday season with beef, chicken, milk and bread — albeit at prices so high that a significant segment of the population is actually worse off. More moneyed Venezuelans, however, are flocking to dozens of newly opened specialty stores — including at least one fake Walmart — brimming with stacks of Cheerios, slabs of Italian ham and crates of Kirkland Signature Olive Oils, much of it bought and shipped in containers to Venezuela from Costco and other bulk retailers in Miami. Socialism doesn’t work? An emerging middle class of Bolivians would beg to differ. Maduro remains deadlocked in a political standoff with opposition leader Juan Guaidó and his backers in Washington, who have ratcheted up pressure to force his ouster. But U.S. sanctions against Venezuela do not appear to have crimped surging imports — mostly because they prevent Americans from doing business with only the government, not private Venezuelans. A woman checks out a shop window in Caracas. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post) “The government had been unable to restart the economy any other way, so it’s doing what the people want” by giving in to the free market, said Ricardo Cusano, president of Fedecamaras, Venezuela’s chamber of commerce. The socialists are still in power, he said, but “they have lost the ideological war.” Plagued by hyperinflation and economic collapse, depressed Venezuelans dubbed last Dec. 25 the “Christmas without lights” — a day largely bereft of the traditional holiday bunting and toys for children. But as the economy begins to show modest signs of life — particularly in the relative bubble of Caracas, the capital — there have been visible changes on the streets. Meager Christmas markets opened to peddle baubles to a slightly more optimistic populace. More holiday decorations popped up inside stores, along with, proprietors say, more parents buying toys and clothing for children. The capital is suffering its worst traffic jams in years as car owners with greater access to imported spare parts drag long out-of-commission vehicles back onto clogged roads. Argentina’s economy is collapsing. Here come the Peronistas, again. The eased restrictions have made the holiday season merrier for a small minority of rich Venezuelans, many of whom live in mansions behind high walls in Eastern Caracas. The tip piggy bank in an imported goods store in Caracas is stuffed with dollar bills. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post) Adult-sized mannequins in Santeria Iyawo attire tower over a child-sized mannequin at El Cementerio market in Caracas. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post) “There were things you just couldn’t get — dishes you just couldn’t make,” said Pablo Gianni, manager of Anonimo, a lavish new Caracas eatery that opened this month complete with a glass-walled wine cellar stocked with shelves of four-figure vintages of Dom Pérignon. “But now, it’s like legal contraband,” he said. “They’re letting everything in.” The changes taking shape here are the product of a combination of factors. For years, the government strictly limited the use of the U.S. dollar, long portrayed as an instrument of Yanqui imperialism. But last year, the government freed the exchange rate and more broadly legalized dollar transactions. It also eliminated massive import taxes on a host of goods. But those measures have begun to work through the economy really only in recent months, as the government has taken the further step of abandoning attempts to control retail prices. Stocks of bread, chicken and beef that once sold for nearly nothing are now being sold at market rates, at least partly normalizing farm production and sales through supply chains. Juan Guaidó promised to save Venezuela. Now the flame he lit is petering out, and his U.S. backers are weighing their options. Just as importantly, there are simply far more dollars in the Venezuelan economy now. About 4.5 million Venezuelans have fled starvation and poverty in recent years, creating a global diaspora that collectively sent $3.5 billion in remittances this year — more than triple the amount two years ago, according to Ecoanalitica, a Caracas-based economic analysis firm. In addition, economists say, the economy is awash in dollars from illegal mining, drug trafficking and other illicit activities. A saleswoman waits for customers in an imported goods store in Caracas. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post) By some estimates, there are three times as many dollars in circulation as bolivars, creating a de facto dollarization of the economy that is stabilizing inflation. Last month, even Maduro seemed to hail the almighty dollar. “I don't see the process they call dollarization as bad,” he said in nationally televised comments. “It can aid the recovery of the productive areas of the country and the functioning of the economy.” Across Venezuela, mechanics and electricians, engineers and architects are increasingly charging in greenbacks. More companies are supplementing their employees’ salaries with U.S. currency. Collectively, economists say, 60 to 70 percent of families here are now regularly receiving some dollars — buying even some Venezuelans of more modest means a merrier Christmas this year. Maduro’s ex-spy chief lands in U.S. armed with allegations against Venezuelan government “Last year was very hard for us. There was practically no Christmas,” Yelitza Mineros, 33, said as she eyed the prices in dollars at a Caracas toy store with her 7-year old son and 3-year old daughter. Her husband, a mechanic, began earning in dollars a few months ago, she said, giving them the extra money they needed to buy new clothes for their children. Her son, Rodrigo, held up a Spider-Man action figure with a big grin as she spoke. “This year, we’re doing better, and we can get them their toys,” she said. “That gives me a lot of joy.” After last year’s “Christmas without Lights,” the decorations have returned to Caracas. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post) Venezuela remains deeply mired in the worst economic crisis in modern Latin American history. Years of chronic mismanagement and, to a lesser extent, U.S. sanctions including an oil embargo have severely damaged the lifeblood of the economy: petroleum production. Venezuelans, including residents of the relatively shielded capital, are struggling with worsening gasoline shortages, lingering blackouts and broken state hospitals. And more food on store shelves doesn’t mean everyone can eat. In western Caracas, for instance, a grocery store that last year sold price-controlled products and suffered from shortages was now well now stocked with goods ranging from imported motorcycle helmets to Diet Coke. But with two chicken thighs at $1.70 and butter at $2 in a nation with a minimum wage of $6 a month, the aisles were mostly devoid of shoppers. In Venezuela’s oil capital, life is a struggle. So is death. Mariutka Oropeza, 54, sits in her home while her son plays with cards in Guarenas, Venezuela. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post) For the poorest Venezuelans with no access to dollars, life is harder. Mariutka Oropeza, a 54-year-old woman who lives with her three adult children in a small apartment in eastern Caracas, has struggled to afford medicines and treatment for her arthritis, hypertension and uterine cancer. She was shocked recently to discover that one of her new prescriptions was going for $70 a box — well out of reach for a family with a household income of $30 a month. Her family once survived by waiting in hours-long lines for regulated goods. But now that the government has stopped enforcing fixed prices, a bag of cornmeal that once cost her 25 cents now costs four times that amount. “It’s painful,” Oropeza said. “People say, ‘Oh, we are doing a little better’ because many of them receive remittances from their families abroad. But oh, my God, we are not doing better at all.” “I remember when this government started ruling, and called the dollar the big enemy. Look where they have brought us now,” she said. “The dollarization of the country. “What they’re really doing is killing us.” Customers leave an imported goods store decorated for Christmas in Caracas. (Andrea Hernández Briceño/For The Washington Post)
Mendoza of the NBER
Gideon Long (OZY). “WHY SOCIALIST VENEZUELA IS COUNTING ON THE DOLLAR.” December 1, 2019. https://www.ozy.com/the-new-and-the-next/why-socialist-venezuela-is-counting-on-the-dollar/249318/
President Nicolás Maduro conceded as much in November when he sang the praises of dollarization during a local television interview. “This process which they call dollarization can be useful for the recovery and for unleashing the country’s productive forces and for the functioning of the economy,” he said. “It is an escape valve. Thank God it exists.” The socialist leader is usually scathing about anything that comes from the U.S. and has taken several steps to “liberate” his country’s economy from the Yankee dollar, by embracing the euro, the renminbi and a homespun cryptocurrency, the petro. But Maduro’s comments reflect a growing reality in Venezuela as the country’s economic decline gathers pace. Walk into many shops in Caracas these days and you can spend greenbacks. “I’d say around 70 percent of all our sales are now in dollars,” says Jennifer Bogarin, owner of a shop selling children’s clothes in a mall in Caracas. “It’s really taken off since the middle of this year. A few people use euros but hardly anyone buys in bolívares anymore.” A recent study by local consulting firm Ecoanalítica found that over half of all financial transactions in Venezuela are paid for in foreign currency — primarily dollars. In the country’s second-largest city, Maracaibo, close to the Colombian border, the figure is 86 percent. Venezuelans use dollars for big-ticket purchases — 95 percent of home appliances, for example — but also increasingly for smaller day-to-day items: More than half of food purchases were made in dollars, the study found.
Heakel’19
Reem Heakal, 11-18-2019, "Dollarization Explained," Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/04/082504.asp, 1-9-2020
The extreme method of pegging lies in a currency board, by which countries "anchor" their local currencies to a convertible currency (often the U.S. dollar). (To learn more about this, see What Is A Currency Board? and Floating And Fixed Exchange Rates.) The result is that the local currency has the same value and stability as the foreign currency. Pegging has typically been a way to substantiate the value of a local currency against the world's convertible currencies and to stabilize the exchange rate.The Dollarization AlternativeAs an alternative to maintaining a floating currency or a peg, a country may decide to implement full dollarization. The main reason a country would do this is to reduce its country risk, thereby providing a stable and secure economic and investment climate. Countries seeking full dollarization tend to be developing or transitional economies, particularly those with high inflation. Many of the economies opting for dollarization already informally use foreign tender in private and public transactions, contracts, and bank accounts; however, this use is not yet official policy, and the local currency is still considered the primary legal tender. By deciding to use the foreign tender, individuals and institutions are protecting against possible devaluation of the local exchange rate. Full dollarization, however, is an almost permanent resolution: the country's economic climate becomes more credible as the possibility of speculative attacks on the local currency and capital market virtually disappears.The diminished risk encourages both local and foreign investors to invest money into the country and the capital market. And the fact that an exchange rate differential is no longer an issue helps reduce interest rates on foreign borrowing.Disadvantages of DollarizationThere are some substantial drawbacks to adopting a foreign currency. When a country gives up the option to print its own money, it loses its ability to directly influence its economy, including its right to administer monetary policy and any form of exchange rate regime.The central bank loses its ability to collect 'seigniorage', the profit gained from issuing coinage (the minting of monies costs less than the actual value of the coinage).
Rosales’19
Antulio Rosales, 3-4-2019, "The dollarization of Venezuela’s economy will only worsen the humanitarian crisis," Globe and Mail, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-dollarization-of-venezuelas-economy-will-only-worsen-the/, 1-9-2020
With the current political stalemate between Mr. Maduro and the speaker of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido (who claims to be Venezuela’s legitimate interim president), the economy is expected to deteriorate further. U.S.-imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil subsidiary, CITGO, restrict financial transactions for oil between Venezuela and the United States. These sanctions mean that the Maduro regime desperately needs new markets for its heavy and extra-heavy crude if it wants to keep the country’s already diminished cash flow.In search of fresh sources of hard currency, the government stealthily devalued the official bolivar exchange rate, something it refused to do for more than a decade despite calls from experts. For the past several weeks, customers paying with international credit cards got a better rate in stores than if they sold their dollars on the black market, which was common practice for many Venezuelans and foreigners in the country. With oil exports rapidly declining, these purchases have allowed the Central Bank to obtain millions of dollars cleared through international banks.Long-lasting dual exchange rates have been at the crux of Venezuela’s economic distortions. The government has kept currency controls for over 16 years that stimulated black markets and enormous gains for the select group of businesses that can get a hold of hard currency sold cheaply by the government. The government’s control over oil wealth allowed it to use hard currency to reward and punish businesses and redirect wealth to cronies. Corruption scandals have been widespread in the food import business. In turn, the distribution of subsidized food remains the government’s main social policy and tool for political control. With the dwindling of government funds, its capacity to import necessary items such as food and medicine will decline further, affecting those who depend on government hand outs.
Benzaquen’17
Mercy Benzaquen, 7-16-2017, "How Food in Venezuela Went From Subsidized to Scarce," No Publication, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/16/world/americas/venezuela-shortages.html?module=ArrowsNavandamp;contentCollection=Worldandamp;action=keypress®ion=FixedLeftandamp;pgtype=Multimedia, 1-9-2020
Regulating production With fewer subsidies on products, the government implemented the Fair Price Law to keep costs affordable. The new law regulated the production, distribution and pricing of products. These measures made many companies unprofitable, causing them to stop producing and worsening shortages, said Félix Seijas, a professor at the Central University of Venezuela. In addition to the high costs, farmers complained that fertilizer and farming equipment were mostly unavailable, and if a piece of machinery broke, the entire supply chain could shut down.But the government blames an “economic war” waged by its opposition and foreign enemies for the food scarcity, accusing private companies of intentionally cutting back production in an attempt to destabilize the country.As a result, Venezuelans have turned to expensive imports or to the black market. For many people, staples like eggs and rice have become unaffordable.These policies led to foodscarcity and more poverty.During the oil price boom, the percentage of households in poverty fell to 29 percent from 53 percent. The government has not released poverty data since 2015. But a survey by three of the top universities in the country indicates that in recent years the government underestimated the level of poverty, which reached 82 percent in 2016According to the survey, about 9.6 million people eat two or fewer meals a day and 93 percent of the population cannot afford food.
PBS 12, 1-24-2012, Is 'Hot Money' Responsible for the Financial Crises?, PBS NewsHour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/is-hot-money-responsible-for-the-financial-crises /CM
Rob Griffith asks: Is there any consensus about whether large rapid inflow and efflux of capital into various countries has played a significant role in the financial crises of the last 30 In economics? Hardly ever. That’s why any economist worth her salt will qualify almost all assertions with the phrase “ceteris paribus,” meaning “all things equal,” as in, “If more money is printed, there will be inflation, ceteris paribus.” One of the safest statements in economics is that printing money causes inflation. But if people refuse to spend the new money and bury it instead, no inflation. “All things” have not remained the same. As to the financial crises of the last 30 years, yes, rapid capital flows have often been fingered as a key culprit. “Hot money,” it’s called, and it generally comes from foreign investors in the form of short-term loans that drive down interest rates when they flood the country, spurring spending and investment. When the investors get nervous, however, and suddenly pull their money out by selling their loans (or simply not refinancing them with new lending), interest rates shoot up, the domestic currency drops in value, and spending and investment swoon. This is how China explains its strict controls over foreign investment and its refusal to let its currency trade openly: it says it’s worried about the role of “hot money” in causing bubbles and busts. This entry is cross-posted on the Making Sen$e page, where correspondent Paul Solman answers your economic and business questions
IMF 13, 4-5-2013, Three Times The Population Of The U.S. Is At Risk Of Falling Into Poverty, HuffPost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/global-poverty-900-million-economic-shock_n_3022420 /CM
Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are on the brink of poverty. A recent study by the International Monetary Fund warns that as many as 900 million people could fall back into poverty in the event of an economic shock like the Great Recession. That figure is three times the size of the U.S. population. While the report acknowledges that progress has been to made to reduce global poverty and strengthen the world economy following the financial crisis, the world is still in a vulnerable situation. Global unemployment, for example, is the highest it’s been in two decades with 40 percent of the world’s population out of work, according to the report. And things could get much worse in the event of a macroeconomic shock, of which the Europe and U.S. are dangerously close. The recent bailout of Cyprus threw the eurozone into chaos, igniting fears that the situation could lead to the next financial crisis. Here in the U.S., a series of automatic spending cuts know as the sequester could cost the economy hundreds of thousands of jobs. The cuts have already threatened the stability of safety nets designed to aid the nation’s poorest.. The U.S. continues to fail to sustain a robust job market, adding only 88,000 jobs in March.
Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor of Business, Economics and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, former chief economist at the World Bank, former chair of the Presidential Council of Economic Advisers, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 2002. (“Globalization and Its Discontents,” June 2002, http://digamo.free.fr/stig2002.pdf.)
Western banks benefited from the loosening of capital market controls in Latin America and Asia, but those regions suffered when inflows of speculative hot money (money that comes into and out of a country, often overnight, often little more than betting on whether a currency is going to appreciate or depreciate) that had poured into countries suddenly reversed. The abrupt outflow of money left behind collapsed currencies and weakened banking systems. The Uruguay Round also strengthened intellectual property rights. American and other Western drug companies could now stop drug companies in India and Brazil from "stealing" their intellectual property. But these drug companies in the developing world were making these life-saving drugs available to their citizens at a fraction of the price at which the drugs were sold by the Western drug companies. There were thus two sides to the decisions made in the Uruguay Round. Profits of the Western drug companies would go up. Advocates said this would provide them more incentive to innovate; but the increased profits from sales in the developing world were small, since few could afford the drugs, and hence the incentive effect, at best, might be limited. The other side was that thousands were effectively condemned to death, because governments and individuals in developing countries could no longer pay the high prices demanded. In the case of AIDS, the international outrage was so great that drug companies had to back down, eventually agreeing to lower their prices, to sell the drugs at cost in late 2001. But the underlying problems – the fact that the intellectual property regime established under the Uruguay Round was not balanced, that it overwhelmingly reflected the interests and perspectives of the producers, as opposed to the users, whether in developed or developing countries – remain. When one region of the world economy experiences a financial crisis , the world-wide availability of investment opportunities declines. As global investors search for new destinations for their capital , other regions will experience inflows of hot money. , large capital inflows make the recipient countries more vulnerable to future adverse shocks , creating the risk of serial financial crises. This paper develops a formal model of such flows of hot money and the vulnerability to serial financial crises. It analyzes the role for macro-prudential policies to lean against the wind of such capital flows so as to offset the externalities that occur during financial crises. Summarizing the results of our model in a simple policy rule, the paper finds that a 1 percentage point increase in a country's capital inflows / GDP ratio warrants a 0.87 percentage point increase in the optimal level of capital inflow taxation. JEL F34, E44, G38 IMF Economic Review (201 1 ) 59, 306-339. doi:1 0.1 057/imfer.201 1 .10 In that recent seemed decades, to be the linked world by a economy recurrent has pattern: experienced one country serial or financial sector in crises the that seemed to be linked by a recurrent pattern: one country or sector in the world economy experiences a financial crisis; capital flows out in a panic; investors seek a more attractive destination for their money. In the next destination, capital inflows create a boom that is accompanied by rising indebtedness, rising asset prices, and booming consumption - for a time. But all too often, these capital inflows are followed by another crisis. Some commentators describe these patterns of capital flows as "hot money" that flows from one sector or country to the next and leaves behind a trail of destruction. The goal of this paper is to develop a model that captures these pheno- mena and that analyzes optimal policy responses. In the model, there are multiple borrowing countries that access finance from a group of international investors. Financial relationships are subject to collateral constraints that depend on the value of the a
Fedecamaras’19
NA (Argus). “Maduro government eyes turning point.” December 20, 2019. https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2038995-maduro-government-eyes-turning-point?backToResults=true
US sanctions imposed on PdV in January constricted oil revenues that historically accounted for up to 90pc of Venezuela's income. And while they have failed to dislodge Maduro, they have compelled his government to ease economic controls this year, modestly improving the country's 2020 economic outlook. Maduro's biggest economic achievement this year has been to curb hyperinflation. National assembly advisers estimate inflation in January-November at over 5,500pc, compared with the central bank's 2018 estimate of 130,000pc. And falling oil revenues have forced Maduro to phase out most domestic price controls and loosen capital controls in a bid to encourage foreign investment and facilitate remittances from Venezuelans abroad. Remittances are expected to jump to about $6bn next year, up from an estimated $4bn this year. This would be equivalent to almost 80pc of the central bank's hard currency reserves of $7.5bn. The trends are driving a robust black market in dollars and euros. Dollarisation is a necessary "pressure release valve" that is allowing private-sector companies to secure hard currency to finance imports, Maduro said in October, adding "thank God for dollarisation". Venezuelan business chamber Fedecamaras says that this year, for the first time in decades, the private sector will account for up to 25pc of GDP, and probably more in 2020.
Viscidi 16
Lisa Viscidi (Foreign Affairs). “Venezuela on the Brink.” September/October 2016. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/venezuela-brink
Venezuela is in the throes of its most tumultuous political and economic period in decades. The collapse of global energy prices has wreaked havoc on the country’s economy. Estimates vary, but oil production has fallen from a peak of around 3.2 million barrels per day in 1997 to somewhere between 2.2 million and 2.5 million barrels per day today. Oil and gas account for more than 95 percent of Venezuela’s revenues from exports, and the country produces few other goods. Without the money it makes from exporting energy products, Venezuela has struggled to import everything else its people need. As a result, Venezuelans are facing widespread shortages of food, medicine, and other basic supplies. Citizens wait in line for hours at supermarkets to buy staples such as rice; many have resorted to sifting through trash to find food. Military forces have been dispatched to oversee food production and distribution. Last year, a group of Venezuelan researchers estimated that, in contrast to relatively rosy official statistics, more than three-quarters of Venezuelans are living in poverty. And there is no relief in sight: by the end of the year, the economy will probably have contracted by eight percent and the inflation rate will likely reach 720 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Chauhan
x
Published, 10-23-2019, "Oil Prices in Danger of Crashing Next Year Thanks to Weak Demand," CCN, https://www.ccn.com/oil-prices-in-danger-of-crashing-next-year-thanks-to-weak-demand/, 1-10-2020
Oil prices were flying high when the year began. OPEC and its allies decided to reduce their output to the tune of 1.2 million barrels per day for the first six months of 2019. Consequently, the international benchmark Brent crude oil touched nearly $75 per…Weak demand as a result of a slowing global economy and a potential increase in production could spell trouble for oil prices next year. Oil prices were flying high when the year began. OPEC and its allies decided to reduce their output to the tune of 1.2 million barrels per day for the first six months of 2019. Consequently, the international benchmark Brent crude oil touched nearly $75 per barrel by the third week of April.oil chart Brent crude oil prices have fallen off a cliff thanks to an economic slowdown. | Source: BloombergBrent crude started the year below $55 a barrel and rose rapidly in a short time. But it didn’t take long for the rally to fizzle out. Oil prices were dealt a body blow by faltering demand, which was triggered by the U.S.-China trade war and the slowdown in global economic growth.Goldman Sachs now believes that oil has very limited upside potential and prices won’t be rising significantly in 2020. However, the possibility of an oil price crash in 2020 should not be ruled out.Goldman Says Oil Prices Are Heading “Nowhere”According to Goldman Sachs, “worsening growth expectations and rising Middle East tensions” have weighed on Brent crude in recent weeks. The investment bank added in a research note that Brent crude will continue to hover around $60 per barrel in 2020:“Nevertheless, absent growth or geopolitical tensions escalating into meaningful shocks, we expect that Brent oil prices are likely to continue trading in 2020 around our $60 (a barrel) forecast.The ongoing OPEC cuts and slowing shale activity will offset rising other non-OPEC supply and moderate demand growth next year.”Brent crude oil is currently trading around Goldman’s 2020 forecast, which means that oil prices are likely to remain flat next year.There are a number of reasons why Goldman’s prediction could turn out to be true. For instance, oil demand is expected to cool off thanks to weak global economic growth this year. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) revealed in its July short-term energy outlook that it has reduced its global oil demand growth expectations for six consecutive months.DON'T MISS:Oil Prices Swing Wildly as Trump’s Sanctions Threat Against Iraq Likely to Backfire Goldman Sachs’ Rosy Assessment of the Economy Isn’t Fooling Bond Investors. The EIA blamed slow economic growth in important oil-consuming countries as the reason behind its pessimism. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) reduction of the 2019 global economic growth forecast to just 3 percent – the lowest level since the last financial crisis – indicates that oil demand growth could come to a screeching halt.So, weak oil demand is going to weigh on prices until and unless global economic growth improves. But that looks unlikely as the probability of a recession looms large over the world economy.Can OPEC Save The Oil Market From Crashing?OPEC has been trying to prop up oil prices on the back of production cuts. The cartel decided in June that it will extend its production cuts until March next year to keep oil prices afloat in the wake of weak economic growth. OPEC now says that it is considering deeper production cuts in 2020 to prepare for a further slowdown in oil consumption.As such, it looks like oil producers will try to match supply with faltering demand in 2020 in a bid to keep prices stable. But the probability of weaker oil prices should not be ruled out either, as the EIA estimates that production is all set to exceed consumption next year. | 904,475 |
365,405 | 379,429 | Offs | Debaters shouldn't paraphrase evidence when introducing it to the round for the first time
Debaters shouldn't read new theory in second rebuttal
Debaters should disclose broken positions on the NDCA wiki open source at least 30 minutes before the round
Debaters shouldn't affirm
Debaters shouldn't read evidence
Debaters should disclose their smash main on the wiki atleast 10 minutes before the round.
Debaters can't be robots | 904,491 |
365,406 | 379,435 | SUPER IMPORTANT PLEASE READ ME | dedev institute does NOT exist. Jeremiah Cohn is not a real person Justin Zhang is not a REAL person. the only real person is Simp Zhangtypesmyspeeches but besides that WE NEVER COMPETED in the first place because something that doesn't exist cannot compete. We never did get to read dedev or SPARK so our meaning for existence is all gone. That is why we have decided to remove ourselves from existence. Thus, this will be the final goodbye for dedev institute. Signing out now, no debate. | 904,501 |
365,407 | 379,438 | BD NEG | Contention One is Mining
Currently, the US is tanking in the nuclear energy market, but Trump wants us winning again – DiChristopher of CNBC writes in 2019 that
DiChristopher, 19 (Tom DiChristopher, 4-4-2019, CNBC, "The US is losing the nuclear energy export race to China and Russia. Here's the Trump team's plan to turn the tide", https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/trump-aims-to-beat-china-and-russia-in-nuclear-energy-export-race.html), accessed on 3-3-2020 //NM
Keep Me Logged In companies and researchers.
Unfortunately, ABC News 2019 writes that Trump has wanted to issue Section 232 which
Abc News, 10-9-2019, "US nuclear, uranium mining industries hope for Trump bailout," ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/us-nuclear-uranium-mining-industries-hope-trump-bailout-66167849 //BB
Trump is scheduled by mining interestss
Unfortunately,
Stanford writes in 2018 that empirically,
Oluwaseun Adebagbo, 3-26-2018, "Environmental Injustice: Racism Behind Nuclear Energy," Stanford University, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/adebagbo1/ //DL
Nuclear power plant (NPP) as cheaper electricity.
In fact, Bienkowski concludes
Brian Bienkowski, Environmental Health News, 8-22-2016, "Years after mining stops, uranium’s legacy lingers on Native land," YubaNet, https://yubanet.com/enviro/years-after-mining-stops-uraniums-legacy-lingers-on-native-land/ sd
Some 15,000 abandoned is closer to 5 percent.
And often, Adebagbo also points out
Oluwaseun Adebagbo, 3-26-2018, "Environmental Injustice: Racism Behind Nuclear Energy," Stanford University, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/adebagbo1/ //DL
Nuclear power plant (NPP) such as cheaper electricity.
And even if natives don’t work in the mines, Lewis 2017 of the Univ. of New Mexico finds that of lax regulations
Johnnye Lewis, 5-14-2017, "Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities," University of New Mexico, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429369/ //DL
As a result of the not be disturbed 36.
Moreover,
Johnnye Lewis, 5-14-2017, "Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities," University of New Mexico, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429369/ //DL
Purpose of Review into the future.
Thus, increasing domestic mining would exasperate the ongoing mining abuse cycle, increasing the number of Native Americans exposed. Already, Lewis concludes
Johnnye Lewis, 5-14-2017, "Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities," University of New Mexico, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429369/ //DL
As a result of the not be disturbed 36.
Contention Two is Overspeculation 2:10
Pearce 17 of the Yale Environment 360 finds that due to the nuclear industry losing to other energy markets in the squo, large scale nuclear companies such as
Fred Pearce, 05-15-2017, "Industry Meltdown: Is the Era of Nuclear Power Coming to an End?," Yale E360, https://e360.yale.edu/features/industry-meltdown-is-era-of-nuclear-power-coming-to-an-end //AD - sd
s the nuclear power ever will be finished.
Union of Concerned Scientists 11 notes that
Union of Concerned Scientists, 2-23-2011, "Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies," https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable-without-subsidies//AD
Subsidies prove addictive assessments of new reactors.
Unfortunately, Researchers at the World Nuclear Association 18 find that domestic prioritizing of nuclear energy through
Various Means,, xx-xx-xxxx, "Energy Subsidies," No Publication, https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/energy-subsidies.aspx//AD
Substantial as a means of environmental protection.
That’s critical because Simpson of the Oil Price finds that due to trenchant volatility
Bill Simpson, xx-xx-xxxx, "The Downfall Of U.S. Nuclear Power," OilPrice, https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Downfall-Of-US-Nuclear-Power.html//AD
A new, shocking nuclear power plants.
But subsidies distort the market, changing investors’ perception of nuclear energy’s profitability.
Specifically, Kenton 18 notes that speculative bubbles form, caused by
Will Kenton, 1-29-2020, "Speculative Bubble," Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/speculativebubble.asp//AD
A speculative bubble Now – Free to Use.
Depersio 19 furthers that:
Greg Depersio, 1-29-2020, "How Do Asset Bubbles Cause Recessions?," Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/082515/how-do-asset-bubbles-cause-recessions.asp//AD
Asset bubbles shoulder following economic recessions.
And the impact of a recession is devastating, as London Business School 19 explains
London Business School, 11-11-2019, "Global Slowdown Worries," Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lbsbusinessstrategyreview/2019/11/11/global-slowdown-worries/#4f92e2924a25 sd
Financial crises are world’s major economies?
Consequently, Bradford 2013 indicates that another global recession could push 900 million people back into poverty.
Harry Bradford, 4-5-2013, "Three Times The Population Of The U.S. Is At Risk Of Falling Into Poverty," HuffPost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/global-poverty-900-million-economic-shock_n_3022420 //LM
Hundreds of millions, adding only 88,000 jobs in March. | 904,509 |
365,408 | 379,440 | AFF 1 - EP | AFF
Energy Poverty
A: Domestic Energy Poverty
Alexander of the Consumer Energy Alliance reports in 2017 that ?Thomas Alexander, 10-16-2017, "More Americans Are Living in Energy Poverty," Consumer Energy Alliance, https://consumerenergyalliance.org/2017/10/americans-living-energy-poverty/ sd
For Americans living … Learn how we can make energy more affordable to Americans in poverty.
Our lack of energy efficiency contributes to energy poverty, as Indrawati 2015 of the World Bank writes that
Sri Mulyani Indrawati, 07-28-15, “What you need to know about energy and poverty,” World Bank Blogs, https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/what-you-need-know-about-energy-and-poverty sd
We find that energy poverty … just beginning to be fully understood.
This makes nuclear energy the most attractive energy option due to its reliability aiding household efficiency. Mueller 2018 of the Office of Nuclear Energy reports that
Mike Mueller, 02-27-18, “Nuclear Power is the Most Reliable Energy Source and It’s Not Even Close,” Office of Nuclear Energy, https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close sd
Nuclear energy is America’s work horse. …. electricity onto the grid.
Nuclear energy’s high efficiency is necessary for affordability. The CEB quantifies that
Edic Modic, March 2019, “Energy Poverty in Europe: How Energy Efficiency and Renewables Can Help,” Council of Europe Development Bank, https://coebank.org/media/documents/CEB_Study_Energy_Poverty_in_Europe.pdf sd
Base model analysis In the … -0.6 within three years.
In comparison to other energy sources - Diaz 2011 finds that nuclear energy is price competitive because
Nils Diaz, Summer 2011, Nuclear energy is clean, reliable and affordable. Not to mention easy to manage.," Americas Quarterly, https://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2769 //NM
Nuclear power is a reliable, … attributed to the operation of LWRs.
In other words, nuclear energy is 54 cheaper than natural gas and coal.
Getting Americans out of energy poverty is crucial, as Ingber of NPR reports in 2018 that?Sasha Ingber, 9-19-2018, "31 Percent Of U.S. Households Have Trouble Paying Energy Bills," NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/2018/09/19/649633468/31-percent-of-u-s-households-have-trouble-paying-energy-bills sd
Nearly a third of households … to freeze during this cold season."
B: Global Energy Poverty
Currently, the US is tanking in the nuclear energy export market, but Trump wants us winning again – DiChristopher of CNBC writes in 2019 that
DiChristopher, 19 (Tom DiChristopher, 4-4-2019, CNBC, "The US is losing the nuclear energy export race to China and Russia. Here's the Trump team's plan to turn the tide", https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/trump-aims-to-beat-china-and-russia-in-nuclear-energy-export-race.html), accessed on 3-3-2020 //NM
Keep Me Logged In The Trump administration is … engage in 123 agreements,"
There is one area of the world that could use US nuclear energy exports.
Africa –
Africa poses as a great place to start nuclear exports – Lovering 2019 report that
Lovering, Jessica, and Kenton De Kirby. “Why the United States Should Partner With Africa to Deploy Advanced Reactors.” Issues in Science and Technology 35, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 84–89. https://issues.org/why-the-united-states-should-partner-with-africa-to-deploy-advanced-reactors/ //NM
Africa has nuclear power … equitable and politically sustainable energy option.
PWT But typical nuclear reactors present two serious obstacles - Lovering continues:
Lovering, Jessica, and Kenton De Kirby. “Why the United States Should Partner With Africa to Deploy Advanced Reactors.” Issues in Science and Technology 35, no. 2 (Winter 2019): 84–89. https://issues.org/why-the-united-states-should-partner-with-africa-to-deploy-advanced-reactors/ //NM
Even though there is intense … as facing severe water stress by mid-century.
Fortunately, next generation smaller modular nuclear plants can solve. Sah 2019 argues that
Abigail Sah, Jessica Lovering, Omaro Maseli, and Aishwarya Saxena. April 2018. “Atoms for Africa: Is There a Future for Civil Nuclear Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa?” CGD Policy Paper. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/publication/atoms-africa-there-future-civilnuclear-energy-sub-saharan-africa //NM
Small modular reactors … their first commercial power plant in 2025.
Abigail Sah, Jessica Lovering, Omaro Maseli, and Aishwarya Saxena. April 2018. “Atoms for Africa: Is There a Future for Civil Nuclear Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa?” CGD Policy Paper. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. https://www.cgdev.org/publication/atoms-africa-there-future-civilnuclear-energy-sub-saharan-africa //NM
Several companies are … be commercially available in the next 10 years.
The US is the best actor to pair with Africa since it’s the best at nuclear innovation–The Office of Nuclear Energy in 2019 reported that already
Office of Nuclear Energy, The BIG Potential for Nuclear Microreactors. MAY 15, 2019https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/big-potential-nuclear-microreactors
The U.S. nuclear energy sector … absolute game-changers for the industry.
PWT Providing Africa with more reliable energy is key as currently countries are facing price hikes due to unreliable energy sources. Farquharson in 2018 explains -
Farquharson, D., Jaramillo, P. and Samaras, C. Sustainability implications of electricity outages in sub-Saharan Africa. Nat Sustain 1, 589–597 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0151-8 //NM
The use of diesel for … Sustainable Development Goals in SSA countries.
Without a stable energy source, Morrissey 2017 reports that 633 million people in Africa lack access to electricity and 792 million rely on burning biomass which causes about 600,000 deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa alone.
James Morrissey. 2017. The energy challenge in sub-Saharan Africa: A guide for advocates and policy makers Part 2: Addressing energy poverty. OXFAM. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/static/media/files/oxfam-RAEL-energySSA-pt2.pdf //NM
Access to energy is fundamental to human welfare. … lacking electricity through to 2040 (see Table 1). | 904,512 |
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365,413 | 379,473 | Aff Case 10 | Contention 1 Emboldenment
Saudi:
Arabia would move to diplomacy
Mike Sweeney. March 2020. “CONSIDERING THE “ZERO OPTION”” Mike Sweeney is a fellow at Defense Priorities. He spent thirteen years as a think tank analyst in Washington, DC, where he focused on U.S. foreign policy and defense planning, undertaking research and studies, including for the Department of Defense. His areas of research include U.S. national security, such as NATO relations and enlargement, Middle Eastern politics and security relations, Russian military and doctrine, long-range defense planning scenarios, and U.S. overseas presence and basing options. From 2001 to 2005, he served as the rapporteur for the Defense Policy Board. He is the co-author of the monograph, Central Asia in US Strategy and Operational Planning (2004) and two books published by Brassey’s, Strategic Paradigms 2025 (1999) and Strategic Dynamics in the Nordic-Baltic Region (2000). His articles and essays have appeared on sites such as Divergent Options, West Point’s Modern War Institute, War on the Rocks, among other outlets.
https://www.defensepriorities.org/explainers/considering-the-zero-option
Whatever form a drawdown takes, there must be a coherent plan for managing any transition by the U.S. to a reduced basing architecture in the Middle East. A major withdrawal by America from its numerous bases will have a major regional impact and could in itself be destabilizing to a degree. This is especially true with regard to U.S. presence in the GCC, where America functions as much as an internal referee as a defender against external forces. For example, in 2017, the Trump administration reportedly stopped an attack on Qatar’s gas fields by talking Saudi Arabia out of executing it.41
On the other hand, it is worth considering the removal of America’s immediate military protection could prompt its erstwhile partners to reconsider their own positions and conduct their external relations with greater circumspection. The phenomenon of “moral hazard” enters the equation here; U.S. protection can have the unwanted effect—in some cases—of emboldening those under its umbrella to undertake riskier behavior knowing that the U.S. military insulates them from the full consequences of their actions. Removing that protection reintroduces the threat of more severe penalties. Ideally, a reduction in U.S. presence and a lessening of its direct involvement in Middle Eastern security commitments would have a sobering effect on its current partners (such as Saudi Arabia), pushing them toward greater reliance on diplomacy and compromise, as opposed to bluster and threats.42
Either way, the effect America has on its military partners will need to be considered as carefully as the potential risks associated with adversaries. But here, too, the Cold War offers a useful example: The U.K. conducted its own strategic exit from the Middle East starting in the late 1960s as part of a broader, decade-long plan to eliminate its military commitments in Asia.43 A similar timetable would be useful for reshaping America’s posture in the region. First, it would provide ample time for the considerable logistical challenges of shuttering bases and withdrawing equipment and personnel. Second, it would afford a longer strategic horizon as America assessed how far it wanted to draw down and how much risk it was willing to accept to its position. Finally, it would allow states of the region to prepare for and adjust to a security environment with a drastically decreased level of American military involvement.
Saudi belief of being bailed out
Nicholas Kristof. Dec 15, 2018. “So, I Asked People in Saudi Arabia About Their Mad, Murderous Crown Prince” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/opinion/sunday/saudi-arabia-yemen-khashoggi.html
Some Saudis kept trying to suggest to me that if we block weapons sales to Riyadh, the kingdom will turn to Moscow. That’s absurd. It needs our spare parts and, more important, it buys our weapons because they come with an implicit guarantee that we will bail the Saudis out militarily if they get in trouble with Iran. Saudi Arabia’s armed forces can’t even defeat a militia in Yemen, so how could they stand up to Iran? That’s why we have leverage over Saudi Arabia, not the other way around. Let’s use that leverage. The next step should be a suspension of arms sales until Saudi Arabia ends its war on Yemen, for that war has made us complicit in mass starvation.
End the war
MOHAMAD BAZZI, SEPTEMBER 30, 2018. “The United States Could End the War in Yemen If It Wanted To” https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/iran-yemen-saudi-arabia/571465/
Like the Saudis and Emiratis, the Trump administration sees in the Houthis the same sort of threat as other Iranian-backed groups such as Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to help Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. In late August, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations tweeted a photo that had circulated in the Arab press of a meeting in Beirut between the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Houthi officials. U.S. officials claimed it showed “the nature of the regional terrorist threat,” and added: “Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen pose major dangers to peace and stability in the entire Middle East.” But beyond recent missile attacks on Saudi Arabia—in retaliation for Saudi air strikes—the Houthis have displayed little regional ambition. Ironically, as the war drags on, the Houthis will grow more dependent on support from Iran and its allies. By accepting the coalition’s cosmetic attempts to minimize civilian casualties, the Trump administration is signaling to Saudi and Emirati leaders its apparent belief that a clear military victory in Yemen remains possible. And as long as the coalition believes it can crush the Houthis, there’s little incentive for it to negotiate. Trump, then, has bought into Saudi Arabia’s zero-sum calculation: that a military win in Yemen for the kingdom and its allies would be a defeat for Iran, while a negotiated settlement with the Houthis would be a victory for Tehran. Blinded by its obsession with Iran, the Trump administration is perpetuating an unwinnable war and undermining the likelihood of a political settlement.
MOHAMAD BAZZI, SEPTEMBER 30, 2018. “The United States Could End the War in Yemen If It Wanted To” https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/iran-yemen-saudi-arabia/571465/
Saudi and Emirati leaders want a clear-cut victory in their regional rivalry with Iran, and they have been emboldened by the Trump administration’s unconditional support to stall negotiations. A recent UN effort to hold peace talks between the Houthis, Hadi’s government, and the Saudi-led coalition collapsed in early September, after the Houthi delegation did not show up in Geneva. Houthi leaders said the Saudis, who control Yemen’s airspace, would not guarantee their safe travel. Days later, Yemeni forces loyal to the Saudi-UAE alliance launched a new offensive aimed at forcing the Houthis out of Hodeidah port, which is the major conduit for humanitarian aid in Yemen. UN officials warn that a prolonged battle for the port and its surroundings could lead to the death of 250,000 people, mainly from mass starvation
Diplomacy Solvency
Trita Parsi. January 6, 2020. “The Middle East is More Stable when the U.S. Stays Away”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/
Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons.
Instead, recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks.
Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times. Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression.
An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security. It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy.
Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted. Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments.
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole. Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished.
It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it?
William Lambers. September 16, 2019. “Use diplomacy, not bombs, for Middle East Crisis.”
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/09/16/use-diplomacy-not-bombs-for-middle-east-crisis/
Malnutrition is slowly killing Yemen’s children and we need to get life-saving food to them. An immediate ceasefire and safe passage of humanitarian aid is crucial. In Yemen both the Saudi side and the Houthis have committed atrocities. One act of violence leads to more. When does it end? They must realize that more war is not going to resolve anything. The United States must be the voice of reason and peacemaking here. But that starts by example. The U.S. should withdraw its military support of the Saudi coalition in Yemen and be just the peacemaker and humanitarian. The Trump administration has provided military intelligence and logistical support to the Saudi war effort in Yemen. Then there are the never ending arms sales to the region worth billions of dollars. Meanwhile, the U.N. World Food Program and other relief agencies are desperate for more funds to feed Yemen’s hungry.
Doug Bandow. May 20, 2017. “Donald Trump Visits Riyadh, Putting Saudi Royals Before American People.”
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/donald-trump-visits-riyadh-putting-saudi-royals-american-people
First, Washington is rewarding a totalitarian dictatorship for its repression. That Riyadh wants a puppet neighbor is unsurprising. But it isn’t America’s responsibility to give one to the Saudi royals. Second, the conflict has diverted Saudi attention from the most destabilizing and dangerous force in the Mideast, the Islamic State. Riyadh is entitled to choose its own priorities, but Washington should not underwrite counterproductive Saudi efforts. After a Houthi missile attack on a U.S. warship Trump officials expressed concern about navigational freedom, especially in the Bab??el??Mandeb waterway. But Yemenis apparently attacked an American vessel because Washington was helping Saudis kill Yemenis. Before that Houthis never targeted Americans. Third, the UN human rights coordinator called Yemen “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.” Houthis have interfered with the delivery of humanitarian aid, but Saudis and their coalition partners have caused far more death and destruction. More than 10,000 civilians have been killed and 40,000 wounded. Saudi airstrikes, described as “indiscriminate or disproportionate” by Human Rights Watch, caused at least two??thirds of infrastructure damage and three??quarters of the deaths. Nearly 19 million people, more than 80 percent of the population, need humanitarian aid. More than ten million have acute need for assistance. About 13 million lack access to clean water. Some 60 percent of Yemen’s people, or 17 million, are in “crisis” or “emergency” situations. The UN World Food Programme warned that the country is on the brink of “full??scale famine,” with seven million people “severely food insecure.” Some four million people already are acutely malnourished and 3.2 million have been displaced within the country. Health services have collapsed as the need for care has mushroomed.
Qatar:
Taha A. Lemkhir, 7-10-2019, "Qatar’s Sorcery is working its magic at the White House," No Publication, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/qatars-sorcery-is-working-its-magic-at-the-white-house/?fbclid=IwAR0wrIq3aFrouG03tWhWc2NBDpFQ4bp8CY3SqCBWB81r0x_6_tsRaNNaYUM
Until now, Qatar’s petrodollars, and with the accumulative effect of the brilliant work of its lobbyists in Washington and other important European capitals, have been successful, in many occasions, in shielding the Emirate from the possibility of a US wrath that could have dramatically shattered the dreams of the little Bedouin Islamist state, and imposed an overdue embargo on its natural gas for its evidenced funding of terrorism. The “inalienable” Al-Udeid Base created an environment of favoritism towards Qatar; it enables the Emirate to act with impunity, free from constant scrutiny, and emboldens its destabilizing plans in the region that are in collision course with US interests and moral values.The “free-of-charge” base and the lavish Qatari spending on its maintenance and accommodating its approx. 10 000 troops became a trap impeding the execution of the pressure needed to curb Qatar’s Islamist agenda and its open support for extremist voices. Nevertheless it is rather understood the significance of the base for the US military operations in the region, and how it is hard for Americans to relinquish such a unique and strategic base that they have treated since its inception with a special care.
Joe Gould, 6-13-2019, "US Senate upholds arms sales to Bahrain, Qatar," Defense News, https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2019/06/13/us-senate-upholds-arms-sales-to-bahrain-qatar/
The vote on Bahrain was 43-56 and Qatar 42-57, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., announced their opposition Thursday. The White House earlier this week threatened to veto the measures.Paul, a Kentucky libertarian who rails against military interventionism, repeated accusations that Bahrain and Qatar support terrorists and argued their repressive authoritarian governments clash with America’s pro-Democratic values. He argued ahead of the vote that the U.S. only maintains these allies as a misguided means to check Iran.“Dumping more weapons into the Middle East won’t get us any closer to peace,” Paul said. “A ‘yes’ vote today is a vote for sanity. A ‘yes’ vote is a vote to quit sending arms to people who abuse human rights.”
Tom Rogan, 8-30-18, "Qatar is a poor American ally; Trump should leave its airbase upgrades empty," Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/qatar-is-a-poor-american-ally-trump-should-leave-its-airbase-upgrades-empty
The simple problem is that Qatar continues to act in ways that are fundamentally counter to American interests. Take Qatar's close friendship with Iran. Qatar is happy to support Iranian foreign policy interests against regional stability. Maintaining growing commercial ties with Iran, the Qatari government has also allowed the Iranian revolutionary guard-aligned hardliners to insulate their business interests from U.S. sanctions pressure. Other recent reports suggest that Qatar may be helping Iran to manipulate the outcome of ongoing government formation talks in Iraq (which would be very bad for America). Still, the real measure of why Trump should challenge Qatar is its ongoing and outrageous support for Salafi-Jihadist terrorists. The divorce between Qatari words and actions here is defining. While the Qatari ambassador writes Washington Post op-eds attacking Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their ( admittedly flawed) campaign in Yemen, his prime minister flirts with terrorist fundraisers in Doha. The ruling Al Thani family allows such conduct because of its own ardent ideological support for the most conservative strains of Sunni political Islam. More importantly, they do so in full awareness that the groups associated with these ideological movements are often defined by violent fanaticism and the pursuit of exclusionary societies that prejudice against other religious ( including Muslim) and social groups.
Joseph Hammond, 8-16-17, "Qatar and Arab powers are already at war…in Libya," Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/qatar-and-arab-powers-are-already-at-warin-libya
The Qatari-Emirati rivalry, which became front-page news last week when Saudi Arabia and its allies severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, has been the significant factor in the continuation of the current Libyan Civil War, much more so than nationalistic or Islamist ideologies. Qatar and the UAE both punch above their weight in the conflict because unlike in Yemen or Syria, the role of the United States and other major powers is somewhat muted. At stake for both Gulf monarchies is influence in post-war Libya as well as economic opportunity. The country is home to some of the last significant underexplored oil and gas basins in the Middle East. Outside the oil sector, Qatar has financial deals with Libya that date to the Ghaddafi era. The UAE, as an early investor in Libya, has also sought controlling positions in the Libyan financial sector.
Jalel Harchaoui, 3-18-2020, "The Libyan Civil War Is About to Get Worse," Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/18/libyan-civil-war-about-get-worse/
Libya has been in the grips of an internationalized civil conflict for more than half a decade, involving the same foreign countries throughout the ordeal. But recently, persistent U.S. apathy toward the region and a growing sense of impunity have emboldened some of those actors. The most assertive one is the United Arab Emirates, followed closely behind by its regional opponent, Turkey. Both are U.S. allies but stand on opposite sides of the conflict. Last year, they began engaging in more direct military intervention, in addition to supporting their usual proxies. Yet another clash between the two main Libya camps is now brewing, and events in recent weeks suggest that the fighting will be more devastating than at any time before—and still may not produce a definitive victory for either side.
Dr. Shady A. Mansour, 4-1-2019, "Are Turkey and Qatar Supporting Terrorism in Libya?," https://eeradicalization.com/are-turkey-and-qatar-supporting-terrorism-in-libya/
During the uprising against Gaddafi in 2011, Qatar provided some extremist groups inside Libya, especially those allied to Al-Qaeda, with arms. One of these groups is the faction led by Belhaj. Some of the arms that Doha sent into Libya were later used by militants with ties to Al-Qaeda in Mali.10 Qatar has been implicated in funding terrorist organizations in Libya, like ISIS and Ansar al-Shariah, which increased the ability of these groups to pay fighters monthly salaries of $100 or more, and hence increase their recruitment bases.11 Turkey has established relations with Al-Qaeda affiliated groups in a number of places throughout the region. One such case was the Libyan-born Irish citizen Mahdi al-Harati, who from April to August 2011 ran the “Tripoli Brigade”, an armed unit that took part in the final battle to push Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi out of his capital city. Shortly after the fall of Tripoli, Harati was appointed as deputy commander of the Tripoli Military Council (TMC), which at the time was headed by Belhaj. Harati resigned in October 2011 and, with the Asharq AL-awsat, 4-13-2019, "LNA Accuses Qatar of Being 'Terrorism Base'," https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1869071/lna-accuses-qatar-being-terrorism-base
support from the Qatari and Turkish government, joined the Syrian insurgency. Around this time, Belhaj also went to Turkey and met with Syrian opposition leaders. In April 2012, Harati and his brother-in-law, Houssam Najjair, established Liwa al-Ummah, based in Syria’s north-west Idlib governorate.12
Khalid Mahmoud, 4-13-2019, "LNA Accuses Qatar of Being 'Terrorism Base'," https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1869071/lna-accuses-qatar-being-terrorism-base
The Libyan National Army (LNA) – commanded by Chief Marshal Khalifa Haftar – accused Qatar again of becoming a base for terrorism in Libya. LNA spokesman Ahmed Mesmari described Qatar as the base for terrorism in Libya and other countries that witnessed terrorist attacks. During a press conference on Wednesday in Benghazi, Mesmari said that the battle of the army is huge because it counters terrorism and countries standing behind it. Further, Head of Libya's Government of National Accord Fayez al-Sarraj chaired a meeting in Tripoli on Wednesday to discuss the oil topic. During the meeting, which was attended by government officials, Sarraj was briefed on the battle updates.
Reuters, March 25, 2020, "Libya battles escalate as coronavirus arrives in country," No Publication, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/libya-battles-escalate-as-coronavirus-arrives-in-country-2020-03-25
TUNIS, March 25 (Reuters) - Battles erupted around Tripoli on Wednesday following intensified bombardment of the Libyan capital, defying international pleas for a truce to tackle the coronavirus after the first case was confirmed in the country.
Nicholas Saidel, 4-17-2020, "The Middle East Conflict You Haven’t Heard About," WSJ, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-middle-east-conflict-you-havent-heard-about-11581277914
Iran isn’t the only flashpoint in the Middle East. Less noticed are tensions between Egypt and Turkey over the fate of Libya, where a messy civil war has been raging since 2014. This antagonism could further destabilize the Middle East, which could set off another refugee crisis in Europe. The fight may also disrupt maritime commerce in the Mediterranean and lead to a resurgence of ISIS in Libya.
Stephen Lendman, 7-6-2011, "Libya: Flashpoint for Global Conflict," Stephen Lendman, https://stephenlendman.org/2011/07/libya-flashpoint-for-global-conflic/
Given the possibility of Libya triggering escalated general or global war, that scenario today is real, especially in light of a “1996 plan to bomb Libya using tactical nuclear weapons.” It was shelved at that time, but never eliminated as a possibility against any nation.
In fact, the Bush administration claimed the preemptive right to use nuclear weapons, including against non-nuclear states, based on alleged national security concerns. Obama recklessly maintains the same policy even though America hasn’t had an enemy since Japan surrendered in August 1945.
Nonetheless, the prospect of escalating war with nuclear or other mass destruction weapons suggests frightening possibilities, including a potential WW III scenario. It’s no less implausible now than WW I seemed in early 1914.
Contention 2 is Depleted Uranium
The US currently uses depleted uranium rounds in the Middle East.
Mizokami, 20 (Kyle Mizokami, 1-21-2020, accessed on 3-3-2020, The National Interest, "The Brutal Reason American Tanks Shoot Depleted Uranium Shells", https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/brutal-reason-american-tanks-shoot-depleted-uranium-shells-115571)
Key point: When you put national security above the environment, firing and leaving behind radioactive shells matters less than achieving victory. That is a calculus of the U.S. military and political leadership. A tank is a fast-moving, well-protected, heavily armed behemoth designed to dominate the land battlefield. As the primary offensive weapon in any army, nations compete to field the best tanks in both peace and war. In the 1980s, the U.S. Army took the drastic step of arming its tank, the M1 Abrams, with the ultimate upgrade: a tank-killing round made of uranium, the heaviest naturally occurring element on Earth. The result is an unmatched tank killer capable of destroying any fielded tank. The M1 Abrams tank was first fielded by the U.S. Army in the 1980s. The Army had preferred the 105-millimeter gun, the British-designed Royal Ordnance L7, also known in the United States as the M68. The M68 had armed the M60 series of tanks for decades and was considered a proven “good enough” gun. The M1’s turret could only accommodate fifty-five rounds of 105-millimeter ammunition, a reduction from the sixty-two rounds the older M60 tank could carry. An even larger gun would further reduce ammo capacity to a mere forty rounds. Pentagon officials, on the other hand, wanted to equip the M1 with the larger German-designed Rheinmetall M256 120-millimeter smoothbore gun. The civilian leadership felt obliged to use the gun in part as a way to offset German participation in the NATO AWACS program. A larger gun would also “future-proof” the M1, allowing it to defeat future tanks with heavier armor. A compromise resulted, in which the M1 would be initially manufactured with the M68 gun, but would be upgradable to the M256 at a later date. Moreover, a later version of the tank, later called M1A1, would come standard with the larger M256. While the tank was now future-proofed, the point about smaller ammunition capability still stood. The fire control system on the M1 was so advanced that it could hit a moving target at two thousand meters with 90 percent accuracy. The problem was not going to be missses and wasted ammunition, but ensuring that hits translated into kills. At the same time, the United States was researching the use of depleted uranium as an armor penetrator. A byproduct of nuclear reactor fuel, depleted uranium was harder and denser than existing tungsten-tipped penetrators. Accelerated to extremely high speeds, this allowed a depleted-uranium (DU) round to smash through an unprecedented amount of armor. The pyrophoric nature of uranium and steel would cause the DU to catch fire upon penetration, causing catastrophic damage inside the tank. The standard tungsten antiarmor round for the M60 tank, the M735, could penetrate 350 millimeters, or 13.7 inches, of steel rolled homogenous armor (RHA), the standard measurement for armored vehicle protection. The M833 DU round, however, could penetrate 420 millimeters of RHA positioned at a sixty-degree angle for maximum armor thickness. By comparison, the larger Soviet 125-millimeter gun on the T-72 tank could penetrate 450 millimeters of armor. Most importantly, the M774 could penetrate the T-72’s frontal hull and turret armor, where armor was the thickest. Meanwhile, efforts to future-proof the M1’s armament were coming in handy. The Soviet Union was known to be deploying a new main battle tank, the T-80. U.S. intelligence believed that the T-80, like other modern tanks such as the M-1 and Leopard 2, had shifted away from an all-steel armor to a mixed composite matrix that included ceramic armors. The result was dramatically improved “composite” armor protection. The T-80 had a frontal turret protection of five hundred millimeters of RHA, and glacis plate (frontal hull) protection level of 450 millimeters of RHA. The 105-millimeter gun had finally run its course as an effective armament. Improved M1A1 tanks equipped with the larger 120-millimeter gun began rolling off assembly lines starting in 1985. The 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq saw the M829A1 depleted-uranium round used by M1A1s against Iraqi T-72s with devastating effect. Nicknamed the “Silver Bullet,” the round could penetrate an estimated 570 millimeters at two thousand meters, giving it good penetration against even a T-80 at typical range. Amazingly, the M829A1 has a flat, laser-like trajectory out to 3,600 meters, meaning it does not incur ballistic drop due to gravity over a distance of two miles. That gives one an idea of the pure power behind the 120-millimeter gun. The latest generation of the M829 series round, M829E4, is designed to penetrate even further than previous versions, the exact extent of which is classified, and to defeat active protection systems such as those built on the latest Russian tanks. Whether or not the M828E4 can penetrate the armor of the new Russian T-14 Armata tank is publicly unknown. The U.S. Army has not pushed to arm the M1 with a longer gun barrel (to increase muzzle velocity) or a larger diameter gun since Armata’s introduction, an interesting nondevelopment in the face of a new threat tank. The use of depleted uranium as a penetrator has resulted in superior armament for U.S. tankers crossing the battlefield. Nobody knows how long the one-two combination of the M256 gun and DU ammunition will continue to overmatch enemy armor, but given DU’s superior armor piercing capability, it’s a fairly sure bet DU will arm the next generation of Army tanks as well.
This is specific to the US, as
Williams, 7 (John Williams, 3-23-2007, accessed on 3-3-2020, Global Research, "Uranium and the War - Global Research", https://www.globalresearch.ca/uranium-and-the-war/5160)
The half-life of uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years. This means that by the time the Earth ceases to be a planet, only a little more than half of the depleted uranium (DU) that the United States Army is firing into Iraq and other countries around the world will be gone. The rest of the radioactive material will still be poisoning the Iraqi people. The U.S. Army revealed in March 2003 that it dropped between 320 and 390 tons of DU during the Gulf War—the first time the material was ever used in combat—and it is estimated that more still has been dropped during the current invasion, though there have been no official counts as yet. Depleted uranium munitions are extremely dense, toxic, and mildly radioactive. And despite mounting evidence of DU’s negative health affects for combatants and civilians alike, their use is increasing. Naturally occurring uranium has three forms: uranium 235, 234, and 238. More than 99 percent of earth’s uranium is 238. Uranium 238 is much less radioactive than uranium 235, which is why it takes so long to deteriorate. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants require highly radioactive uranium, so the uranium 238 is removed from the naturally occurring uranium by a process known as enrichment. Depleted uranium is the by-product of the uranium enrichment process. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) has not spoken out against the use of DU munitions, their website states that, “the behavior of DU in the body is identical to that of natural uranium.” Roberto Gwiazda, a researcher in the environmental toxicology department at UCSC, was the lead researcher in a project examining the level of uranium in veterans of the Gulf War, including vets who had sustained shrapnel wounds involving radioactive material. These were all friendly fire incidents, as the United States is the only country in the world that uses DU shells. “Of those with radioactive shrapnel wounds, all had significant levels of uranium in their urine seven to nine years after the explosion,” Gwiazda said. “Of those who only inhaled the incendiary uranium, a statistically significant number also had high uranium levels.” A study conducted by the Pentagon in 2002 predicted that, “every future battlefield will be contaminated” with DU. The fact that radioactive dust from a bullet explosion can spread nearly 30 miles means that the radius of disruption surrounding a battle sight can be vast. Further, the WHO report on DU states, “Over the days and years following DU contamination, the contamination normally becomes dispersed into the wider natural environment by wind and rain. People living or working in affected areas may inhale contaminated dusts or consume contaminated food and drinking water.” Army training manuals inform American military personnel that DU contamination renders food and water unsafe for consumption.
Oakford 17 finds that Depleted Uranium Shells have been used as recently as November 2015
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/14/the-united-states-used-depleted-uranium-in-syria/
Officials have confirmed that the U.S. military, despite vowing not to use depleted uranium weapons on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria, fired thousands of rounds of the munitions during two high-profile raids on oil trucks in Islamic State-controlled Syria in late 2015. The air assaults mark the first confirmed use of this armament since the 2003 Iraq invasion, when it was used hundreds of thousands of times, setting off outrage among local communities, which alleged that its toxic material caused cancer and birth defects.
Depleted uranium shells lead to cancer
Taylor and Francis, 13 (other parties, 5-21-2013, accessed on 3-3-2020, ScienceDaily, "Cancer and birth defects in Iraq: The nuclear legacy", https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130521105557.htm)
Although there is already significant evidence of cancers and related illnesses in adults (particularly war veterans), the authors emphasise that it is the dramatic rise in the incidence of cancer and birth defects in children under 15 years of age since the second Gulf War that points to the terrible legacy of depleted uranium DU weaponry. Childhood cancers are now some five times higher than before the two Gulf Wars (currently around 22 children per 100,000, compared with approximately 4 children per 100,000 in 1990). The focal point of their scientific study was three sites near Mosul: Adayah, a landfill for radioactive waste; Rihanyah, a former research centre for nuclear munitions (disused since 1991); and Damerchy, a small village on the Tigris River (about 10km north of Mosel), which was a scene of fighting in the 2003 conflict. Particularly high levels of uranium were found at Rihanyah where storage ponds of liquid and solid waste from uranium processing are still a source of radioactive pollution. The accumulation of uranium in wild plants (principally the shrub Lagonychium farctum) was noted in Damerchy, where it is thought to have entered the food chain and is linked to the death of numerous head of cattle. The team acknowledge that there are numerous other factors that impact on the data for cancer rates in the wider Iraqi population, including population increases and possible inaccuracies due to reluctance to register congenital malformations and deaths or poor administration in hospitals (although almost 70 per cent of births took place outside hospitals). Nevertheless, with the WHO predicting that global cancer levels will rise by 50 per cent between 2003 and 2020, the presence of so much carcinogenic material across Iraq suggests that the public health legacy of the two Gulf Wars is only going to get worse. Story Source: Materials provided by Taylor and Francis. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Journal Reference: Cite This Page: Get the latest science news with ScienceDaily's free email newsletters, updated daily and weekly. Or view hourly updated newsfeeds in your RSS reader: Keep up to date with the latest news from ScienceDaily via social networks: Tell us what you think of ScienceDaily ~-~- we welcome both positive and negative comments. Have any problems using the site? Questions?
The numbers are staggering
Jamail, 13 (Dahr Jamail, 3-15-2013, accessed on 3-7-2020, Al Jazeera, "Iraq: War's legacy of cancer", https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013315171951838638.html)
This report contains photos of a graphic nature. Fallujah, Iraq - Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq. Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates. There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah. Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled skyrocketed to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing. As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest. however, "Cancer statistics are hard to come by, since only 50 per cent of the healthcare in Iraq is public,"writes Dr Salah Haddad of the Iraqi Society for Health Administration and Promotion told Al Jazeera. "The other half of our healthcare is provided by the private sector, and that sector is deficient in their reporting of statistics. Hence, all of our statistics in Iraq must be multiplied by two. Any official numbers are likely only half of the real number." | 904,555 |
365,414 | 379,503 | Contact info | Hi I'm vikas, we kinda suck at debate. DM me on facebook if you want to talk avt anything(cw or whatever)
I am done with Spanish Duolingo and have tested out of it and am 5/8 fluent in Spanish.
my fav smash bros character is kirby | 904,589 |
365,415 | 380,052 | 0 - Disclosure Note | Contact us for the pro/con contention(s). Flip as early as possible so we can have pre-round prep time. If you don't disclose, we wont either. Start an email chain at the beginning of round, so we dont have to waste time "calling for cards". Seeing the evidence is key to understanding the context from which you pull facts from, so email chains are definitely a must have. PF disclosure norms are horrible, and we're here to change that. | 905,272 |
365,416 | 379,983 | NSD ValladolidMartinez M4A Neg | =C1 – Rural Collapse=
Under the Medicare for All bills, millions of rural Americans are at risk from the current COVID '19 Pandemic
This happens two ways firstly,
==Doctor Shortages==
Pipes of the WSJ '20 finds that under the current Medicare drafts, government rates for healthcare would be 40 lower than that of Private Insurers. This is a problem as this would cut the salaries of U.S. physicians by nearly 50 and would make 44 thousand doctors to leave, retire, or change jobs by 2050 and leave students to consider even becoming one in the first place. This is a compounding problem as Pipes of Pacific Research '20 reports that the US is already facing a shortage of nearly 120,000 doctors by 2032 with already half of physicians wanting to change career paths and 17 wanting to retire. Already doctors aren't on board with Medicare as nearly 1/5^^th^^ already limit or deny care to Medicare applicants, with this number being worse for primary care doctors, 1/3, and practice owners, ½, as written by Heritage '19. Kliffsarah '19 finds that this has been seen historically as when converting over to a single payer health system in Canada there was rioting in by doctors and healthcare employees which almost completely collapsed the Canadian system. This doctor shortage is increasingly problematic in low income and rural areas as detailed by Siegler '19, 60 of the areas experiencing doctor shortages were rural and with doctors retiring this threats healthcare in these areas as doctors have about a 1 of taking up practice in 10k population areas and 2 for 20, citing expensive costs and cumbersome hours. Under the Medicare for all plan they would even be less motivated to set up shop, leaving many destitute and dying.
Secondly is the issue of
==Hospitals Closure==
Aberlson of the New York Times '19 writes that under Medicare for All a hospital would be payed on average half than they would under private insurance. Continuing that there would be a nearly 40 reduction in rates and would force rural centers to close overnight. O'Dowd '19 finds that this would cause even more rural hospitals to close because Medicare rates pay hospitals only 99 of allowable Medicare costs, a procedure that would cost the hospital $100 would only be given $99, making it unprofitable to make these deals, which is why again Heritage '19 finds that only 50 of practice owners allow Medicare patients.
These have one big impact
Siegler '20 finds that rural hospitals were already closing at an alarming rate but at the wake of COVID-19 nearly half of Rural Hospitals opened but were teetering on shutdown. Salman of USA Today '20 finds that over 800 hospitals in Rural America were already under high financial stress and must now serve nearly ten of thousands of COVID-19 victims, which could cascade sinking hundreds of hospitals under. Rural America is one of the most vulnerable areas in the US with the highest relative infection and death rates, as nearly 23 of the US's older Americans, who are more susceptible, live in these areas and 22, even more at risk, racial and ethnic minorities who have higher rates of chronic health conditions, as hospitals close their doors this would create a domino effect as untreated patients travel to another clinics and hospitals forcing them too to close. Medicare for All would strike at the worst possible time for these people as this would leave treatment centers without doctors, staff, and forced to operate at nearly half of previous income. Even without COVID-19 Smith '19 and Mccausland '15 conclude that for every doctor leaving per 10 thousand people there is a 5.3 increase in mortality rates and for every hospital closing there is 6 rise in morality in rural communities, which we would say these numbers would skyrocket under current situation. Leaving, as Parker '17 concludes, 46 million rural Americans at risk.
=Cut Evidence =
Reed Abelson, 4-21-2019, "Hospitals Stand to Lose Billions Under 'Medicare for All'," No Publication, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/health/medicare-for-all-hospitals.html
For a patient's knee replacement, Medicare will pay a hospital $17,000. The same hospital can get more than twice as much, or about $37,000, for the same surgery on a patient with private insurance. Or take another example: One hospital would get about $4,200 from Medicare for removing someone's gallbladder. The same hospital would get $7,400 from commercial insurers. The yawning gap between payments to hospitals by Medicare and by private health insurers for the same medical services may prove the biggest obstacle for advocates of "Medicare for all," a government-run system. If Medicare for all abolished private insurance and reduced rates to Medicare levels — at least 40 percent lower, by one estimate — there would most likely be significant changes throughout the health care industry, which makes up 18 percent of the nation's economy and is one of the nation's largest employers. Some hospitals, especially struggling rural centers, would close virtually overnight, according to policy experts. Others, they say, would try to offset the steep cuts by laying off hundreds of thousands of workers and abandoning lower-paying services like mental health.
Peter O'Dowd, 8-16-2019, "Rural Hospitals Say 'Medicare For All' Would End Up 'Closing Our Doors'," No Publication, https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/08/16/rural-hospitals-medicare-for-all-health-care
Adopting a single-payer government health care program that covers all Americans would force more rural hospitals to close, according to hospital administrators from Texas to Maine. Universal health care — also known as "Medicare for All" — is a long way from becoming law. But the issue is already dividing Democrats trying to unseat President Trump in the 2020 election. Some progressive front-runners like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders say they'd be willing to do away with private insurance in favor of a government plan. Moderates have balked at that idea — and at the price tag. Here's how former Rep. John Delaney put it during the Democratic debate in June: "If you go to every hospital in this country and you ask them one question, which is, 'How would it have been for you last year if every one of your bills were paid at the Medicare rate?' Every single hospital administrator said they would close." "Congressman Delaney is wrong — full stop," says Craig Garthwaite, a health care economist at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Garthwaite says it's more likely hospitals will be forced to scale back services, amenities and staff under a Medicare for All system. "We're going to get a different kind of hospital going forward and we'll have to decide if that's what we want," he says. "But it's hyperbole to say all hospitals will close." But that is the position of hospital executives at Central Maine Healthcare. About two-thirds of patients using the company's two critical-access rural hospitals are covered by either Medicaid or Medicare. The government pays the hospital 99 of allowable Medicare costs, says Peter Wright, who runs the company's Bridgton and Rumford hospitals. That means — hypothetically — if an X-ray costs $100, Medicare will reimburse the hospital $99.
Kirk Siegler, 4-9-2020, "Small-Town Hospitals Are Closing Just As Coronavirus Arrives In Rural America," NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/2020/04/09/829753752/small-town-hospitals-are-closing-just-as-coronavirus-arrives-in-rural-america
Small-town hospitals were already closing at an alarming rate before the COVID-19 pandemic. But now the trend appears to be accelerating just as the disease arrives in rural America. When Decatur County General Hospital shuts down indefinitely by April 15, it will be the ninth small-town hospital to close in 2020 alone. According to a report released this month by the Chartis Center for Rural Health, nearly half of rural hospitals were already operating in the red before the COVID-19 crisis. "That idea of a perfect storm — that gets overused, but that's actually what's happened," says Allan Jenkins, an economics professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Jenkins says small-town hospitals have struggled to stay open because of perennial challenges facing rural America, such as depopulation and demographics. "Because rural communities tend to be older and poorer and sicker and less likely to be insured, high-deductible insurance policies are very hard on rural hospitals," he says. One recent analysis estimated that treating just one uninsured COVID-19 patient who has to be hospitalized could cost at least $40,000. In a letter this week to congressional leaders, the National Rural Health Association lobbied for "immediate relief" for rural hospitals, warning that hundreds are on the verge of closure.
Josh Salman and Jayme Fraser, 2020, "Coronavirus strains cash-strapped hospitals, could cause up to 100 to close within a year," USA TODAY, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/04/25/coronavirus-strains-cash-strapped-hospitals-could-cause-mass-closures/2996521001/
"We don't have any profit margin to speak of, so it will be a direct loss," said Chad Thompson, the hospital's chief financial officer. "And we don't know how long this will last." In rural communities across America, more than 800 hospitals faced financial peril before the pandemic took hold. Now, they must find a way to treat thousands of coronavirus patients, which could trigger a financial cascade that sinks up to a hundred hospitals within the next year. A USA TODAY Network analysis of financial reports submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that almost half of the counties with coronavirus cases are served by a hospital that reported a net loss in 2017.
Sari Boren, Journalist'S Resource June 10, 2020, 6-10-2020, "Rural health care and COVID-19: A research roundup," Journalist's Resource, https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/health-care/rural-health-care-covid-19-research/
As early as March, researchers from University of Chicago showed hot spots cropping up in rural areas. Many rural counties have had fewer deaths compared with large cities, but higher relative infection or death rates. On May 28, The New York Times reported that rural Trousdale County in Tennessee had the nation's highest per capita infection rate, linking the spike to a local prison. The Times maintains a U.S. coronavirus map with infection, death and per capita rates by county. Several factors are likely to increase infection rates in rural America. As reported in the Washington Post, people travelled farther in the past month, sometimes from hot spots to rural areas, for recreational opportunities or to access services that have been closed in their communities due to pandemic restrictions. Potential "super-spreader" environments can also create hot spots. Meat processing plants with large COVID-19 outbreaks are mostly in rural areas, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented. A May article in Wired describes why conditions in those plants facilitate infection transmission. Prisons are also a risk as super-spreader environments, as explained by Vox, with potential for large outbreaks among the incarcerated population, as well as staff, who can infect their families and communities. As explained in The Conversation, of the over 1,000 prisons constructed from 1970 to 2000, about 70 were built in rural communities. Finally, nursing homes and other elder care facilities have also been hot spots of infection outbreaks in cities. Such facilities in rural areas also face similar problems, but with fewer critical care resources. Rural areas are older, poorer and sicker than their urban counterparts, according to research from the Rural Health Research Gateway, funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy. Older people and those with underlying chronic health conditions — such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity and coronary artery disease — have a higher risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19. Roughly 23 of older Americans live in rural areas, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau covering 2012 to 2016. About 18 of the rural population was age 65 and older, compared with 14 in urban areas. In Vermont, Maine, Mississippi, West Virginia and Arkansas, more than half of people over age 65 are in rural areas, according to the Census report. From 2010 to 2017, rural areas had a higher percentage of preventable deaths than metropolitan areas for the five leading causes of death, according to a 2019 CDC report. The gap in preventable deaths from cancer, heart disease and chronic lower respiratory disease widened between the most rural and most urban counties during the study period. The gap decreased for unintentional injury and remained steady for stroke. Racial and ethnic minorities, who make up 22 of the rural population, are at an even higher risk. Non-Hispanic black and Indigenous rural residents have higher rates of chronic health conditions and poorer access to health care, placing them at higher risk for COVID-19, as noted in a May commentary in the Journal of Rural Health. Navajo Nation has suffered among the highest per capita case rates in the country. High Country News reports, "Decades of negligence and billions of dollars in unmet need from the federal government have left tribal nations without basic infrastructure like running water and sewage systems, along with sparse internet access and an underfunded Indian Health Service."
Yolanda Smith,, 2019, "Physician Shortage," News-Medical.net, https://www.newsmedical.net/health
/Physician-Shortage.aspx
The supply of primary care physicians is linked to the achievement of better health outcomes. These include overall health, life expectancy, better perception of self-rated health, and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and in infancy. This relationship has been evident with repeated trials over the previous thirty years in the United States. Research suggests that increasing the number of primary care physicians by one per 10,000 people is associated with a 5.3 reduction in average mortality (which is presently 49 per 100,000 per year). The need for primary care physicians is usually estimated based on the tasks they are expected to carry out, and the time required to maintain health programs, rather than the benefits of their contribution. Based on this approach, there was predicted to be a surplus of primary care physicians in the early 21st century. And for employers, health insurance provides a tax deduction, which is an incentive for stretching the budget and hiring. A transition to Medicare for All would be a definite job killer, affecting millions more in addition to the close to 2 million health care workers who would be displaced from their jobs in the transition.
Phil Mccausland, 6-15-2015, "Rural hospital closings lead to more deaths, study finds," NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rural-hospital-closings-cause-mortality-rates-rise-study-finds-n1048046
More than 100 rural hospitals have closed in the United States since 2010 and another 430 are at risk of closing, which a new study says could have life-or-death implications for rural communities. University of Washington researchers examined 92 rural hospital closings in California from 1995 to 2011. They found that while the closings of urban hospitals had no impact on their surrounding communities, rural closings caused their populations — which have limited access to health care and other services — to see mortality rates rise 5.9 percent.
https://vtdigger.org/2020/04/06/covid-19-threatens-the-future-of-private-doctors/
No longer. Even as hospitals prepare to treat a surge of people with coronavirus, patients avoiding routine care have left small independent practices with empty waiting rooms and a dwindling flow of cash. At a low point on March 27, practitioners at Lyons' office in White River Junction saw just eight patients. "Independent primary care practices in Vermont will collapse if you do not provide relief and payment reform immediately," Lyons wrote in a March 21 letter to legislators and state officials. "We will soon run out of CASH to pay our staff!" The shortage of patients in the midst of a public health crisis is a predicament faced by small practices nationally — part of the lopsided strain placed on the health care system by the coronavirus. Vermont has reported 543 cases of Covid-19 and 23 deaths, as of Monday afternoon. Hospitals are preparing to be inundated with sick patients, setting up temporary hospitals in gyms and tents. But after the first coronavirus cases were reported in Vermont in mid-March, physicians started telling patients to stay out of the doctor's office, to protect doctors and patients alike. Most offices have postponed annual checkups and preventive visits. They've told patients to call before they come in, and they've started seeing patients online. The decreased traffic has been costly to doctors, who have as little as a week — and no more than two months — of cash on hand, said Susan Ridzon, executive director of Health First, an organization that represents about 70 independent providers across Vermont.
Piper '20 – Doctors get pay cuts and leave
Sally C. Pipes, 7-16-2020, "Opinion," WSJ, https://www.wsj.com/articles/medicare-for-all-could-mean-doctors-for-none-11581379209
A single-payer program would pay doctors at rates similar to Medicare reimbursement levels, already at least 25 less than private insurance pays, according to estimates by Charles Blahous of the Mercatus Center. Under the current legislative drafts of Medicare for All, government rates over the first decade would be 40 lower than those paid by private insurers. That amounts to an enormous pay cut for doctors. U.S. physicians earned on average $313,000 in 2019, according to Medscape's international physician compensation report. ~~While~~ The average physician in the U.K. earned only $138,000. The Commonwealth Fund reports that American general practitioners earned a little more than $218,000 on average in 2016, compared with $146,000 in Canada and $134,000 in the U.K. Drastic pay cuts would inevitably drive physicians to give up the practice. Patients can't afford an exodus of doctors. Nearly 80 million people live in areas with too few primary-care professionals, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports. Even under current policies, the country may face a shortage of as many as 120,000 doctors in a decade, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. The prospect of lower pay and stressful work would also discourage young people from entering the profession. Medical school is expensive; the median graduate takes on $200,000 in debt. It's time-consuming, too. The typical doctor spends four years in medical school, followed by three to seven years in residency and fellowship. Lucrative jobs in finance, technology and law require far less preparation time. One report from FTI Consulting found that Medicare for All would reduce the projected number of U.S. physicians in 2050 by about 44,000, including more than 10,000 primary-care doctors. Patients would have to compete for appointments with a dwindling number of overloaded and underpaid doctors. Everyone would have coverage, but that's not the same thing as care.
JANUARY 27, 2020 SALLY C. PIPES https://www.pacificresearch.org/doctors-need-a-second-opinion-on-medicare-for-all/
Doctors also better prepare to work longer hours for less money. "Medicare-for-all" would make health care free at the point of access. That would encourage Americans to consume more care than they currently do. Providers would have to spend more time on the clock to keep up with demand. And they'd receive less money for each hour they log. If "Medicare-for-all" adheres to Medicare's existing payment schedule, then doctors would receive 9 percent less for every office visit and 60 percent less for every emergency department visit, relative to average private in-network rates, according to one analysis published by JAMA, a medical journal. Medicare's payment rates are projected to be 40 percent lower than those for private insurance over the first ten years of Medicare-for-all's implementation, according to the Mercatus Center's Charles Blahous. That would represent some kind of pay cut~~s~~ for doctors. By making physicians' lives more miserable, "Medicare-for-all" would drive many from the profession. Already, about half of physicians say they want to change career paths; 17 percent are planning to retire. A "Medicare-for-all"-induced exodus would exacerbate America's doctor shortage. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the United States will face a shortage of more than 120,000 physicians by 2032. Patients everywhere would struggle to get timely care, particularly in rural and urban areas.
Contrast, The, 8-22-2019, "More Medicare, Less Health Care: ?How Medicare for All ?Threatens Patient Health," Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/insider/summer-2019-insider/more-medicare-less-health-care-how-medicare-all-threatens-patient
All the current deficiencies of traditional Medicare will only get worse as physicians start disappearing from medical practice. According to the 2018 Physicians Foundation Survey, more than 1 in 5 physicians either limit the number of Medicare patients they see or refuse to see them at all. For Medicaid, the number is almost 1 in 3. The situation is particularly bad in primary care. True to its name, primary care is generally the entry point into the medical system, and access to it is associated with better health outcomes. According to the survey, 32 percent of primary care physicians limit or refuse Medicare patients; the figure is 36 percent for Medicaid patients. While the Physicians Foundation Survey did not ask the reason doctors limit or refuse Medicare or Medicaid patients, the results show that salaried physicians were less likely than doctors who own their own practice to refuse these patients. Over 50 percent of practice owners limit or refuse Medicare patients. Practice owners feel the brunt of the difference between private and government payments, whereas employed physicians are often paid in a manner agnostic of the insurance type.
Sarah Kliffsarah@Vox, 3-29-2019, "The doctor's strike that nearly killed Canada's Medicare-for-all plan, explained," Vox, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/29/18265530/medicare-canada-saskatchewan-doctor-strike
Canada experienced massive upheaval and protest when its single-payer system launched in 1962. Back then, Canadian single-payer opponents were making the exact same arguments against the program as American single-payer opponents do today: that it was too much government in medicine, that physicians would no longer be able to practice medicine in the way they saw fit. The doctors even went on strike (for more than three weeks) when the system launched. "It was a very close call," says Greg Marchildon, a professor at the University of Toronto who studies the history of Canadian health care. "The doctors were totally against it, half the population was totally against it and the other half were totally for it. It could have gone either way." The history of Canadian health care, it turns out, can actually offer a glimpse of what America's future could look like if a committed government tried to enact Medicare-for-all. In 1960, the Canadian province of Saskatchewan elected a socialist premier named Tommy Douglas who had campaigned on a promise to bring universal insurance to his province. (Incidentally — just because I couldn't leave this fact out — Tommy Douglas turns out to be Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather. Who knew!) Douglas followed through on that promise: In late 1961, his government passed the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Act. The province already had government-sponsored hospital insurance, but this new bill would layer on a plan to cover doctor visits. There was no comparable insurance scheme for doctor visits, which meant that patients could still end up with a significant bill from the doctor who saw them in the hospital.
Kirk Siegler, 5-21-2019, "The Struggle To Hire And Keep Doctors In Rural Areas Means Patients Go Without Care," NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/21/725118232/the-struggle-to-hire-and-keep-doctors-in-rural-areas-means-patients-go-without-c
Rural hospitals are in decline. Over 100 have closed since 2010 and hundreds more are vulnerable. As of December 2018, there were more than 7,000 areas in the U.S. with health professional shortages, nearly 60 percent of which were in rural areas.
Kirk Siegler, 5-21-2019, "The Struggle To Hire And Keep Doctors In Rural Areas Means Patients Go Without Care," NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/21/725118232/the-struggle-to-hire-and-keep-doctors-in-rural-areas-means-patients-go-without-c
There's a changing of the guard going on in the health care industry, and its effects may be most apparent in rural America. As baby boomer doctors retire, independent family practices are closing, especially in small towns. Only 1 of doctors in their final year of medical school say they want to live in communities under 10,000; only 2 were wanted to live in towns of 25,000 or fewer. Taking over a small-town practice is too expensive, or in some cases, ~~and~~ too time-consuming for younger, millennial physicians. And a lot of the newly minted doctors out of medical training are opting to work at hospitals, rather than opening their own practices.
Kim Parker, 2017, "Demographic and economic trends in urban, suburban and rural communities," Pew Research Center's Social and Demographic Trends Project, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/
About 46 million Americans live in the nation's rural counties, 175 million in its suburbs and small metros and about 98 million in its urban core counties. | 905,186 |
365,417 | 380,057 | contact info | Pranav Ram
email: [email protected]
fb: Pranav Ram
phone: (650)-704-3656
FB is best, but phone or email works too. | 905,277 |
365,418 | 380,103 | Aff infra | ===Uniqueness===
====Squo harms of infrastructure under-investment====
**BRUCE BARNARD 19 of the Journal of Commerce **(2-8-2019, "Europe infrastructure underinvestment hits shippers", doa 8-15-2019, https://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/europe-infrastructure-underinvestment-hits-shippers_20180208.html) NY
LONDON – Europe is a major player in global trade. It is home to
AND
are unlikely to place any bets on these figures and dates being met.
====Need BRI – main source of China's developmental finance which is key source of infrastructure funding====
**AUSTIN STRANGE 17 of Harvard University **(10-2017, "Aid, China, and Growth: Evidence from a New Global Development Finance Dataset", doa 8-27-2019, http://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/WPS46_Aid_China_and_Growth.pdf) NY
Evidence on the effects of aid on economic growth is mixed.1 Some studies
AND
on the effectiveness of financial support from more established donors and lenders. 9
====EU needs BRI – increased infrastructure investment, trade facilitation====
**SEBASTIAN GEBAUER 17 of the Polish Studies of East Asia **(1-2017, "China Heads West: "One Belt, One Road" Initiative", doa 8-28-2019, file:///C:/Users/ndy15/Documents/Debate/2019-2020/PF/Septober/PDFs/no20idea.pdf) NY
The OBOR initiative's objectives also greatly impact upon the economic model of the European Union
AND
process will be more likely to continue growing as OBOR develops further.21
===Recession===
====BRI only solution to coming recession====
**ANTHONY ROWLEY 19 of the South China Morning Post **(3-31-2019, "Belt and Road may be the nearest help for the world's ailing economy", doa 9-6-2019, https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/3003964/chinas-belt-and-road-may-be-closest-world-has-stimulus) NY
They seem to keep coming, these stock market mini-meltdowns, and flash
AND
a crash in Shanghai to observe a potential renaissance on their own doorsteps.
====Increased accessibility in Europe increases new businesses and employment====
**STEPHEN GIBBONS 19 of the Journal of Urban Economics **(3-2019, "New road infrastructure: The effects on firms", doa 8-15-2019, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119019300105) NY
The ward-level regressions provide strong evidence that road improvement schemes increase the number
AND
the number of destinations, are all highly correlated and yield similar results.
====Economic growth effect of infrastructure 5x greater during recessions due to economic underutilization – 1 infrastructure investment creates 7 growth====
**MARIO HOLZNER 18 of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies **(7-2018, "A 'European Silk Road'", doa 8-29-2019, https://wiiw.ac.at/a-european-silk-road—dlp-4608.pdf) NY
The estimates contained in Figure 14 illustrate the average effect of a change in public
AND
Abiad et al., 2015; Gechert, 2015; Heimberger, 2017).
====Empirics prove – infrastructure investment allowed Poland to escape economic harms of Great Recession====
**CONNOR SHEETS 12 of the International Business Times **(9-29-2012, "The East European Miracle: How Did Poland Avoid The Global Recession?", doa 9-5-2019, https://www.ibtimes.com/east-european-miracle-how-did-poland-avoid-global-recession-795799) NY
As the European Union fell into the global recession that began in 2008, only
AND
major overhauls of the nation's highway system and of the Warsaw subway system.
====Growth in Europe specifically decreases poverty====
**ASAD ALAM 05 of the World Bank **(2005, "Growth, Poverty, and Inequality", doa 8-27-2019, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTMACEDONIA/Resources/Growth_Poverty_and_Inequality.pdf) NY
Table 2.1 presents simple averages of the elasticity of poverty reduction to growth
AND
growth has lowered poverty by 1.3–1.4 percent.
===Trade===
====Time-sensitivity in EU-China trade====
**JOANNA KONINGS 18 of Durham University **(Joanna Konings is a senior economist working on international trade issues and joined ING in 2017 from the Bank of England. She studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Durham University and holds an MSc in Economics from Birkbeck, University of London. 6-6-2018, "Trade impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative", doa 8-29-2019, https://think.ing.com/uploads/reports/Tradebelt_final2.pdf) NY
Rail transport is only used for a small share of trade between the EU and
AND
greener alternative to air transport for the most time-sensitive trade flows.
====High trade barriers now – travel times, transportation costs, general inefficiency====
**ALESSIA AMIGHINI 18 of the University of Milan **(2018, "Beyond Ports and Transport Infrastructure: The Geo-Economic Impact of the BRI on the European Union", doa 8-28-2019, http://sci-hub.tw/10.1007/978-981-10-7116-4_14) NY
What has been partly overlooked in the design of the EU TEN-T corridors
AND
times and improve the interconnectedness between the ports and the inland railway network.
====Great potential for trade====
**WEINAN HU 16 of the Center for European Policy Studies **(2016, "Tomorrow's Silk Road: Addressing an EU-China Free Trade Agreement", doa 8-29-2019, https://www.ceps.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/EUCHINA_FTA_Final.pdf) NY
FTA between China and the EU is worthwhile for a host of reasons. The
AND
sequel' in its trade policy vis-á-vis dynamic East Asia.
====Limited EU BRI participation now – greater cooperation can generate wide-scale cooperation and integration====
**JOEL RUET 17 of the Institute for International Political Studies **(2017, "New Belts and Roads: Redrawing EU-China Relations", doa 8-28-2019, https://www.ispionline.it/it/EBook/Rapporto_Cina_2017/China_Belt_Road_Game_Changer.pdf~~#page=98) NY
The context of EU-China relations has dramatically changed over the past five years
AND
catalyst for deeper Eurasian trans-continental economic integration and greater regional security.
====Increased trade with BRI connections====
**ANNA KNACK 18 of the RAND Corporation **(2018, "China Belt and Road Initiative: Measuring the impact of improving transportation connectivity on trade in the region", doa 8-28-2019, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2600/RR2625/RAND_RR2625.pdf, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25088/9781464809910.pdf) NY
With regard to transport connectivity, we find that a lack of rail connection between
AND
infrastructure indices, which may absorb some effect of the trade variation among countries
====Trade reduces poverty====
**DEVASHISH MITRA 16 of Syracuse University **(2016, "Trade liberalization and poverty reduction", doa 8-31-2019, https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/272/pdfs/trade-liberalization-and-poverty-reduction.pdf) NY
While earlier cross-country work was unable to find any effect of trade or
AND
rate is associated with a 0.4 percentage point decline in poverty.
====Lots of poverty now====
**EU 18 **(12-8-2014, "Special Eurobarometer 355: Poverty and Social Exclusion", doa 8-16-2019, https://data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data/dataset/S888_74_1_EBS355) NY
Over 80 million people in the EU are still living at risk of poverty and
AND
social exclusion; Combating poverty and social exclusion; Access to social services. | 905,396 |
365,419 | 379,327 | 0 - GENERAL INFO | Contact Info:
Sahil Chiniwala, 1st Speaker
[email protected]
Shabbir Bohri, 2nd Speaker
[email protected]
Shabbir Bohri on FB
Disclosure Info:
We'll disclose our cases after we've broken them at a tournament on this wiki, if you need an email chain or disclosure on pf.circuitdebater.org just ask and we can make that work.
We read our cases paraphrased, but do not put those versions on the wiki. Instead, we will have, for each contention, every card we read, along with its individual tagline, full citation, url, and first/last sentence. This just helps to improve evidence ethics without risking people reading our cases word for word.
We urge that everyone discloses and will ask teams for disclosure before round. If we are reading disclosure theory at a particular tournament, we will disclose broken interps directly after the round we read them in, and continue to give teams a chance to disclose before the round starts. We will hopefully never have to resort to it unless there are clear violations of evidence standards and ethics.
If you have any questions please contact us before round. | 904,386 |
365,420 | 379,351 | 3 - NOVDEC - Hardliners | The US and Iran are getting deeper into conflict each day. Foreign Affairs explains that
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2019-06-28/us-and-iran-are-marching-toward-war
With each passing ... toward war continues.
And the reason a full blown war hasn’t happened yet is the delicate power balance existing in Iran. Tabatabia ‘19 explains
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-rohani-vs-revolutionary-guards-inside-iran-s-turbulent-debate-on-war-with-america-1.7242942
Similar tensions over ... and the U.S.
US cyberattacks have emerged as a bloodless way to attack Iran for us. According to Foreign Affairs ‘19
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2019-06-28/us-and-iran-are-marching-toward-war
With U.S. President ... flex American power.
These attacks will benefit Iranian hardliners politically for 2 reasons:
First is Increasing Aggression.
US OCO’s eliminate moderate discourse and cause aggression. Carnegie 18 writes
https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/01/04/iran-target-and-perpetrator-pub-75139
Since the first ... espionage and sabotage.
The NYT furthers in 2019 by contextualizing the effects of Stuxnet-a prominent cyber-attack against Iran:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/world/middleeast/iran-cyberattack-us.html
The attack using ... Aramco’s computer systems.
US OCO’s only embolden the hardliners in Iran because hardliners dominate the discussion around the cyber sphere so any escalation in Iranian cyber activities advances their position. The Financial Times writes in 2018
https://www.ft.com/content/15e1acf0-0a47-11e6-b0f1-61f222853ff3
Knowing what Iran ... and International Studies.
And, this leads creates an echo-chamber ripe for hardline takeover. Carnegie 18 writes that:
https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/01/04/iran-s-cyber-threat-introduction-pub-75138
That said, most ... of the state.
Second is by Feeding into the Rhetoric.
Hardliners are benefited is because US OCO’s feed into the narrative pushed by hardliners that America is the aggressor and Iran is only defending itself. According to the Insurance Journal in 2018
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/08/13/497767.htm
Iran denies using ... include cyber attacks.
Higher tensions between the US-Iran hurt the moderate’s position in the country. The National Interest writes:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/growing-us-pressure-emboldening-iranian-hardliners-53882
If President Trump ... a disastrous war.
This will shift government power as Bayat 19 explains
https://lobelog.com/trump-has-strengthened-hardliners-in-iran/
The bad news for ... for Iranian conservatives.
The effect of this is that hardliners are willing to take more aggressive action in the Strait of Hormuz. Etehad ‘19 furthers
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-07-19/iran-strait-of-hormuz-oil-tanker-seizure
“Iranian officials want ... borders,” he said.
The impact is Food Instability.
The US has agreed that if Iran takes steps to close the strait we will intervene militarily. The Virginia Journal of International Law writes
http://www.virginia.edu/colp/pdf/kraska-legal-vortex.pdf
On September 27 ... its Arab allies.
And this would be devastating, as Newsweek describes in 2018 that
https://www.newsweek.com/america-vs-iran-can-us-military-win-war-against-islamic-republic-1036980
There is no ... for all involved.
This creates more aggressive harassment of oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz as The Congressional Research Service explains
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/R42335.pdf
Harassment and/or Infrastructure ... in aggressive action.
Iran has started to disrupt the US shipping in the region already as The VJIL highlights that
http://www.virginia.edu/colp/pdf/kraska-legal-vortex.pdf
The Pentagon realizes ... along the bottleneck.
And, 40 of the world's oil comes through here. The VJIL continues that
http://www.virginia.edu/colp/pdf/kraska-legal-vortex.pdf
The Strait of ... the world’s oil transportation.
This is incredibly harmful because any cut off in supply has dramatic repercussions on food prices in developing economies. Nwoko describes in 2016, that
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23311932.2016.1142413
Periods of high ... the long term.
And, we can see empirical examples of this in the past. An article published in the Journal of Nutrition examines the period directly after peak oil prices:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793127/
The world economic ... anemia among children. | 904,411 |
365,421 | 379,354 | 4 - JAN - Democracy | Maduro's corruption has turned Venezuela into a humanitarian catastrophe
Kevin Sullivan, 3-3-2019, "‘Losing support by the hour’: Venezuela’s Maduro will be out of power soon, Colombian president says," Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/losing-support-by-the-hour-venezuelas-maduro-will-be-out-of-power-soon-colombian-president-says/2019/03/03/a00f4608-3cf8-11e9-b10b-f05a22e75865_story.html
Venezuelan President Nicolás ... to regional security.
Maduro is clinging to power with rising opposition
Thomas Purcell, 2-6-2019, "Venezuela: US sanctions hurt, but the economic crisis is home grown," Conversation, https://theconversation.com/venezuela-us-sanctions-hurt-but-the-economic-crisis-is-home-grown-111280
There appear to ... polarised stand off.
The crisis is being ignored by him while he illicitly funds his military
Philip Reeves, 2019, "Instability in Venezuela ," Global Conflict Tracker, https://www.cfr.org/interactive/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/instability-venezuela
Venezuela is in ... Cuba, Russia, and Turkey.
Sanctions push Maduro out in 2 ways:
1 - Undermining Support
Sanctions have targeted elites and military officials
Laura Vidal, 1-31-2019, "US sanctions squeezed Venezuela's Chavismo elites. This time, it's oil.," Public Radio International, https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-01-31/us-sanctions-squeezed-venezuelas-chavismo-elites-time-its-oil
US sanctions directed ... on Latin America.
Maduro has to depend on his military after losing popular support
David Luhnow, 3-19-2019, "Maduro Loses Grip on Venezuela’s Poor, a Vital Source of His Power," WSJ, https://www.wsj.com/articles/maduro-loses-grip-on-venezuelas-poor-a-vital-source-of-his-power-11553014207
This nation’s slums ... President Nicolas Maduro.
Military officials have defected and will continue to do so
Kenneth Rapoza, 6/3/2019, "No, U.S. Sanctions Are Not Killing Venezuela. Maduro Is," Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2019/05/03/no-u-s-sanctions-are-not-killing-venezuela-maduro-is/#113bcb594343
Somali-American and ... is running it.
2 - Revenue
Sanctions choke off Maduro's revenue
Moses Rendon, 9-3-2019, "Are Sanctions Working in Venezuela?," CSIS, https://www.csis.org/analysis/are-sanctions-working-venezuela
Sanctions are ... should be adopted.
No economic lifelines left for Maduro
Allison Fedirka, 9-9-2019, "The New US Strategy to Remove Maduro in Venezuela," Geopolitical Futures, https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-new-us-strategy-to-remove-maduro-in-venezuela/
After months of ... sign of progress.
Democracy key to saving Venezuela from it's current crisis where 90 are in poverty
Moises Rendon, 1-17-2019, "Venezuela’s Road to Recovery," CSIS, https://www.csis.org/analysis/venezuelas-road-recovery
Once Venezuela has ... and fair elections. | 904,414 |
365,422 | 379,338 | 5 - FEB - Poverty v1 | S Budget Report: $1 trillion spent on MTW
Jeff Sessions, US Senate, "CRS Report: Welfare Spending The Largest Item In The Federal Budget", 2011, https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS20Report20-20Welfare20Spending20The20Largest20Item20In20The20Federal20Budget.pdf
Ranking Member Sessions ... which people contribute (e.g., Social Security and Medicare).
Tanner 15: No change in poverty from MTW
Michael Tanner, Cato Institute, "The Pros and Cons of a Guaranteed National Income", May 12, 2015, https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa773.pdf
However, in recent years, ... national welfare reform
Center for Policy Research: Poverty rate at about 14
J Semega, Center for Policy Research, "What is the current poverty rate in the United States? - UC Davis Center for Poverty Research", October 15, 2018, https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states
The official poverty ... was 13.9 percent.
Hamilton 18: 1.46m live with less than $2 a day and welfare doesn't help
Leah Hamilton, BIEN, "Why Welfare Doesn’t Work: And What We Should Do Instead | BIEN", June 29, 2018, https://basicincome.org/news/2018/06/why-welfare-doesnt-work-and-what-we-should-do-instead/
The primary cash assistance ... afford quality childcare.
3 reasons welfare is broken:
1 - Reqs
Semuels 16: TANF has too many reqs
Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, "The End of Welfare as We Know It - The Atlantic", April 1, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/
By the numbers, ... Nothing in America.
2 - Block Grants
Semuels 16: Block grants for states' welfare is misused
Alana Semuels, The Atlantic, "The End of Welfare as We Know It - The Atlantic", April 1, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/
By the numbers, ... Nothing in America
3 - Tax
PRI 19: High implicit tax rate from welfare disincentivizes work
Damon Dunn, Pacific Research Institute, "Pacific Research Institute | Well-Meaning Government Anti-Poverty Programs Actually Hurt the Poor", March 6, 2019, https://www.pacificresearch.org/well-meaning-government-anti-poverty-programs-actually-hurt-the-poor/
Unlike other failed ... percent for the working poor.
Rappaport 19: Increased income with MTW can decrease benefits by up to 100
Mike rappaport, Law and Liberty, "Means-Tested Welfare and the Disincentive to Work", February 5, 2019, https://www.lawliberty.org/2019/02/05/means-tested-welfare-and-the-disincentive-to-work/
But to my ... an enormous problem.
Santens 17: UBI is unconditional and federaly funded
Scott Santens, World Economic Forum, "Why we should all have a basic income | World Economic Forum", January 15, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income/
The idea is ... the poverty line.
Hammond 17: UBI does not have implicit marginal tax rate
Samuel Hammond, Niskanen Center, "The Pro-work Case for Universal Basic Income - Niskanen Center", January 4, 2017, https://www.niskanencenter.org/ubi-pro-work/
In many ways, ... or work hours.
Haarmann 08: Namibia UBI a massive success
Claudia Haarmann, Basic Income Grant Coalition, "BIG Pilot Project - Assessment Report", September 2008, http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08a.pdf
While on average ... school dropped by 50.
Weller 17: UBI in Iran did not hurt employment, shows small increases in hours worked
Chris Weller, World Economic Forum, "Iran introduced a basic income scheme, and something strange happened | World Economic Forum", May 31, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/iran-introduced-a-basic-income-scheme-and-something-strange-happened/
One of the ... become more important."
Berman 16: Alaskan poverty rates have declined due to PFD
Matthew Berman, Institute of Social and Economic Research, "Permanent Fund Dividends and Poverty in Alaska", November 2016, https://iseralaska.org/static/legacy_publication_links/2016_12-PFDandPoverty.pdf
Our estimates show ... will actually occur.
Matthews 17: A UBI replacing welfare could slash US poverty by 40
Dylan Matthews, Vox, "A basic income really could end poverty forever - Vox", July 17, 2017, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/17/15364546/universal-basic-income-review-stern-murray-automation
The plan was ... Stern’s plan does. | 904,398 |
365,423 | 379,361 | 1- China Hegemony | The BRI Is FAILING:
Greer in 18,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/06/bri-china-belt-road-initiative-blunder/
China’s signature foreign-policy ...China’s blunders their own.
If the EU joins the BRI, China will inevitably rise as it dominates trade
Pollack and Bader, July 2019,
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/FP_20190716_us_china_pollack_bader.pdf
Amidst the torrent of ...to be compliant or submissive.
China’s rise in global hegemony revitalizes military aggression and global authoritarianism
Nikki Haley, 7-18, 19,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-07-18/how-confront-advancing-threat-china
The most important international ...and is subordinate to,
A strong BRI means China replaces the US-led global liberal world order and collapses US hegemony
Bruno Macaes, 2019, https://books.google.com/books?id=
The Belt and Road is ...superpower will be in order.
US led global order is the key solution to solve every impact
Robert Kagan 17, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-twilight-of-the-liberal-world-order/
However, it is the two great ... smaller dissatisfied powers.
The impact is conventional war
Bruno Macaes, 2019, https://books.google.com/books?id=NcmGDwAAQBAJandpg=PA6andlpg=PA6anddq=22global+public+opinion,+any+direct+confrontation+with+these+other+polesE28094+++even+if+they+are+able+to+combineE28094will+have+a+predetermined+winner.+The+map+tells+a+simple+story+of+power+and+influence.+More+than+a+project+or+an+initiative,+the+Belt+and+Road+is+a+movement,+representing+the+slow+but+ineluctable+expansion+of+Chinese+influence.+Wherever+it+finds+a+vacuum+or+an+area+of+little+resistance,+it+moves+in.+Where+it+finds+opposition,+it+stops,+if+only+momentarily.+A+colour+map+is+a+good+representation:+check+back+a+few+months+later+and+some+countries+or+regions+may+have+changed+from+their+original+grey+as+they+join+the+Belt+and+Road.+The+22andsource=blandots=8fTqUNf8XIandsig=ACfU3U0AkvM6g_DN-c9er6c9snCh3FNv7gandhl=enandsa=Xandved=2ahUKEwjJibTvmZ_kAhVMIKwKHWmfAOEQ6AEwAHoECAAQAQ#v=onepageandq=22global20public20opinion2C20any20direct20confrontation20with20these20other20polesE28094202020even20if20they20are20able20to20combineE28094will20have20a20predeterminedandf=false
Graham Allison has made the ... as we face a similar danger.
650,000 deaths will be the price for this war
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1140.html
Gompert of Rand tells us,
An important consideration in ... sides could increase | 904,421 |
365,424 | 379,364 | 0-info | email [email protected] if you have questions.
anvitha- 2nd
jaanvi- 1st
we disclose on the wiki after a new case is broken. ask us if you need additional information. we paraphrase but cards are on the email chain and on this wiki. | 904,424 |
365,425 | 379,365 | PRO | Contention 2: OCOs take down child pornography
Pictures of child sexual abuse have long been produced and shared to satisfy twisted adult obsessions.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-abuse.html
https://fox17.com/news/local/fbi-issues-sobering-statistics-on-child-pornography-in-the-united-states-dark-web
For the last two years, the FBI has been using drive-by hacks as a solution on how to identify and prosecute users of criminal websites hiding behind Tor.
https://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation-torpedo/
According to Heath, during late 2015 and early 2016, the FBI managed to
identified and charged.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/
In a children
en rescued from their abusers.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/feds-take-down-world-s-largest-dark-web-child-porn-n1066511
In each case, the FBI injected the site with malware to crack Tor’s anonymity.
Those hacks were a technical milestone.
Number of kids : https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/28/us/child-sex-abuse.html
Offensive
attacks on the ground.
Sussman, Bruce. Cyber War vs. Traditional War: The Difference Is Fading. 24 June 2019, https://www.secureworldexpo.com/industry-news/cyber-war-vs-traditional-war.
Shooting this drone down,
in two ways
1. Reduces Collateral damages
In
deaths, in combat.
https://www.cyberscoop.com/isis-jtf-ares-cyber-offensive-afghanistan/ : ISIS example
2. OCO’s can be used
fighters in harm’s way. | 904,425 |
365,426 | 379,366 | contact info | **for quarantined tournament**
hello, we are eesha and enya.
**pronouns**
enya - she/her; they/them
eesha - she/her; they/them
let us know yours :)
__**for quarantined, all of our prep/speeches we will be breaking new.**__
we'll disclose after (maybe)
here's our contact info if u wanna harass us ab disclosing
enya pinjani -
460-786-7206
or facebook message at Enya Pinjani
eesha suri -
214-784-9049
or facebook message at Eesha Suri
if you don't contact us before round we get auto-meets on your interps :)
you have been warned | 904,426 |
365,427 | 379,376 | 0 - Contact Info and Pronouns | 1N: Abigail Spencer (she/they)
2N: Dylan Beach (he/him)
Any speed is fine, as long as you're loud and clear.
Let us know if there's anything we can do to make the round more accessible for you. Debate is an educational experience, so let's try to make that education as accessible as possible!
Questions? Message us on Facebook Messenger or text 702-672-1349 | 904,433 |
365,428 | 379,386 | 2 - Nocember - stock neg | open source | 904,444 |
365,429 | 379,401 | neg | Sole contention is reforms
Rendon 19 of csis writes
https://www.csis.org/analysis/are-sanctions-working-venezuela
Sanctions did not ….. of citizens relied.
Bahar 19 of Brookings indicates
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/05/22/chavismo-is-the-worst-of-all-sanctions-the-evidence-behind-the-humanitarian-catastrophe-in-venezuela/
Thus, it is …. mildly, highly misleading.
Rendon 19 continus
https://www.csis.org/analysis/are-sanctions-working-venezuela
There is significant ….. have limited results.
The Economist 19 explains
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2019/12/18/more-dollars-and-fewer-protests-in-venezuela
The sanctions have …. by foreign ngos.
First is liberalization.
Katona 19 writes
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Venezuela-Is-Quietly-Ramping-Up-Oil-Production.html
If anyone is ….. main scourge, hyperinflation.
Argus 19 furthers
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2037897-venezuela-defies-sanctions-with-dollardriven-upswing?backToResults=true
US sanctions have ….. 500,000pc in 2020.
Zerpa 19 of bloomberg reports
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-05/venezuela-is-now-more-than-50-dollarized-study-finds
Venezuela’s economy is … is about $6.
Thus, Argus 19 concludes
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2037897-venezuela-defies-sanctions-with-dollardriven-upswing?backToResults=true
Dollarization is a ….. more in 2020.
Sanchez 19 continues
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/02/venezuela-inflation-at-10-million-percent-its-time-for-shock-therapy.html
Shock therapy measures, ….. the power grid.
Second is privatization.
Cohen 20
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-ramirez-exclusive/exclusive-weakened-by-sanctions-venezuelas-pdvsa-cedes-oilfield-operations-to-foreign-firms-idUSKBN1Z221R
Ramirez blamed the …… knowledge of oil.”
Cohen continues
(Reuters) - Venezuelan state ……. control the operations
Katona 19 finds
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Venezuela-Is-Quietly-Ramping-Up-Oil-Production.html
Although no Venezuelan …... it might be).
Reuters in December reported
https://www.reuters.com/article/venezuela-oil/venezuela-nov-crude-output-jumps-to-highest-level-since-u-s-tightened-sanctions-sources-idUSL1N28K1YG
CARACAS, Dec 10 (Reuters) - ….. President Nicolas Maduro.
Third is diversification
PETER KANZACHEEV 17 of the Cato Institute
https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/curse-or-blessing-how-institutions-determine-success-resource-rich
Although some economists ……. of a century.
CARLOS ROSSI 11 of the International Association for Energy Economics
https://www.iaee.org/en/publications/newsletterdl.aspx?id=137
Today oil accounts …... managed to produce.
CARLOS ROSSI 11 of the International Association for Energy Economics
https://www.iaee.org/en/publications/newsletterdl.aspx?id=137
Dutch Disease is …… on its head.
MAYELA ARMAS 19 of Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-exports-insight/in-hungry-venezuela-food-producers-step-up-exports-to-survive-idUSKBN1X215M
Shrimp farming is involved in those
Rivas 18
https://america.cgtn.com/2018/10/19/economic-crisis-in-venezuela-takes-toll-on-agriculture-sector
Venezuelan President Nicolás ……. 2018 to 2019.”
HARRY NITZBERG 18 of American University
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/wp.towson.edu/dist/b/55/files/2018/05/SPRING-2018-NITZBERG-ARTICLE-1t195ce.pdf
Once inflation has …. the same time.
Reuters 19
https://www.reuters.com/article/venezuela-economy-imports/venezuelan-state-imports-surge-despite-sanctions-central-bank-data-show-idUSL2N27D1DA
But in the …… back to 1997.
EVGENY KAKANOV 18 of the OECD
http://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=ECO/WKP(2018)59andamp;docLanguage=En
Table 2 presents ï …… oil share increases.
Impact- saving Venezuela
Lopez 19
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14753
Unlike various other ……. a sustainable path.
Constable 19 of Forbes finds
https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2019/03/26/why-venezuelas-economic-pain-could-last-through-2025/#72e40fea4779
If Venezuela follows …… began to collapse.
UPENN 19 finds
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/venezuela-extricate-crisis-recover/
“First and foremost, ….. the country’s wealth.”
O’Hanlon 19 of Brookings,
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/09/10/get-ready-for-the-venezuela-refugee-crisis/
With its economy …. deteriorate even further. | 904,459 |
365,430 | 379,419 | 4- State Quals Neg Automatic Stabilizers | ===Our Sole Contention is fanning the flames.===
**Chappelow, 19' explains that** (Jim Chappelow - "Automatic Stabilizer Definition", Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/automaticstabilizer.asp )/mateo
Automatic stabilizers are a type of fiscal policy designed to offset fluctuations in a nation's economic activity through their normal operation without additional, timely authorization by the government or policymakers. The best-known automatic stabilizers are progressively graduated corporate and personal income taxes, and transfer systems such as unemployment insurance and welfare. Automatic stabilizers are so called because they act to stabilize economic cycles and are automatically triggered without additional government action. Automatic stabilizers are ongoing government policies that automatically adjust tax rates and transfer payments in a manner that is intended to stabilize incomes, consumption, and business spending over the business cycle. Automatic stabilizers are a type of fiscal policy, which is favored by Keynesian economics as a tool to combat economic slumps and recessions. In the event of acute or lasting economic downturns, governments often back up automatic stabilizers with one-time or temporary stimulus policies to try to jump start the economy. Automatic stabilizers are primarily automatic stabilizers are designed to counter negative economic shocks or recessions, though they can also be intended to “cool off” and expanding economic or to combat inflation. By their normal operation these policies take more money out of the economy as taxes during periods of rapid growth and higher incomes, and/or put more money back into the economy in the form of government spending or tax refunds when economic activity slows or incomes fall. This has the intended purpose of cushioning the economy from changes in the business cycle. Automatic stabilizers can include the use of a progressive taxation structure under which the share of income that is taken in taxes is higher when incomes are high and falls when income fall due to recession, jobs losses, or failing investments. For example, as an individual taxpayer earns higher wages, his additional income may be subjected to higher tax rates based on the current tiered structure. If wages fall, the individual will remain in the lower tax tiers as dictated by his earned income.
**Fisher, 19 continues that** (Authors - "Planning for the next recession by reforming U.S. automatic stabilizers", Equitable Growth, https://equitablegrowth.org/planning-for-the-next-recession-by-reforming-u-s-macroeconomic-policy-automatic-stabilizers/ )/mateo
When the U.S. economy is cruising down the road in high gear, as it is these days, it can be hard to focus on the next engine failure. Having occurred seven times in the past 50 years, recessions—like death and taxes—are inevitable. And they are painful, with harsh short-term effects on families and businesses and potentially deep long-term ill effects on the economy and society. But policymakers can ameliorate some of the next recession’s worst effects and minimize its long-term costs if they adopt smart policies now that will be triggered when the first warning signs of the downturn appear. What are the best policies to put in place today? Policymakers need a guide, and Equitable Growth has joined forces with The Hamilton Project to advance a set of specific, evidence-based policy ideas for shortening and easing the impacts of the next recession. In a new book, Recession Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy, experts from academia and the policy community propose six big ideas, including two entirely new initiatives and four significant improvements to existing programs, all to be triggered when the economy shows clear, proven signs of heading into a recession. Recession Ready was edited by Equitable Growth Executive Director Heather Boushey, Ryan Nunn, a fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and policy director for The Hamilton Project, and Jay Shambaugh, director of The Hamilton Project, senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, and professor of economics and international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. Automatic stabilizers for the economy are anything but a new concept. When a recession hits, the tax system and a number of key programs, like Unemployment Insurance and Medicaid, already cushion a recession’s its effects by giving families suffering from unemployment or underemployment greater resources to cushion the blow or, in the case of the tax system, taking less (or nothing) in taxes. These results are important not only for families but also for and the overall economy, which desperately needs the injection of greater resources. But as we have seen in most recessions, the existing automatic stabilizers are not nearly enough. Recessions have victims. Millions of workers can lose their jobs. A generation of young people seeking to enter the workforce may find it daunting or even impossible. Families must contend with depleted savings and making painful choices among life’s necessities. And thriving businesses, especially small businesses, can be brought to their knees, hurting employers and employees. What’s worse, the most vulnerable are disproportionately affected. Numbers from the most recent downturn, while a severe example—it’s called the Great Recession for a reason—give an idea of the potential damage. The unemployment rate doubled to 10 percent and took 7 years to get back to its pre-recession level, 8.7 million jobs disappeared, and more than 5 million additional people were thrown into poverty—a number that would have been far greater in the absence of automatic stablizers the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. There is evidence that these losses will have a long-term impact on careers and earnings, especially for those who entered the job market during the recession.
**This has worked empirically, look to Germany.**
**The ILO explains that** (International Labor Organization - " A review of global fiscal stimulus", International Labor Organization, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/~-~~-~-dgreports/~-~~-~-inst/documents/publication/wcms_194175.pdf )/mateo
During a the crisis, a number of countries reinforce their automatic stabilizers, which proved extremely effective in reducing the impacts of the crisis on employment. The success of these initiatives, however, lies in the fact that countries used these measures strategically to better target the sectors more in need. As such, efforts were concentrated in areas with large spill-over effects on job creation. In general, automatic stabilizers played a key role in mitigating the fall in GDP and employment (see Box 1). Global fiscal stimulus: Timely, targeted and temporary 9 Box 1 Reinforcing automatic stabilizers • Brazil: A number of automatic stabilizers were reinforced during the crisis. In addition to like well known social assistance programs, there was an extension of unemployment insurance benefits by two months for redundant workers employed in sectors most affected by the crisis. • Germany: In Germany, automatic stabilizers were the principal means through which the crisis was addressed and played a significant role in lessening the negative impacts of crisis. This included easier access to short-time work, improvements to unemployment assistance, pension guarantees, extra resources to the PES as well as a series of initiatives targeted to low-income households. The OECD estimates those automatic stabilizers were at least three times more important than the fiscal stimulus packages that Germany put in place. Automatic stabilizers are estimated to have had a fiscal impact of 2.5 per cent of GDP in 2009 and in 2010. • Indonesia: Although to a lesser extent, automatic stabilizers were also effectively used in Indonesia during the crisis, mainly through social assistance programmes. Community based programmes targeting poor and vulnerable households and workers were the most targeted by the government. Indeed, during the crisis the government increased the allocation of some of this programmes – from IDR 58 trillion in 2008 to IDR 66 trillion in 2009. In some instances, macroeconomic policies proved to have important employment multipliers because they were targeted to employment-intensive sectors. For example: ? Brazil: The reduction in the industrial production tax (IPI) gave an important boost to job creation due to the strong employment content – both forward and backward linkages – of the automobile industry. The initiative is estimated to have saved up to 60,000 jobs and the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA) estimates that each R$1.00 spent on cars has a multiplier effect of R$3.76 on aggregate output. ? China: A number of macroeconomic policies were put in place in China in an effort of boosting domestic demand to stimulate economic growth and address the effects of the crisis on the labour market. For example, a monetary policy measure was put in place that lowered the benchmark lending rate by five times and the required reserve rate successively five times. A credit of ¥7 trillion was channelled through the banking system to counter the impact of the credit crunch. Moreover, a tax reform was carried out, with a transition to value added tax, and taxes on the refined oil, medical and health systems. Between the fourth quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2009 four sets of investment funds were disbursed, totalling ¥384 billion. Of this, ¥37.5 billion were for housing, ¥104.3 billion for rural infrastructure, ¥87.1 billion for social services, ¥57.3 billion for the environment, ¥39.6 billion for independent innovation, and ¥54.2 billion for industrial restructuring. 10 ? Indonesia: stimulus spending focused on cutting personal income taxes in an effort to boost domestic consumption which ended up having strong spillover effects in related sectors. In fact, preliminary estimates show that more than 30 per cent of the jobs created between February 2009 and August 2010 were due to the stimulus package – 1.2 million out of 3.7 million jobs.2
**Rubin 17' continues that** (Robert E. - "Opinion", Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-anti-poverty-programs-congress-wants-to-cut-are-crucial-to-the-economy/2017/03/10/5359b7e0-0509-11e7-b1e9-a05d3c21f7cf_story.html?noredirect=on )/mateo
To start, these are vital public investments with high rates of return. They improve productivity and reduce social costs caused by crime, malnutrition and poor health. For adults, Medicaid and SNAP better enable effective participation in the workforce. Roughly 20 percent of U.S. children live in poverty. In the wealthiest country in the world, that’s not just a moral outrage — it’s a serious detriment to our economic future. For low-income children, Medicaid and SNAP are investments that significantly improve outcomes later in life. For example, one study found that children who received SNAP were less likely to experience stunted growth, heart disease and obesity as adults — and had graduation rates that were 18 percentage points higher. We need to do more, not less, to help these children — by providing early family intervention, better schools and housing, safer neighborhoods and much else. What’s more, these programs serve as “automatic stabilizers” during an economic downturn: In a weak economy, as more people lose income and become eligible for federal benefits, the programs expand, putting more money in more people’s pockets. People then spend that money, increasing demand and helping the economy recover. All this adds up to a clear but underappreciated reality: Anti-poverty programs are an economic imperative. And yet their future is in jeopardy. The majorities in Congress have advocated capping or “block granting” federal spending on Medicaid and SNAP — and the Trump administration is also expected to pursue a budget that restructures them. Over time, the effect would be major cuts to these programs. The more immediate effect would be to eliminate the programs’ ability to automatically adjust to meet increased need, whether from a weakened economy, natural disaster or public-health crises such as the opioid epidemic. Low-income programs that depend on annual appropriations are also at risk if the president and Congress follow through on plans to bring domestic spending to historically low levels.
**Unfortunately, Ortiz, 18 continues that** (Isabel Ortiz - "Universal Basic Income proposals in light of ILO standards :Key issues and global costing", International Labor Organization, https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/~-~~-~-ed_protect/~-~~-~-soc_sec/documents/publication/wcms_648602.pdf )/mateo
At the guaranteed minimum-income (GMI) level, which is below poverty lines, and at lower benefit levels Replaces social insurance and social assistance, may also replace all social spending for the age group All children and working age adults Budget-neutral UBI proposal, thus using current social security and other social expenditures (spreading them among all children and working age people), abolishing tax-free allowances. Expected results: Because of low benefit levels, overall poverty rates would increase significantly. From an economic perspective, UBI does not act as an automatic stabilizer as it does not go up or down in a downturn.
This is explained by Harrop, 17 who corroborates (Andrew Harrop - "Universal basic income and the future of work", Fabian Society, https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/UBI.pdf )/mateo
As an in-work benefit, UC aims to tackle some of the same labour market problems as UBI. It offers a redistributive solution to pay stagnation, inequality and insufficient work by topping-up the earnings of people with low monthly pay and/or high living costs. In this sense it is a (less generous) successor to new Labour’s tax credits, which in the 2000s played a major role in reducing in-work poverty and supplementing stagnant wages. UC is proving far less successful at sustaining living standards because its value is being eroded over time, relative to earnings and GDP per capita (this is an example of means-tested benefits being more vulnerable to cuts than universal entitlements). Tax credits played a critical role in the wake of the financial crisis, when total payments increase, as an ‘automatic stabiliser’, in response to a decline in hours of work and hourly pay. If this had happened under a UBI regime, tax liabilities would have fallen but benefit payments would not have increased. For every pound of earnings they lost, with UBI low income households would have seen a significantly larger drop in their disposable income (this is a mirror image of UC being less good at ‘making work pay’ when people’s earnings rise). This tells us that if there was a long-term structural decline in the real monthly earnings of low paid workers, UC would provide a better cushion than UBI. Universal Credit is also much cheaper than UBI. This is very important if the two alternative policies are to be funded by the ‘closed loop’ of personal taxation, because it makes future increases towards a subsistence level more plausible and it means that less money would need to be raised from median earners (as we saw earlier, low and middle earners without children are better off under UC than a fiscally neutral UBI). On the other hand if some external source of funding was available (eg a tax on profits or wealth) any given level of new revenue would fund a greater improvement in living standards for low and middle income groups if channeled through UC than UBI because the money would be spread less thinly
**The impact is two fold and the first is preventing worsened conditions.**
**Stone, 15' quantifies that** (Chad Stone, - "It Could Have Been So Much Worse", US News and World Report, https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/10/23/the-great-recession-would-have-been-much-worse-without-stimulus-tarp )/mateo
POLICYMAKERS' ACTIONS in late 2008 and early 2009 prevented the Great Recession from becoming another Great Depression, according to a recent analysis by former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Blinder and Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi. That probably surprises anyone who's only heard that President Barack Obama's stimulus program was a "failure" and financial stabilization measures like the Troubled Asset Relief Program were just "bailouts" for those who caused the problem in the first place. In a nutshell, Blinder and Zandi estimate that without the full set of federal responses, the recession would have been more than three times deeper and lasted twice as long; we would have lost twice as many jobs and unemployment would have peaked at 16 percent rather than 10 percent; the budget deficit would have grown to 20 percent of GDP, reaching $2.8 trillion in fiscal 2011; and unemployment today would be 7.6 percent, not 5.1 percent. Those federal responses included: substantial fiscal stimulus (debt-financed tax cuts and spending increases), most notably the 2009 economic recovery act; extraordinary actions by the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Treasury Department, together with TARP, to re-established a stable financial system and got credit flowing again; and the Fed's aggressive monetary stimulus, first using standard monetary policy to cut short-term interest rates to zero, then making large-scale purchases of longer-term assets (so-called quantitative easing or QE) to lower longer-term rates to encourage more economic activity. SEE: Political Cartoons on the Economy To be sure, these extraordinary measures didn't prevent a severe recession. But as the chart below from this chart book shows, the massive job losses of late 2008 and early 2009 were soon reversed and, by early 2010, a sustained job recovery had begun. In Blinder and Zandi's no-policy scenario, the job losses would have been larger and continued longer, substantially delaying the jobs recovery.
**Second, is ending SNAP.**
**Boushey, 19 explains that** (Heather Boushey, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh - "Recession ready: Fiscal policies to stabilize the American economy", Brookings, https://www.brookings.edu/multi-chapter-report/recession-ready-fiscal-policies-to-stabilize-the-american-economy/ )/mateoteo
After federal welfare reform of 1996, the federal program that provides cash to families in need was block-granted, and funds were capped at their 1997 level. The newly created TANF program included a small emergency fund, which has been insufficient to allow TANF to function as needed for families or provide any cushion to the economy in a downturn. In the seventh chapter, Indivar Dutta-Gupta suggests shifting the structure of TANF so that it can expand in downturns as need rises and thus play a countercyclical role both for households and the economy. He also reviews the experience of TANF job subsidies enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and proposes expanding this approach, explaining how employment subsidies can play an important role as part of an overall policy response to economic downturns. SNAP is the nation’s most-important food support program—and it is also an automatic stabilizer that supports the economy during downturns. In the eighth chapter, Hilary Hoynes and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach the government proposes reforms to SNAP that would make it a more-effective automatic stabilizer and increase its ability to protect families during downturns. In particular, they focus on ensuring that families in need of food support are not tied to work requirements that may be impossible to meet in an economic downturn; they also suggest increasing SNAP benefits during a recession. Overall, this set of proposals builds on the best available evidence and analysis. They the government uses programs that have been effective parts of U.S. fiscal policy and have either been an important part of discretionary or automatic spending in prior downturns. The proposals suggest a clear path toward improved automatic stabilizers for the U.S. economy. These programs already exist or have been pursued in the past, suggesting they are feasible and realistic. Though these policies could be implemented separately, there is an advantage in thinking of them as a package. As described in the first chapter, these policies would affect the economy at different points in time, would assist different types of households, and would address differences in economic conditions across places.
**Jennings, 18' quantifies that** (By - "SNAP Is Linked with Improved Nutritional Outcomes and Lower Health Care Costs", Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-is-linked-with-improved-nutritional-outcomes-and-lower-health-care )/mateo
New and emerging research links the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, with improved health outcomes and lower health care costs. This research adds to previous work showing SNAP’s powerful capacity to help families buy adequate food, reduce poverty, and help stabilize the economy during recessions. SNAP is the primary source of nutrition assistance for many low-income people. In a typical month of 2017, SNAP helped about 42 million low-income Americans afford a nutritious diet. It provides important nutritional support for low-wage working families, low-income seniors, and people with disabilities living on fixed incomes: close to 70 percent of SNAP participants are in families with children, and more than one-quarter are in households with seniors or people with disabilities. While SNAP provides only a modest benefit — just $1.40 on average per person per meal in 2017 — it forms a critical foundation for the health and well-being of low-income Americans, lifting millions out of poverty and improving food security. THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT SNAP MAY PROMOTE BETTER HEALTH AND LOWER HEALTH CARE COSTS. Although evaluating SNAP’s impact presents a daunting challenge in part because it is so widely available and because participants tend to be substantially different from non-participants, research emerging in the last ten years suggests that SNAP may affect household well-being in ways that extend beyond its intended aim to improve food security and nutrition. The available evidence suggests that SNAP is at least associated with and may promote better health and lower health care costs. And, to the extent this connection exists, it is plausible that policies that limit program eligibility and cut SNAP benefits would harm health and raise health care costs. Substantial research on SNAP and related areas has shown:
**Feeding America explains that**, xx' (Providing The - "What is SNAP?", No Publication, https://www.feedingamerica.org/take-action/advocate/federal-hunger-relief-programs/snap )/mateo
SNAP provides families with their basic nutritional needs to get them through temporary hard times. It helps people get back on their feet and on the road to a better life — in 2015, SNAP lifted 4.6 million Americans above the poverty line, including 2 million children and 366,000 seniors. Moreover, SNAP helps to ensure that children are given a fair chance at a healthy adulthood, that seniors age with dignity and that family can care for themselves. SNAP is absolutely critical to making sure no one in America goes hungry. On top of that, SNAP supports America’s economy and creates jobs. Research from Moody’s Analytics suggests that for every dollar spent by SNAP, 1.7 dollars are added to the economy. A 2010 study by the USDA found that for every $1 billion of added SNAP funding, between 8,900 and 17,000 jobs were created. By contrast, another study found that for every $1 billion in cuts, 11,437 jobs would be destroyed. | 904,478 |
365,431 | 379,432 | Yemen | =AFF=
====Millions dying====
====Patrick Cockburn, 10-26-2018, Independent, "The Yemen war death toll is five times higher than we think – we can't shrug off our responsibilities any longer", https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yemen-war-death-toll-saudi-arabia-allies-how-many-killed-responsibility-a8603326.html====
One reason Saudi Arabia and its allies are able
AND
threatens 14 million Yemenis – half the population
====US at fault====
Ali Harb, 3-1-2019, "Saudi Arabia would end Yemen war without US support, experts say", Middle East Eye, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-would-end-yemen-war-without-us-support-experts-say // JBC
Ending American assistance to the Saudi-led coalition
AND
"Definitely at the beginning, they could not have started this war without US and UK support."
====War wont end as long as US there====
Mohamad Bazzi, 9-30-2018, "The United States Could End the War in Yemen If It Wanted To", Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/iran-yemen-saudi-arabia/571465/, // JBC
On September 12, Secretary of State
AND
lodge the Houthis from the capital, Sanaa.
====Plan grounds the RSAF.====
Bruce **Riedel 18** ~~Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Center for Middle East Policy, Director - The Intelligence Project~~ "After Khashoggi, US arms sales to the Saudis are essential leverage" October 10, 2018. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/10/10/after-khashoggi-us-arms-sales-to-the-saudis-are-essential-leverage / IB
The Saudis have continued to buy spare parts
AND
Shaking the arms relationship is by far the most important way to clip his wings.
====Logistics lol====
Micah Zenko 18, October 2018, US and Americas Programme, "US Military Policy in the Middle East An Appraisal", https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2018-10-18-us-military-policy-middle-east-zenko.pdf
While this last question has been the subject
AND
that has emerged because of the US military’s access requirements
====Airstrikes target food====
Florence Dixon, 10-13-2018, "Engineering famine: Saudi-led coalition 'deliberately bombing Yemen food supply', which may amount to war crime," alaraby
A new report slamming what it
AND
distribution in the areas under the control of Sanaa."
====Perception negotiations stuff====
Trevor Thrall ~~Senior Fellow, Cato Institute~~, "Trump’s No Good Very Bad Arms Deal," Cato Institute, June 7 2017. Available at: h?ps://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-nogood-very-bad-arms-deal
When countries believe they
AND
work toward diplomatic solutions
====Quantification for negotiations====
Erickson of Boston College A. Trevor Thrall and Caroline Dorminey, CATO, "Risky Business The Role of Arms Sales in U.S. Foreign Policy ", March 13, 2018, https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-836.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3iB30KXfE4nKzxfTW4Gz4'zQB7Ca-VkGnqWRlcum4h1Km0hw-wwbrLx9E
Third, this dynamic appears to be
AND
greater stability, there is a strong case to be made that the opposite is now true.
====Houthi signaling====
Patrick Wintour, 2-13-2019, "Time running out to turn Yemen ceasefire into peace, says Hunt," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/13/time-running-out-to-turn-yemen-ceasefire-into-peace-says-hunt
Lack of trust between warring countries putting
AND
letting it drag out talks as the war rages on.
====Saudi gotta stop military stuff bro====
Jeffrey Feltman, November 26, 2018, "The Only Way to End the War in Yemen", https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/yemen/2018-11-26/only-way-end-war-yemen
There is only one way for Saudi Arabia to end this
AND
t to the relationship between the two countries
====Peace without US====
Trita Parsi, 1-6-2020, "The Middle East Is More Stable When the United States Stays Away", Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/, // JBC
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy
AND
celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments. | 904,496 |
365,432 | 379,439 | BD NEG | Contention One is Mining
Currently, the US is tanking in the nuclear energy market, but Trump wants us winning again – DiChristopher of CNBC writes in 2019 that
DiChristopher, 19 (Tom DiChristopher, 4-4-2019, CNBC, "The US is losing the nuclear energy export race to China and Russia. Here's the Trump team's plan to turn the tide", https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/trump-aims-to-beat-china-and-russia-in-nuclear-energy-export-race.html), accessed on 3-3-2020 //NM
Keep Me Logged In companies and researchers.
Unfortunately, ABC News 2019 writes that Trump has wanted to issue Section 232 which
Abc News, 10-9-2019, "US nuclear, uranium mining industries hope for Trump bailout," ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/us-nuclear-uranium-mining-industries-hope-trump-bailout-66167849 //BB
Trump is scheduled by mining interestss
Unfortunately,
Stanford writes in 2018 that empirically,
Oluwaseun Adebagbo, 3-26-2018, "Environmental Injustice: Racism Behind Nuclear Energy," Stanford University, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/adebagbo1/ //DL
Nuclear power plant (NPP) as cheaper electricity.
In fact, Bienkowski concludes
Brian Bienkowski, Environmental Health News, 8-22-2016, "Years after mining stops, uranium’s legacy lingers on Native land," YubaNet, https://yubanet.com/enviro/years-after-mining-stops-uraniums-legacy-lingers-on-native-land/ sd
Some 15,000 abandoned is closer to 5 percent.
And often, Adebagbo also points out
Oluwaseun Adebagbo, 3-26-2018, "Environmental Injustice: Racism Behind Nuclear Energy," Stanford University, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/adebagbo1/ //DL
Nuclear power plant (NPP) such as cheaper electricity.
And even if natives don’t work in the mines, Lewis 2017 of the Univ. of New Mexico finds that of lax regulations
Johnnye Lewis, 5-14-2017, "Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities," University of New Mexico, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429369/ //DL
As a result of the not be disturbed 36.
Moreover,
Johnnye Lewis, 5-14-2017, "Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities," University of New Mexico, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429369/ //DL
Purpose of Review into the future.
Thus, increasing domestic mining would exasperate the ongoing mining abuse cycle, increasing the number of Native Americans exposed. Already, Lewis concludes
Johnnye Lewis, 5-14-2017, "Mining and Environmental Health Disparities in Native American Communities," University of New Mexico, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429369/ //DL
As a result of the not be disturbed 36.
Contention Two is Overspeculation 2:10
Pearce 17 of the Yale Environment 360 finds that due to the nuclear industry losing to other energy markets in the squo, large scale nuclear companies such as
Fred Pearce, 05-15-2017, "Industry Meltdown: Is the Era of Nuclear Power Coming to an End?," Yale E360, https://e360.yale.edu/features/industry-meltdown-is-era-of-nuclear-power-coming-to-an-end //AD - sd
s the nuclear power ever will be finished.
Union of Concerned Scientists 11 notes that
Union of Concerned Scientists, 2-23-2011, "Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies," https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-still-not-viable-without-subsidies//AD
Subsidies prove addictive assessments of new reactors.
Unfortunately, Researchers at the World Nuclear Association 18 find that domestic prioritizing of nuclear energy through
Various Means,, xx-xx-xxxx, "Energy Subsidies," No Publication, https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/energy-subsidies.aspx//AD
Substantial as a means of environmental protection.
That’s critical because Simpson of the Oil Price finds that due to trenchant volatility
Bill Simpson, xx-xx-xxxx, "The Downfall Of U.S. Nuclear Power," OilPrice, https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/The-Downfall-Of-US-Nuclear-Power.html//AD
A new, shocking nuclear power plants.
But subsidies distort the market, changing investors’ perception of nuclear energy’s profitability.
Specifically, Kenton 18 notes that speculative bubbles form, caused by
Will Kenton, 1-29-2020, "Speculative Bubble," Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/speculativebubble.asp//AD
A speculative bubble Now – Free to Use.
Depersio 19 furthers that:
Greg Depersio, 1-29-2020, "How Do Asset Bubbles Cause Recessions?," Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/082515/how-do-asset-bubbles-cause-recessions.asp//AD
Asset bubbles shoulder following economic recessions.
And the impact of a recession is devastating, as London Business School 19 explains
London Business School, 11-11-2019, "Global Slowdown Worries," Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lbsbusinessstrategyreview/2019/11/11/global-slowdown-worries/#4f92e2924a25 sd
Financial crises are world’s major economies?
Consequently, Bradford 2013 indicates that another global recession could push 900 million people back into poverty.
Harry Bradford, 4-5-2013, "Three Times The Population Of The U.S. Is At Risk Of Falling Into Poverty," HuffPost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/global-poverty-900-million-economic-shock_n_3022420 //LM
Hundreds of millions, adding only 88,000 jobs in March. | 904,511 |
365,433 | 379,441 | Disclosure Shell | Disclosure Shell
Interpretation:
Teams must disclose previously used case positions including general tags before the round preemptively on the NDCA PF wiki at least 30 min before the round.
Violation:
They did not disclose on the wiki in time while we did.
Standards:
Fairness-It’s impossible to predict what they will run unless they disclose on the wiki. We can’t do research on their arguments if we don’t know what it is. That provides an unfair advantage because they can look at our arguments.
2. Education -We can compare arguments and evidence better if we can prepare for the specific arguments. There’s no education if only one side knows what their opponent is running. Good disclosure is important because Nails 2013 explains that “disclosure streamlines research… providing knowledge … everyone can build off of.”
Nails, Jacob. October 10, 2013.A Defense of Disclosure (Including Third-Party Disclosure) by Jacob Nails. http://nsdupdate.com/2013/10/10/a-defense-of-disclosure-including-third-party-disclosure-by-jacob-nails/ .DA=1/26/17.-SVJK
I fall squarely on the side of disclosure. I find that the largest advantage of widespread disclosure is the educational value it provides. First, disclosure streamlines research. Rather than every team and every lone wolf researching completely in the dark, the wiki provides a public body of knowledge that everyone can contribute to and build off of. Students can look through the different studies on the topic and choose the best Studies ones on an informed basis without the prohibitively large burden of personally surveying all of the literature. The best arguments are identified and replicated, which is a natural result of an open marketplace of ideas. Quality of evidence increases across the board.
There are 2 voters –
First is Predictability:
Predictability is key to fairness because if one side is more prepared they will always win. They know what our arguments are but we do not have an opportunity to gain that same advantage. Debate is a competitive activity designed to determine the better debater; adjudicating unfair debates only determines who was arbitrarily advantaged, not who gave the better performance.
Second is Clash:
More education leads to more clash and more educational experiences for everyone pre-and during round. Lack of grounds and predictability destroys in round clash, taking away the opportunity to have more productive and educational debates with each team testing each other at our fullest capability.
Drop the Debater:
Judge, you can’t agree with the strategy my opponent is using because they are clearly ruining the educational value and fairness of PF just to try and win. You cannot allow this to happen and help show it is wrong by voting down my opponent. This sends a signal to other teams that they should disclose and corrects for the time skew that occurs from us addressing this unfairness. No fairness RVI’s because you do not win the round by proving you don’t cheat. They have to
Prefer reasonability over competing interpretations with an emphasis on clear demonstrations of in round violations.
If it is reasonably true that my opponents have violated our interp and why that’s significant, then you should drop them. Competing interpretations only allow in round abuse to be masked by blippy theory debates and sidestep meaningful engagement with the arguments presented in this debate. | 904,513 |
365,434 | 379,467 | DDA AC V1 | Contention One is Accessibility:
Insurance is becoming increasingly more difficult to obtain for millions of Americans.
Collins, Sara R. Who Are the Remaining Uninsured, and Why Do They Lack Coverage? 28 Aug. 2019, www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2019/aug/who-are-remaining-uninsured-and-why-do-they-lack-coverage. //Roy
in 2018, an estimated 30.4 million people were uninsured, up from a low of 28.6 million in 2016. Coverage gains have stalled in most states and have even eroded in some.
Medicare-for-all saves lives.
Franks P, Clancy Cm, Gold Mr., xx-xx-xxxx, "Health Insurance and Mortality in US Adults," PubMed Central (PMC), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775760/ //Roy
a 25 higher risk of death among uninsured compared with privately insured adults.
Ingraham 20:
Christopher Ingraham, 2-20-2020, "Here’s that Medicare-for-all study Bernie Sanders keeps bringing up
," Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/20/lancet-medicare-for-all-study/ //Roy
a single-payer system akin to Sanders’s plan would slash the nation’s health-care expenditures by 13 percent, or more than $450 billion, each year. Not only that, “ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68,000 lives.”
Pandemic growth speed has increased.
Patrick R. Saunders-Hastings, 11-6-2016, "Reviewing the History of Pandemic Influenza: Understanding Patterns of Emergence and Transmission," PubMed Central (PMC), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5198166/ //Roy
Population growth, human mobility, and greater proximity to animal reservoirs continue to increase both the risk of pandemic emergence and the speed with which such a pandemic could spread across the globe.
Antonelli 20:
Ashley Antonelli, 5-15-2020, "Weekly line: Why deadly disease outbreaks could become more common—even after Covid-19," No Publication, https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/05/15/weekly-line //Roy
infectious disease outbreaks could become more common.
These outbreaks are devastating.
Patrick R. Saunders-Hastings, 11-6-2016, "Reviewing the History of Pandemic Influenza: Understanding Patterns of Emergence and Transmission," PubMed Central (PMC), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5198166/ //Roy
If a pandemic today were to kill the same proportion as in 1918, this would equal between 74 and 370 million people.
Granting everyone access to medical care would dramatically mitigate the effects of these pandemics.:
Ann Kimberly Petersen, 9-xx-2014, "," Calhoun.nps, https://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/43979/14Sep_Petersen_Kimberly.pdf?sequence=1 //Roy
, if people have health insurance, they are more likely to go to the doctor when they are ill. Conversely, a lack of health insurance equals worse health outcomes because patients wait longer to seek care and present at a later stage of illness.60 Anthrax is not contagious; a person sickened with anthrax cannot pass the disease to another person. If a bioattack involves a contagious disease, enabling early identification and treatment, which are even more critical.
Khan 17:
Laura H. Khan, 6-5-2017, "Why access to health care is a national security issue," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, https://thebulletin.org/2017/06/why-access-to-health-care-is-a-national-security-issue/ //EZG
Countries like Canada, which has universal health coverage and a well-funded public health infrastructure, are much better prepared to handle deadly epidemics
Contention Two is Ending an Epidemic:
Universal access to care reduces chronic pain~-~--solves the root cause for opioid demand.
Maki 2-16-17 (Jennifer, Senior Director in the Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy at FTI Consulting and an Academic Associate at Arizona State University, College of Health Solutions, served as a testifying economic expert in litigation related to opioids, “Applying the rules of supply and demand to the Opioid Crisis” http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/319819-applying-the-rules-of-supply-and-demand-to-the-opioid-crisis) //Conrad
Poor health drives demand for prescription opioid pain medication, so trying to approach the opioid epidemic by monitoring supply or by increasing addiction or overdose treatment options will not fully address the problem. To reduce demand for opiates, there must be greater focus not only on preventive care and improving overall health (thus reducing the need for pain medication), but also increasing access to care,
Lack of insurance drives opioid demand~-~--plan makes alternative pain treatments accessible~-~--that solves
German Lopez, 8-1-2017, "How to stop the deadliest drug overdose crisis in American history," Vox, https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/1/15746780/opioid-epidemic-end //EZG
there are hundreds of non-opioid medications already available.) But to get these options, more patients will need to be able to see doctors who will like Mackey to help put them on the right treatment plan. Such specialists remain out of reach as they are — too expensive, too far away — for many patients. This is a reason that opioids became so popular in the first place: It’s much easier to give someone a pill than to get them into an expensive, complicated pain treatment program. Addressing the faults of the health care system, from lack of local options to lack of insurance, would help solve
For profit insurers overprescribe opioids and drive addiction~-~--single payer solves.
Corbett 9-18-17 (Jessica, staff writer Common Dreams, “Bolstering Single-Payer Case, Report Shows How For-Profit Insurers Fuel Opioid Crisis” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/09/18/bolstering-single-payer-case-report-shows-how-profit-insurers-fuel-opioid-crisis) //Conrad
for-profit system, a new report by ProPublica and the New York Times reveals that despite the U.S. opioid crisis, many insurance companies provide easy access to highly addictive opioid medications for pain relief while restricting access to less-risky but more costly alternatives. As the nation's opioid epidemic has grown, "drugmakers, pharmaceutical distributors, pharmacies, and doctors have come under intense scrutiny in recent years, but the role that insurers—and the pharmacy benefit managers that run their drug plans—have played in the opioid crisis has received less attention," note the Times' Katie Thomas and ProPublica's Charles Ornstein. The pair spoke with patients who have struggled to access pain relief medications through insurance providers such as Anthem and UnitedHealthcare, the nation's largest insurer. They also analyzed Medicare prescription drug plans that covered 35.7 million Americans and found only a third of those with coverage could access "a painkilling skin patch that contains a less-risky opioid," whereas nearly all plans covered "common opioids, and very few required any prior approval." Further, they found that "insurers have also erected more hurdles to approving addiction treatments than for the addictive substances themselves." And although addiction experts have observed that as this epidemic evolves, "the problem now appears to be rooted more in the illicit trade of heroin and fentanyl," the reporters also note a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis showing that "risks for chronic use" increase "with each additional day" an opioid is prescribed, and of those patients who receive initial 10-day prescriptions, 20 percent will continue using the drugs after one year. The ProPublica/Times report provoked an outpouring of personal anecdotes that often mirrored those featured in the article, and strong condemnation of insurance companies, as well as doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. It also spurred calls for reform—to prescription practices and drug costs, but also to healthcare more broadly. This report comes less than a week after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), with substantial support from Senate Democrats, introduced a bill aimed at reforming how Americans access health insurance and healthcare. Sanders' Medicare for All bill proposes transitioning from the U.S.'s for-profit healthcare system toward a national single-payer program that guarantees care for all Americans. In an op-ed for the Boston Globe last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote of the opioid crisis: "I believe we can beat this epidemic,"
Strong cartels will cause Mexico state collapse~-~--US opioid demand key.
Racke 9-15-17 (Will, Immigration and Foreign Policy Reporter, Daily Caller, Report: John Kelly Thinks Mexico Could Be The Next Venezuela” http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/15/report-john-kelly-thinks-mexico-could-be-the-next-venezuela/) //EZG
The struggle for control of heroin trafficking routes and distribution nodes, known as “plazas,” is a prime driver of the violence, according to security analysts. America’s insatiable appetite for cheap opioids provides an irresistible opportunity for up-and-coming drug traffickers or splinter groups, who are willing to use extreme violence to push out established organizations. Today, north of 90 percent of all heroin trafficked into the U.S. comes from Mexico,
Homicide rates are increasing under cartel violence.
Racke 9-15-17 (Will, Immigration and Foreign Policy Reporter, Daily Caller, Report: John Kelly Thinks Mexico Could Be The Next Venezuela” http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/15/report-john-kelly-thinks-mexico-could-be-the-next-venezuela/) //EZG
Mexico has seen a disturbing rise in drug cartel-related violence in recent years, as competition among warring factions of formerly dominant cartels, and between newly ascendant criminal organizations, which has pushed homicide rates to their highest in two decades. Based on his evaluation of Mexico’s security situation and political stability, Kelly believes there is a real danger the country’s government could collapse under the weight of brutal drug cartel violence
Mexico is descending into Venezuela-like conditions.
Racke 9-15-17 (Will, Immigration and Foreign Policy Reporter, Daily Caller, Report: John Kelly Thinks Mexico Could Be The Next Venezuela” http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/15/report-john-kelly-thinks-mexico-could-be-the-next-venezuela/) //EZG
Mexico could descend to Venezuela’s level as a borderline failed state.
Opioids Kill.
CDC, 3-19-2020, "Drug Overdose Deaths," Centers for Disease Control, https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html //EZG
Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 46,802 overdose deaths in 2018
The opioid crisis is harmful to the economy.
Council of Economic Advisers, 10-28-2019, "The Full Cost of the Opioid Crisis: $2.5 Trillion Over Four Years," White House, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/full-cost-opioid-crisis-2-5-trillion-four-years/ //EZG
the opioid crisis, which the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) estimates cost $696 billion in 2018—or 3.4 percent of GDP—and more than $2.5 trillion for the four-year period from 2015 to 2018. These massive costs point to the nationwide economic destruction from America’s very human “crisis next door.” In 2017, CEA published a report that measured the full cost of the opioid crisis by considering the value of lost lives, as well as increases in healthcare and substance abuse treatment costs, increases in criminal justice costs, and reductions in productivity. | 904,542 |
365,435 | 379,475 | 1 Contact Info | Please contact us if you have any questions or want us to meet any interps.
Sanjit: [email protected]
Pranav: [email protected] | 904,557 |
365,436 | 380,046 | 0 - Disclosure Note | Contact us for the pro/con contention(s). Flip as early as possible so we can have pre-round prep time. If you don't disclose, we wont either. Start an email chain at the beginning of round, so we dont have to waste time "calling for cards". Seeing the evidence is key to understanding the context from which you pull facts from, so email chains are definitely a must have. PF disclosure norms are horrible, and we're here to change that. | 905,266 |
365,437 | 380,051 | NovDec19 - Cyber Defense | ====First, US faces increasingly hostile cyber-threats – Donnelly 19 reports: ====
~~John M. Donnelly, 7-11-2019, "America is woefully unprepared for cyber-warfare," Roll Call, https://www.rollcall.com/news/u-s-is-woefully-unprepared-for-cyber-warfare, CP~~
Information operations and cyberattacks in the gray zone have grown in recent years — in
AND
Iran shot down a U.S. drone in the Persian Gulf.
====Unfortunately, cyber-defense lagging – Donnelly continues: ====
~~John M. Donnelly, 7-11-2019, "America is woefully unprepared for cyber-warfare," Roll Call, https://www.rollcall.com/news/u-s-is-woefully-unprepared-for-cyber-warfare, CP~~
Despite this ramped-up offense, America's defenses lag behind, according to retired
AND
not only reduces resources dedicated for defense but overtakes other priorities as well.
====Wolff confirms, writing in 2018 that: ====
~~Josephine Wolff is an assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of "You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches, "Trump's Reckless Cybersecurity Strategy," New York Times, Oct. 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/opinion/trumps-reckless-cybersecurity-strategy.html, CP~~
The Trump administration's shift to an offensive approach is designed to escalate cyber conflicts,
AND
can be certain of who those targets are and what they are doing.
====Critical infrastructure: ====
====Focus on preemptive cyber-attack capability trades off with fixing critical cyber vulnerabilities====
Rid 2013 ~~Thomas Rid is a reader at the Department of War Studies, King's College London finds. 2013, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112314/obama-administrations-lousy-record-cyber-security~~#~~
But the rhetoric of war doesn't accurately describe much of what happened. There was
AND
, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, has stalled indefinitely in the Senate.
====Donnelly 19: ====
~~John Donnelly and Gopal Ratnam are reporters with CQ-Roll Call, 26 Jun, 2019, "US is woefully unprepared for cyber-warfare," SandP Global, https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/52560026, CP~~
In these two realms, the U.S. military and civil society are
AND
S.D.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity.
====Slayton 15 of Cornell explains:====
Rebecca Slayton is Assistant Professor at Cornell University with a joint appointment in the Science and Technology Studies Department and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, 4-22-2015, "Why Cyber Operations Do Not Always Favor the Offense," Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/why-cyber-operations-do-not-always-favor-offense
Prioritizing offensive operations can increase adversaries' fears, suspicions, and readiness to take offensive
AND
civil society to mitigate those vulnerabilities, leaves critical infrastructure vulnerable to attack.
====Finance example ====
Healey '13 ~~Jason Healey is director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council finds. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/03/08/clandestine-american-strategy-on-cyberwarfare-will-backfire
Imagine for a moment you coordinated cybersecurity response for a major U.S.
AND
Iranian denial of service attacks against the U.S. finance sector.
====Cyber-defense key solves all threats better – McGraw 11: ====
~~Gary McGraw is the Chief Technology Officer of Cigital, Inc., a software security consulting firm with headquarters in the Washington, D.C. area and offices throughout the world. He is a globally recognized authority on software security and the author of eight best-selling books on this topic. His titles include Software Security, Exploiting Software, Building Secure Software, Java Security, Exploiting Online Games, and six other books; and he is editor of the Addison-Wesley Software Security series. Dr. McGraw has also written over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications, authors a monthly security column for SearchSecurity and Information Security Magazine, and is frequently quoted in the press. Besides serving as a strategic counselor for top business and IT executives, Gary is on the Advisory Boards of Dasient (acquired by Twitter), Fortify Software (acquired by HP), Invincea, and Raven White. His dual PhD is in Cognitive Science and Computer Science from Indiana University where he serves on the Dean's Advisory Council for the School of Informatics. Gary served on the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors and produces the monthly Silver Bullet Security Podcast for IEEE Security and Privacy magazine (syndicated by SearchSecurity); Nathaniel Fick, "SEPARATING THREAT FROM THE H YP E: WHAT WASHINGTON NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT CYBER SECURITY," June 2011, CNAS, https://www.garymcgraw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/mcgraw-fick-CNAS.pdf, CP~~
Focus on defense by building security in. A good offense is not a good
AND
today's vulnerable systems, why bother to even work on a cyber rock?
====Multiple, defensive options – Valeriano 19: ====
~~Brandon Valeriano is the Donald Bren Chair of Armed Politics at Marine Corps University. Benjamin Jensen is an associate professor at the Marine Corps University and a scholar-in-residence at American University's School of International Service, 1-15-2019, "The Myth of the Cyber Offense: The Case for Restraint," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/myth-cyber-offense-case-restraint, CP~~
In military theory, active defense is "the employment of limited offensive action and
AND
cyber options to ensure partners can patch their networks and update their defenses.
====Impact is three-fold: First, effective cyber-defense is the pre-requisite to cyber-offense; without it = disaster – Donnelly continues: ====
~~John M. Donnelly, 7-11-2019, "America is woefully unprepared for cyber-warfare," Roll Call, https://www.rollcall.com/news/u-s-is-woefully-unprepared-for-cyber-warfare, CP~~
Despite this ramped-up offense, America's defenses lag behind, according to retired
AND
capability depends on defensive assurance and resilience of key military and homeland systems."
====Second, economic loss. Cyber-crime is the largest cyber-threat and costs trillions annually – McGraw 11 quantifies: ====
~~Gary McGraw is the Chief Technology Officer of Cigital, Inc., a software security consulting firm with headquarters in the Washington, D.C. area and offices throughout the world. He is a globally recognized authority on software security and the author of eight best-selling books on this topic. His titles include Software Security, Exploiting Software, Building Secure Software, Java Security, Exploiting Online Games, and six other books; and he is editor of the Addison-Wesley Software Security series. Dr. McGraw has also written over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications, authors a monthly security column for SearchSecurity and Information Security Magazine, and is frequently quoted in the press. Besides serving as a strategic counselor for top business and IT executives, Gary is on the Advisory Boards of Dasient (acquired by Twitter), Fortify Software (acquired by HP), Invincea, and Raven White. His dual PhD is in Cognitive Science and Computer Science from Indiana University where he serves on the Dean's Advisory Council for the School of Informatics. Gary served on the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors and produces the monthly Silver Bullet Security Podcast for IEEE Security and Privacy magazine (syndicated by SearchSecurity); Nathaniel Fick, "SEPARATING THREAT FROM THE H YP E: WHAT WASHINGTON NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT CYBER SECURITY," June 2011, CNAS, https://www.garymcgraw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/mcgraw-fick-CNAS.pdf, CP~~
Among the three major cyber security concerns in the public eye, cyber crime is
AND
and cyber war. We can kill all three birds with one stone.
====Dave====
~~Paresh Dave, 7-22-2013, "Cybercrime costs U.S. economy up to $140 billion annually, report says," Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-cybercrime-140-billion-dollars-economy-20130722-story.html, CP~~
Cyberattacks may be draining as much as $140 billion and half a million jobs
AND
effects of car crashes and ocean piracy, instead of surveys of companies.
====And cyber-espionage adds additional costs to the US economy – Blair 17 explains: ====
~~Dennis C. Blair is a former director of national intelligence and a former commander in chief of the United States Pacific Command. Keith Alexander is a former commander of the United States Cyber Command and a former director of the National Security Agency, 8-15-2017, "China's Intellectual Property Theft Must Stop," New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/opinion/china-us-intellectual-property-trump.html, CP~~
Chinese companies, with the encouragement of official Chinese policy and often the active participation
AND
weakens our military capability and undercuts a key American competitive advantage — innovation.
====Second, attacks on critical infrastructure = bad. Straub 19 quantifies: ====
~~Jeremy Straub, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, North Dakota State University., 18 AUG 2019, "A Major Cyber Attack Could Be Just as Deadly as Nuclear Weapons, Says Scientist," Science Alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/a-major-cyber-attack-could-be-just-as-damaging-as-a-nuclear-weapon, CP~~
Unfortunately, there are signs that hackers have placed malicious software inside US power and
AND
could happen over a wide area, resulting in mass injury and even deaths | 905,271 |
365,438 | 379,342 | 2 - SEPTOCT - Tariffs | BRI investments in EU give Chinese navy access to foreign posts
Emanuele Scimia, South China Morning Post, "Europe continues to welcome Chinese investment in its ports, despite US concerns about Beijing’s global maritime ambitions | South China Morning Post", June 20, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3015214/europe-continues-welcome-chinese-investment-its-ports-despite-us
"In its annual report to Congress on China’s military power ... as well as through some exclusive logistics facilities."
China has interest in specific European ports
Markus Ziener, The Straits Times, "In Italy, China is hoping for another strategic foothold in Europe, Europe News and Top Stories - The Straits Times", April 5, 2019, https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/news-analysis-in-italy-china-is-hoping-for-another-strategic-foothold-in-europe
"Both the EU and the United States are concerned ... which is also ready to provide financing for the BRI projects."
Chinese expansion into ports creating backlash, concerns about militaristic purposes
Kristin Huang, South China Morning Post, "Why China buying up ports is worrying Europe | South China Morning Post", September 23, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2165341/why-china-buying-ports-worrying-europe
"China’s rapid advance into the ... to establish one in Gwadar Port in Pakistan."
US threatens tariffs on EU when their national security was threatened
CNBC, Reuters, "EU will react swiftly if Trump hits it with car tariffs: Commission", February 18, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/18/eu-will-react-swiftly-if-us-hits-it-with-car-tariffs-commission.html
"U.S. President Donald Trump has promised European Commission ... from imposing any tariffs or quotas,” Kempf said."
US hostile with tariffs to EU and criticizes Chinese investment in Italy
Ishaan Tharoor, The Washington Post, "China lays down a marker in Europe - The Washington Post", March 25, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/03/25/china-lays-down-marker-europe/?noredirect=on
"Some seven centuries after the legendary ... strategy than any investment agreements could ever be."
Trade relations critical between US and EU
USEU, US Mission to the European Union, "Ambassador Sondland Closing Remarks for AmChamEU's Transatlantic Week Conference | U.S. Mission to the European Union", March 21, 2019, https://useu.usmission.gov/ambassador-sondland-closing-remarks-for-amchameus-transatlantic-week-conference/
"Let’s look at trade, for example ... the EU there is no daylight between them. None." | 904,402 |
365,439 | 379,340 | 7 - APR - Heg | American Hegemony is inevitably tied to the Middle East
Cropsey 19
https://www.hudson.org/research/15570-a-u-s-withdrawal-will-cause-a-power-struggle-in-the-middle-east
If the United ... great-power status.
Hegemony is happening now and is sustainable – multipolarity not possible
Kortunov 18 (Dr. Andrey KORTUNOV Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council. June 28, 2018 Why the World is Not Becoming Multipolar https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2018/06/28/why-the-world-is-not-becoming-multipolar/)
Putin noted the ... property, education, and talents.
Even if they win inevitability, the Neg is key to a slow transition – that’s the only way to make it peaceful
Haass 19 (Richard, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, “How a World Order Ends”, Foreign Affairs, January/February, accessed via ebscohost)
For the United ... it will not.
First, Hegemony key to the promotion of human rights – even if hege has been bad in the past, other countries are worse
Hussain 17 (Murtaza Hussain is a journalist whose work focuses on national security, foreign policy and human rights. His work has previously been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian and Al Jazeera English. September 24 2017 THE VIEW FROM THE END OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE https://theintercept.com/2017/09/24/decline-american-empire-donald-trump/)
Such a development ... their larger neighbors.
Second, Hegemony key to solving warming
– other countries don’t solve
Graham 18 (DAVID A. GRAHAM is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers U.S. politics and global news. JUN 25, 2018 Can Anyone Fill the U.S. Leadership Vacuum on Climate Change? https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/can-anyone-fill-the-us-leadership-vacuum-on-climate-change/563594/)
But the U.S. ... of human life.
This is problematic because climate change leads to extinction
Spratt 19
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/148cb0_b2c0c79dc4344b279bcf2365336ff23b.pdf
In 2017-18, the ... in human behaviour.
Third, Failure to balance China causes a resurgence in the sphere of influence politics~-~--that collapses regional stability and economic globalization, causes nuclear proliferation and causes great power war.
Daniel Twining 17, Counselor and Asia Director, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, 3-21-2017, "Abandoning the Liberal International Order for a Spheres-of-Influence World is a Trap for America…," Medium, https://medium.com/out-of-order/abandoning-the-liberal-international-order-for-a-spheres-of-influence-world-is-a-trap-for-america-7bfcdbb83df4
The liberal world ... to oppose them. | 904,400 |
365,440 | 379,360 | 0 - Contact Information | 1st Speaker: Aarin Mhashelkar (Facebook)
2nd Speaker: Vinay Vankina (Facebook)
We'll disclose cases after we've broken them as well as any broken interps. Feel free to contact us if you need anything before round. | 904,420 |
365,441 | 379,355 | 0-General Info | Hi! We're Coppell TS, here's the contact information for each of us:
1st Speaker: Vishal Sivamani ([email protected])
2nd Speaker: Joshua Thomas ([email protected])
If you need any past affirmative constructives that haven't broken, let us know! We'd be happy to send it over to you if there's too quick a turnaround between rounds and it isn't already there. We will not disclose new positions that we haven't broken ~-~-- new affs won't be up here until they've been read in a competitive round.
If you have any other questions regarding our wiki in particular, use the email for Vishal on the wiki - I'm likely going to be running the wiki for our team but for general questions about cases either of us should be able to help you out.
Thanks!
~TS | 904,415 |
365,442 | 379,369 | 1 - Disclosure Interp | Debaters must disclose all broken constructive positions on the NDCA 2019-2020 PF wiki after they are read in round. The disclosure must include a tag, citation, and the first and last 3 words of each piece of evidence they read originally written by another author. | 904,430 |
365,443 | 379,392 | 2 - February - cap k | open source | 904,448 |
365,444 | 379,395 | PTOC R2 | open source, was facing anti blackness | 904,452 |
365,445 | 379,404 | Contact | Messenger us 15-20 min before round for disclosure
Email:
[email protected]
[email protected] | 904,462 |
365,446 | 379,411 | 3- Sunvite Aff Oil and Mining V2 | Eaton 19
US got sanctions on oil
Collin Eaton, 8-14-2019, "Explainer: U.S. sanctions and Venezuela's trade and oil industry partners," U.S., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-crude-sanctions-ex/explainer-u-s-sanctions-and-venezuelas-trade-and-oil-industry-partners-idUSKCN1V420P
The United States last week imposed a sweeping freeze on Venezuelan government assets in U.S. territory and threatened to sanction any company that works with socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s government, as the Trump administration ratcheted up its bid to force Maduro out. In January the United States US imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s most important global business - producing and selling crude oil industry, which accounts for more than 95 percent of the country’s exports revenue. U.S. refineries had been Venezuela’s top customer, and output has fallen by some 40 percent since then. The United States and many Western governments have recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s rightful head of state.
HOW DO U.S. SANCTIONS AFFECT THE SECTOR? The January sanctions prevent prevented U.S. companies from dealing with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA , and a clause that became effective in April block blocked PDVSA from operating in the U.S. financial system. The asset freeze announced in early August threatens sanctions against any company deemed by Washington to be “materially assisting” Venezuela’s government. While the January sanctions included similar language, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton last week said Moreover, the new round of sanctions gives gave companies a choice between doing business with Maduro or the United States. That has spooked PDVSA’s joint venture partners and customers, who are seeking clarity on the measure, sources said. WHAT ABOUT U.S. IMPORTS?
Viemla 19
US sanctions been hitting hard on oil
Franco Vielma, 3-30-2019, "Oil at the crossroads: The tug-of-war between the U.S. and Venezuela," Misión Verdad, http://misionverdad.com/mv-in-english/oil-at-the-crossroads-the-tug-of-war-between-the-us-and-venezuela
Venezuela through its state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) used to import some 100,000 barrels a day of naphtha from the United States, an indispensable diluent for processing, transporting and dispatching extra heavy crude, Venezuela's main export crude. But the White House's actions have ruined it, so Venezuela has seen its production levels affected, losing some 300,000 barrels a day just because of that factor. A damage of great significance to Venezuelan income, because of the boycott that the United States is carrying out not only on U.S. soil, but simultaneously in other countries. The company India Reliance Industries, in its commercial turn with Venezuela due to U.S. pressure, revealed that "Additionally Since the sanctions were imposed and, contrary to what some reports say, Reliance India has stopped all provision of diluents to PDVSA and will not resume those sales until the sanctions are lifted. This is how it was referred to by the BBC, in the name of Reliance, owned by Mukash Ambani, the richest man in Asia, who has close ties to the U.S. economy.
Weisbrot, ‘19 (Weisbrot and Sachs- " Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela
", CEPR, http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-2019-04.pdf )/MA
The August 2017 sanctions prohibited the Venezuelan government from borrowing in US financial markets. This prevented the government from restructuring its foreign debt, because any debt restructuring requires the issuance of new bonds in exchange for the existing debt. Thus, these sanctions prevented the economy from recovering from a deep recession which had already taken a large toll on the population, which along with the economy was more vulnerable to these sanctions and the ones that followed as a result of the economic crisis. Real GDP had already declined by about 24.7 percent from 2013 through 2016, and consumer price inflation for January to August 2017 was probably somewhere between 758 percent and 1,350 percent at an annual rate. Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela 2 It is important to emphasize that nearly all of the foreign exchange that is needed to import medicine, food, medical equipment, spare parts and equipment needed for electricity generation, water systems, or transportation, is received by the Venezuelan economy through the government’s revenue from the export of oil. Thus, any sanctions that reduce export earnings, and therefore government revenue, thereby reduce the imports of these essential and, in many cases, life-saving goods. The August 2017 sanctions adversely impacted oil production in Venezuela. But following the August 2017 executive order, oil production crashed, falling at more than three times the rate of the previous twenty months. This would be expected from the loss of credit and therefore the ability to cover maintenance and operations and carry out new investments necessary to maintain production levels. This acceleration in the rate of decline of oil production would imply a loss of $6 billion in oil revenue over the ensuing year. This by itself is an enormous loss of foreign exchange, relative to the country’s need for essential imports. Imports of food and medicine for 2018 were just $2.6 billion. Total imports of goods for 2018 were about $10 billion. The loss of so many billions of dollars of foreign exchange and government revenues was very likely the main shock that pushed the economy from its high inflation, when the August 2017 sanctions were implemented, into the hyperinflation that followed
Anatoly Kurmanaev and Clifford Krauss, 19' (Anatoly Kurmanaev and Clifford Krauss - "U.S. Sanctions Are Aimed at Venezuela’s Oil. Its Citizens May Suffer First.", No Publication, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/world/americas/venezuela-sanctions-maduro.html )/MA
Now the new American sanctions could cut Venezuela’s oil exports by two-thirds, to just $14 billion this year, and lead to a 26 percent reduction in the economy’s size, according to Mr. Rodríguez, the economist. Mr. Trump said the oil sanctions were meant to punish Mr. Maduro for human rights violations and force him to cede power to Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader whom the United States and many other countries have recognized as the rightful Venezuelan president. The sanctions announced by the Treasury Department on Jan. 28 banned United States companies and individuals from dealing with Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, or Pdvsa, which provides about 90 percent of the country’s hard currency. The sanctions essentially shut Venezuelan oil out of the American market. Mr. Maduro, accusing the United States of sponsoring a coup attempt, has vowed to remain in power. Before the sanctions, his country imported about 120,000 barrels of oil and refined petroleum products a day from the United States. The Venezuelans blended the lighter American oil with their own thick crude oil so it could flow through pipelines to ports. The American shipments halted last week.
Medea 19 - "U.S. Sanctions: Economic Sabotage That Is Deadly, Illegal, and Ineffective", Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/17/us-sanctions-economic-sabotage-deadly-illegal-and-ineffective )/MA
U.S. sanctions were largely responsible for at least 40,000 additional deaths that year. The Venezuela Pharmaceutical Association reported an 85 shortage of essential medicines in 2018. Absent U.S. sanctions, the rebound in global oil prices in 2018 should have led to at least a small rebound in Venezuela’s economy and more adequate imports of food and medicine. Instead, U.S. financial sanctions prevented Venezuela from rolling over its debts and deprived the oil industry of cash for parts, repairs and new investment, leading to an even more dramatic fall in oil production than in the previous years of low oil prices and economic depression. The oil industry provides 95 of Venezuela’s foreign earnings, so by strangling its oil industry and cutting Venezuela off from international borrowing, the sanctions have predictably - and intentionally - trapped the people of Venezuela in a deadly economic downward spiral. A study by Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, titled “Sanctions as Collective Punishment: the Case of Venezuela,” reported that the combined effect of the 2017 and 2019 U.S. sanctions are projected to lead to an astounding 37.4 decline in Venezuela’s real GDP in 2019, on the heels of a 16.7 decline in 2018 and the over 60 drop in oil prices between 2012 and 2016.
Viscidi, 16' (James M. Lindsay - "Venezuela on the Brink", Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/venezuela-brink )/MA
For a country that boasts the world’s largest proven oil reserves, this is an extraordinary state of affairs. Venezuela’s leaders desperately need to take action to save the country’s sole economic engine. But political instability, bordering on chaos, has stood in the way. The president, Nicolás Maduro, took office in 2013 as the handpicked successor of Hugo Chávez. Maduro is now the head of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and the standard-bearer of “Chavismo,” which is the term Venezuelans use to describe Chávez’s mix of populism, socialism, and cult-of-personality strongman leadership. But Maduro does not enjoy the fierce loyalty that Chávez inspired among working-class and lower-middle-class voters, and he is now fighting for his political survival. For the past two years, anti-Maduro protests and riots have rocked Venezuela’s cities. In response to his slipping support, Maduro has cracked down on dissent, even jailing prominent critics. In July, he reorganized the state bureaucracy, putting the defense minister directly in charge of all economic affairs. Maduro has clung to power only by maneuvering to prevent the opposition from holding a national recall referendum that would remove him from office. With his leadership under assault and his support in doubt, Maduro might not complete his term in office. But if he, or whoever might succeed him, wants to stop the economy’s free fall, there are some relatively simple, modest steps he could take to stabilize the oil sector. Doing so would insulate global oil markets from the shock they would endure if chaos in Venezuela further reduced its ability to produce oil. More important, rescuing the country’s oil industry would spare Venezuelans from even worse deprivations and would help pull the country back from the brink.
Stephania Taladrid, 19' (Stephania Taladrid - "Venezuela’s Food Crisis Reaches a Breaking Point", New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/venezuelas-food-crisis-reaches-a-breaking-point?verso=true )/MA
For years, Chávez relied on oil revenues to import food and sell it, along with other goods, at subsidized prices. While in power, he spent without restraint, managed to quadruple Venezuela’s foreign debt, and expropriated or nationalized hundreds of firms, factories, and farms. By the time Maduro took over, after Chávez’s death, Venezuela was on the verge of a crippling economic crisis. A plunge in oil prices precipitated the downfall and undercut Maduro’s capacity to fund long-standing assistance programs, such as food subsidies. To avoid cutting spending, Maduro began printing more and more money, sparking hyperinflation. By curbing imports, he further strangled domestic industries, and the damage to production only worsened when he decided to tighten currency and price controls. Before long, corruption, poverty, and hunger became widespread.
Byjessica Corbett, 19' (Byjessica Corbett, - "Economists Warn Trump's Sanctions Targeting Venezuela 'A Death Sentence for Tens of Thousands of People'", Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/25/economists-warn-trumps-sanctions-targeting-venezuela-death-sentence-tens-thousands )/MA
Two American economists warn that U.S. sanctions targeting Venezuela "are a death sentence for tens of thousands of people" and that the nation's humanitarian crisis will worsen as long as the sanctions continue. Since August of 2017, President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions that "have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018," write Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs. Their paper—entitled Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela (pdf)—was published Thursday by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), and comes as Trump continues to back opposition leader Juan Guaidó's effort to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The broad sanctions Trump imposed in 2017 fueled a sharp decline in oil production that impeded the Maduro government's ability to "import medicine, food, medical equipment, spare parts and equipment needed for electricity generation, water systems, or transportation," and the U.S. president has ramped up economic pressure since offering his support to Guaidó earlier this year. In late January, as Common Dreams reported, the Trump administration announced sanctions against Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA), the state-run oil company that serves as "a primary source of income and foreign currency for the country." Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence unveiled more sanctions targeting the Maduro government as well as companies that transport Venezuelan oil to Cuba.
William Bonnett 19, 8-23-2019, A trail of 'bloody gold' leads to Venezuela's government, CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/20/americas/venezuela-gold-mining-intl/index.html /CM
Rojas moved here three years ago, when oil prices hit a 12-year-low. Such drops in oil prices, compounded by years of mismanagement and corruption, were already pushing Venezuela's state-run oil industry to near-collapse ~-~- and the national economy along with it. Progressive US sanctions have tightened the vice, forcing the government to find alternative sources of revenue. In November 2018, embattled president Nicolas Maduro announced a "Gold Plan" that would allow Venezuela to profit an estimated $5 billion dollars annually, starting in 2019. "Gold will strengthen our international reserves and it will strengthen the national finances," he said, claiming that his government had been negotiating with foreign investors to sell the valuable mineral. "Welcome to the Orinoco Mining Arc and the Gold Plan, all investors worldwide," he said. Most of the country's gold reserves are thought to lie in Orinoco Mining Arc, Bolivar state. It is a vast stretch of land, most of it jungle, that spans more than 40,000 square miles from Guyana to Colombia. The three hour drive from the airport in Puerto Ordaz to the city of El Callao, considered locally as the mining industry's capital, is incredibly scenic, with lush terrain as far as the eye can see. Food and fuel sellers dot the journey, usually near small towns lost in the wilderness. The further into the jungle, the more expensive these goods get. The road is surprisingly well paved ~-~- an indication of how well traveled it is ~-~- but not without its perils. El Callao is the most violent municipality in Venezuela, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (VOV). The Roscio municipality, less than ten miles north in the town of Guasipati, came second. The reasons for the violence are many but they all begin with mining, which has attracted "armed groups, the presence of so called 'syndicates', coupled with the lethal and violent actions of police and military operatives in the area," VOV said in its 2018 annual report. We pass thirteen police checkpoints on the way in. It doesn't matter what we bring in ~-~- it's what comes out that these men are looking for. In 2016, the government named Orinoco a "strategic development zone", which would facilitate the establishment of mining operations and allow it to receive special funding. It also bypassed local authorities and the opposition-controlled National Assembly, centralizing control in the country's Mining Ministry in Caracas, right under Nicolas Maduro. The move would boost Venezuela's economy by compensating for the fall in oil revenue, the government said. But the US says that some gold profits are just going into private pockets. Maduro, members of his family and his regime have been using this legal framework to direct illegal mining operations in the region, granting the Venezuelan military "liberal access" to mines in order to buy their "staunch loyalty", the US Department of Treasury said in March as it imposed sanctions on Venezuela's mining industry.
Emma Graham-Harrison 19, 6-8-2019, Venezuela’s gold fever fuels gangs and insecurity: 'There will be anarchy', Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/08/venezuela-puerto-ordaz-gold-mines-armed-gangs /CM
Puerto Ordaz was once Venezuela’s industrial hub, a modernist dream of broad boulevards and ranks of factories and gateway to a belt of rich oilfields that funded government largesse for decades. As the economy has crumbled though, the modern city of steel and aluminium has been swallowed by its past, transformed into little more than an outpost of the gold mines a few hours’ drive away in the fringes of the Amazon. There, in swampy, malaria-ridden pits controlled by criminal gangs, men labour away much as they would have done centuries ago. The lumps of yellow metal they extract through backbreaking work now power the city; gold has become so pervasive that medieval-style barter is replacing hard currency across the city. Gold also increasingly pays the bills for the national government in distant Caracas. With oil revenues dwindling and US sanctions biting, the president, Nicolás Maduro, has been relying on wealth from the mines to keep the government afloat during a months-long standoff with the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó. So the government has allowed the illegal industry and the armed groups that run them to flourish, spawning an epidemic of violence, disease and environmental devastation, and drawing in much of the remaining population of Puerto Ordaz. “More than half our clients want to pay in gold,” said one estate agent in Puerto Ordaz, who described a recent nerve-racking drive through the increasingly lawless city to broker a deal, following buyers carrying an apartment’s worth of precious metal. “The client said ‘come in our car’, but I said: ‘No, we are traveling behind you.’ With the insecurity you don’t know who knows you have gold,” added the agent, who is still struggling with the new norms of doing business, and asked not to be named for her safety.
ICG 19' (ICG * - "Gold and Grief in Venezuela’s Violent South", RAISG, https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/radar/gold-and-grief-in-venezuelas-violent-south/ )/MA
Miners pay protection fees or “taxes” in relatively small quantities of gold, but make frequent instalments. These amounts increase considerably when the ELN or the sindicatos pay off government officials. Mineral traders report that senior authorities take kilograms of gold as bribes. They say, for example, that top military officers in Amazonas state receive at least 20kg in gold every month (valued at about $800,000) to allow illegal mining in Yapacana. This helps explain why senior army positions in the region, especially in Bolívar state, are among the most popular postings in Venezuela. These generals are often rotated, helping to foster expectations and buttress loyalty to the government in senior military circles. Gold from Amazonas state, says a former Venezuelan intelligence officer, ends up via extortion payments in the hands of regional heads of the security forces and intelligence bureaus. Failures to pay expected kickbacks have caused tensions between the National Guard and the guerrillas, according to miners in Yapacana, with one witness reporting an incident where guerrilla fighters shot directly at a Venezuelan army helicopter in a bid to make it crash. Armed indigenous communities also threw the National Guard out of the Alto Orinoco municipality after tiring of repeated abuses and extortion demands. Seizing on reports of deep state involvement in the illegal gold trade, and aiming to further undermine the Maduro government, the U.S. has taken action. Following Venezuela’s export of 21 tonnes of gold to Turkey in 2018, for example, Washington claimed via an executive order on 1 November that gold exports were being used to enrich Venezuela’s political and economic elite at the cost of increasing violence and human rights abuses in the country’s south, and would be considered liable for future sanctions. However, no sanctions have yet been applied. Turkey has been named as the main known purchaser of Venezuelan gold, and food products for use in state-subsidised rations boxes have reportedly been transported from Turkey to Venezuela as part of the arrangement. However, and although gold smuggling is associated with crimes that harm local communities, imposing sanctions on state gold exports could be misguided. Because most gold already leaves Venezuela via contraband routes, sanctions would probably only increase the volume of smuggled gold and thereby the revenues of organised crime networks, guerrillas and corrupt government officials. Gold can be trafficked to neighbouring countries where it would receive a certificate of origin, which would be an illegal but effective way to circumvent any sanctions.
Emma Graham-Harrison 19, 6-8-2019, Venezuela’s gold fever fuels gangs and insecurity: 'There will be anarchy', Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/08/venezuela-puerto-ordaz-gold-mines-armed-gangs /CM
“It was the first time I learned the value of a university education in grams of gold. I could not have imagined it.” Shopping malls have been taken over by metal dealers, who sit idly in rows of shops that once sold electronics or clothes, waiting for miners to arrive with crumbs of yellow to exchange for cash. Men with wary eyes and barely concealed guns stand near the main exits. They are the most discreet public face of an epidemic of violence nurtured in the mines, but already spilling beyond them. Gold fever has fuelled a proliferation of armed gangs, drawn in a Colombian guerrilla group, the ELN, fostered corruption in the national security forces, and insecurity in Puerto Ordaz. Disease has also festered in the mines then followed gold and miners to Puerto Ordaz, reviving malaria in a region where it was once stamped out. Troubles in the country’s remote east usually make fewer headlines than crises along the western border with Colombia, the main route for millions of migrants trying to escape Venezuela’s misery. But locals say the lawlessness brewing in the remote mining camps is an underestimated risk. “Here in Bolívar state, we have the conditions to finance chaos, because we have gold,” said Peraza. “In Caracas they don’t know what is going on here. They are so focused on the question of oil, because its been the economic heart of the country for 100 years. But the oil has dried up and no one has realised how reality changed.” Gold is far easier to transport, and less complex to extract, if you have a workforce desperate enough to do the dangerous, dirty work by hand. The men who dig for gold – and it is all men, women only work as cooks or in brothels at the mines – include professionals whose jobs were engulfed by the crisis or whose salaries have been eroded by hyperinflation to levels that will buy them a few loaves of bread, or perhaps a bag of rice. Some never return from the brutal pits, whatever deaths they met there not registered, their bodies never officially buried. Among the missing are photographer Wilmer González, who both chronicled the mines and worked in them. In the region, many who are not directly digging for gold are dependent on the gold economy to survive. Every day a steady stream of passenger cars head to the mines loaded with jerrycans of diesel, many driven by white-collar workers. “I have no choice if we want to eat – I haven’t been paid for months,” said Lucia, a primary school teacher who twice a week makes the 18 hour round trip with her husband and two small children, risking malaria and violence for a small markup that will keep a roof over their heads, and the most basic of meals on the table. She asked not to use her real name for fear of losing her job. Once a supporter of Hugo Chávez, she lost faith in the government as the economy collapsed around her once-prosperous family, destroying her husband’s blue collar factory job and turning her teaching post into a voluntary one.
Nicholas Casey 16, 8-14-2016, Hard Times in Venezuela Breed Malaria as Desperate Flock to Mines, No Publication, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/world/venezuela-malaria-mines.html /CM
It is a society turned upside down, a place where educated people abandon once-comfortable jobs in the city for dangerous, backbreaking work in muddy pits, desperate to make ends meet. And it comes with a steep price: Malaria, long driven to the fringes of the country, is festering in the mines and back with a vengeance. Venezuela was the first nation in the world to be certified by the World Health Organization for eradicating malaria in its most populated areas, beating the United States and other developed countries to that milestone in 1961. It was a huge accomplishment for a small nation, one that helped pave Venezuela’s development as an oil power and fueled hopes that a model to stamp out malaria across the globe was at hand. Since then, the world has dedicated enormous amounts of time and money to beating back the disease, with deaths plummeting by 60 percent in places with malaria in recent years, according to the W.H.O. But in Venezuela, the clock is running backward. The country’s economic turmoil has brought malaria back, sweeping the disease out of the remote jungle areas where it quietly persisted and spreading it around the nation at levels not seen in Venezuela for 75 years, medical experts say. It all starts with the mines. With the economy in tatters, at least 70,000 people from all walks of life have been streaming into this mining region over the past year, said Jorge Moreno, a leading mosquito expert in Venezuela. As they hunt for gold in watery pits, the perfect breeding ground for the mosquitoes that spread the disease become created, they are catching malaria by the tens of thousands. Then, with the disease in their blood, they return home to Venezuela’s cities. But because of the economic collapse, there is often no medicine and little fumigation to prevent mosquitoes there from biting them and passing malaria to others, sickening tens of thousands more people and leaving entire towns desperate for help. The economic breakdown has “triggered a great migration in Venezuela, and right behind it is the spread of malaria,” said Dr. Moreno, a researcher at a state-run laboratory in the mining region. “With this breakdown comes a disease that is cooked in the same pot.” Once out of the mines, malaria spreads quickly. Five hours away in Ciudad Guayana, a rusting former industrial boomtown where many are now jobless and have taken to wildcatting in the mines, a crowd of 300 people packed the waiting room of a clinic in May. All had symptoms of the disease: fevers, icy chills and uncontrollable tremors. There were no lights because the government had cut power to save electricity. There were no medicines because the Health Ministry had not delivered any. Health workers administered blood tests with their bare hands because they were out of gloves. Maribel Supero clutched her 23-year-old son as he trembled, unable to speak. José Castro held his 18-month-old daughter as she screamed. Griselda Bello, who works at the clinic, waved her hands helplessly and told yet another patient to hold on a bit longer. The pills had run out. There was nothing she could do. “Come back tomorrow at 10 a.m.,” she said. “My God,” the patient said. “Someone might die by then.” “Indeed, they might,” she said. In the nearby town of Pozo Verde, residents said malaria had swept in after miners began returning home sick, the government fumigators having vanished two years ago. Now, the public high school has become an incubating ground of its own: A quarter of its 400 students have contracted malaria since November.
Al Jazeera 18, 4-1-2018, WHO: Venezuela malaria cases jump by 69 percent, No Publication, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/venezuela-malaria-cases-jump-69-percent-180424172239443.html /CM
Health experts have warned that malaria cases in Venezuela jumped by an estimated 69 percent last year, expressing concern over the spread of the disease in the crisis-hit country and other parts of Latin America. The figure was released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, on the eve of World Malaria Day. According to the UN health agency's estimates, cases of malaria in Venezuela rose from to 240,613 in 2016 to 406,000 in 2017. READ MORE Malaria infections spreading in crisis-ridden Venezuela The current figures are around five times higher than the 2013 ones for the mosquito-borne disease. "What we are now seeing is a massive increase, probably reaching close to half a million cases per year," Pedro Alonso, director of WHO's global malaria programme, told reporters on Tuesday. "These are the largest increases reported anywhere in the world," he added, blaming a lack of resources and ineffective anti-malaria campaigns. Venezuelan migrants fleeing the economic and social crisis are carrying the mosquito-borne disease into Brazil and other parts of Latin America, WHO said, urging authorities to provide free screening and treatment regardless of their legal status to avoid further spread. "In the Americas, it's not just Venezuela. We're actually reporting increases in a number of other countries," said Alonso. "Venezuela, yes this is a significant concern, malaria is increasing and it's increasing in a very worrying way." The Venezuelan government's organisation overseeing healthcare in the country, El Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Salud, refused to comment on the matter when approached by Al Jazeera.
Stephanie Nebehay 18, 4-24-2018, Malaria on rise in crisis-hit Venezuela, WHO says, U.S., https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-malaria-venezuela/malaria-on-rise-in-crisis-hit-venezuela-who-says-idUSKBN1HV1ON /CM
GENEVA (Reuters) - Malaria is spreading rapidly in crisis-hit Venezuela, with more than an estimated 406,000 cases in 2017, up roughly 69 percent from a year before, the largest increase worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. Venezuelan migrants fleeing the economic and social crisis are carrying the mosquito-borne disease into Brazil and other parts of Latin America, the U.N. agency said, urging authorities to provide free screening and treatment regardless of their legal status to avoid further spread. “In the Americas, it’s not just Venezuela. We’re actually reporting increases in a number of other countries. Venezuela, yes this is a significant concern, malaria is increasing and it’s increasing in a very worrying way,” Pedro Alonso, director of WHO’s global malaria program, told a news briefing. Venezuela is slipping into hyperinflation with shortages of food and medicines during a fifth year of recession that President Nicolas Maduro’s government blames on Western hostility and falling oil prices. Venezuelan officials reported 240,613 malaria cases in 2016, many in the gold-mining state of Bolivar bordering Guyana, with an estimated 280 deaths, according to the WHO. The 2017 estimate has leapt to 406,000 cases - five times higher than in 2013. “What we are now seeing is a massive increase, probably reaching close to half a million cases per year. These are the largest increases reported anywhere in the world,” Alonso said. A lack of resources and ineffective anti-malaria campaigns were to blame, he said. WHO and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) are working with Venezuelan authorities to address the situation, he added. “We are seeing indeed because of population movement, cases among Venezuelan migrants appearing in other countries - Brazil certainly. But also in Colombia, in Ecuador and in a number of other places,” Alonso said. “What this calls for is renewed effort by the countries surrounding Venezuela to ensure adequate diagnosis and treatment free for whoever shows up at medical services,” he said. The global campaign against the life-threatening disease has stalled for the first time in a decade, with a reversal of gains made in some countries, the WHO said last November. Malaria infected around 216 million people in 91 countries in 2016, killing 445,000, with 90 percent of cases and fatalities in sub-Saharan Africa, it said.
Bram Ebus 19, 6-8-2019, Venezuela's mining arc: a legal veneer for armed groups to plunder, Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/08/venezuela-gold-mines-rival-armed-groups-gangs /CM
Multiple non-state armed groups are spreading their hold over southern Venezuela, adding another unpredictable factor to the country’s current crisis – and complicating any efforts for a peaceful resolution. Their methods and origins may be different, but their motivation is one which has driven violence in Latin America since colonial times: a hunger for gold and other valuable minerals. Venezuelan crime syndicates have run informal mines for years. More recently, Colombian guerrillas – dissidents from the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and members of the National Liberation Army (ELN) – have expanded their reach hundreds of miles into Venezuela. The groups are deeply entrenched in local communities, and often work in volatile alliances with parts of the military who privately profit from illegal mining. At least 300,000 people work at wildcat mines which have caused huge environmental damage, and sparked a malaria epidemic. Confrontations between the rival armed groups make southern Venezuela one of the most violent regions in Latin America. “Everybody wants to be boss,” explained a former miner who fled to Colombia to avoid the escalating violence. Numerous sources confirm the army’s participation in illicit mining and report that military death squads have occasionally entered mines to settle disputes. Most killings go unrecorded, but local media have reported more than a dozen massacres since 2016. Municipalities in the mining region cope with homicide far above that of Caracas, the world’s most violent capital city. Of these factions, the ELN is one of the most prominent, operating in 13 of Venezuela’s 24 states and extending its reach across the southern mining regions to form a corridor across Venezuela to near its disputed border with Guyana. The ELN’s tactical and ideological alignment with the Venezuelan government is grist to the mill for those arguing for a military intervention against Maduro. But any foreign incursion could potentially trigger a disastrous escalation of violence, possibly leading to a low-intensity conflict that would cause tremendous suffering for Venezuela’s most vulnerable populations. The ELN is now Latin America’s biggest guerrilla army, and has vowed to defend Maduro’s government in the event of a foreign intervention. Local sources have described how the guerrillas embed themselves in local communities, giving political and military training.
ICG *, 19' (International Crisis Group * - "Gold and Grief in Venezuela’s Violent South", RAISG, https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/radar/gold-and-grief-in-venezuelas-violent-south/ )/MA
Why did it happen??The ongoing economic crisis has driven many impoverished Venezuelans into working in the illegal mining sector. Armed state and non-state actors, Colombian guerrillas foremost among them, have also expanded in this resource-rich region. Fast-declining oil production has turned gold mining into a vital source of revenue. Why does it matter??The presence of organised crime and guerrilla groups harms communities, diverts scarce resources and prompts sky-high murder rates. Their expansion and cross-border operations, especially into Colombia, risk destabilising the entire region at a time of extreme uncertainty in Venezuela. What should be done??Providing humanitarian care for affected populations, preserving communications between neighbouring armed forces, and restarting peace talks with rebels in Colombia are essential next steps. Sanctions targeting gold exports are counterproductive and should be abandoned in favour of stronger due diligence on mineral trading. | 904,470 |
365,447 | 379,431 | Important Info | hi we'll be disclosing all broken positions on this topic after we read them and simp's main character is little Mac(smh) and mine is wolf.
You can reach me on facebook messenger best prolly. | 904,495 |
365,448 | 379,436 | BD AFF | Contention One is Decarbonization 1:54
The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions 2016 finds that
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, xx-xx-2016, "Nuclear Energy," https://www.c2es.org/content/nuclear-energy///MB
In 2016, nuclear energy non-proliferation safeguards.
That’s because Rhodes 2018 of Yale reports that
Richard Rhodes, 07-19-2018, "Why Nuclear Power Must Be Part of the Energy Solution," Yale E360, https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-nuclear-power-must-be-part-of-the-energy-solution-environmentalists-climate sd
In the late 16th century, major energy source.
Bosselman 07 corroborates, adding that
Bosselman 7—Professor of Law with a specialty in environmental law (Fred, “THE ECOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES OF NUCLEAR POWER,” New York University Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2007, SSRN, // JM
The use of nuclear to facilitate compliance.224
Unfortunately, the status quo is bleak for nuclear energy, as Union of Concerned Scientists finds in 2018 that because of profitability issues due to fossil fuels like natural gas,
Union of Concerned Scientists, 10-9-2018, "The Nuclear Power Dilemma," https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-dilemma sd
More than one-third more than triple by 2035.
The disappearance of nuclear energy is concerning as Union of Concerned Scientists conclude that
Union of Concerned Scientists, 10-9-2018, "The Nuclear Power Dilemma," https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/nuclear-power-dilemma sd
More than one-third of would more than triple by 2035.
However, the best way to counter carbon emissions is to expand nuclear power – Jiang 2011 finds that
Ziying Jiang, 6-25-2011, "Nuclear Power Development for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction in China," KEAI, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674927811500188 sd
The carbon reduction would be greater.
Keeping emissions low is vital, as Jennifer Chu of MIT cites a 2013 study that finds in
Jennifer Chu. MIT News, 8-29-2013, "Study: Air pollution causes 200,000 early deaths each year in the U.S.," http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829 //NM
Researchers from MIT’s exposure to air pollution.
Fortunately, reducing emissions avoids the death sentence for thousands – Whitman of Fortune in 2016 finds that
Whitman, 16 (Christine Todd Whitman, 3-04-2016, Fortune, "Why Nuclear Energy Can Help Fight Climate Change", https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-nuclear-energy-help-fight-180008048.html), accessed on 3-3-2020 //NM
America is facing c More from Fortune.com
Contention Two is Energy Equity 2:05
Alexander of the Consumer Energy Alliance reports in 2017 that
Thomas Alexander, 10-16-2017, "More Americans Are Living in Energy Poverty," Consumer Energy Alliance, https://consumerenergyalliance.org/2017/10/americans-living-energy-poverty/ sd
For Americans living who needs it. Learn how we can make energy more affordable to Americans in poverty.
Our lack of energy efficiency contributes to energy poverty, as Indrawati 2015 of the World Bank writes that
Sri Mulyani Indrawati, 07-28-15, “What you need to know about energy and poverty,” World Bank Blogs, https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/what-you-need-know-about-energy-and-poverty sd
We find that energy poverty solar potential is only just beginning to be fully understood.
This makes nuclear energy the most attractive energy option due to its reliability aiding household efficiency. Mueller 2018 of the Office of Nuclear Energy reports that
Mike Mueller, 02-27-18, “Nuclear Power is the Most Reliable Energy Source and It’s Not Even Close,” Office of Nuclear Energy, https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close sd
Nuclear energy is America’s to generate the same amount of electricity onto the grid.
The Energy Services Group International concludes that
Energy Services Group International, 5-8-2015, "Nuclear Power Efficiency," https://www.esgi.net/2015/05/08/know-efficiency-of-nuclear-power-energy-staffing-jobs/ sd
Energy efficiency is industry across the board.
That high efficiency from nuclear energy is necessary for affordability. Indeed, a study from the CEB quantifies that
Edic Modic, March 2019, “Energy Poverty in Europe: How Energy Efficiency and Renewables Can Help,” Council of Europe Development Bank, https://coebank.org/media/documents/CEB_Study_Energy_Poverty_in_Europe.pdf sd
Base model analysis -0.6 within three years.
In comparison to other energy sources - Diaz 2011 finds that nuclear energy is price competitive because
Nils Diaz, Summer 2011, Nuclear energy is clean, reliable and affordable. Not to mention easy to manage.," Americas Quarterly, https://www.americasquarterly.org/node/2769 //NM
Nuclear power is a reliable, to the operation of LWRs.
Getting Americans out of energy poverty is crucial, as Ingber of NPR reports in 2018 that
Sasha Ingber, 9-19-2018, "31 Percent Of U.S. Households Have Trouble Paying Energy Bills," NPR.org, https://www.npr.org/2018/09/19/649633468/31-percent-of-u-s-households-have-trouble-paying-energy-bills sd
Nearly a third terms of geography, "I am going to freeze during this cold season."
Even worse, the impact extends beyond this generation; Alexander 2017 furthers that
Thomas Alexander, 10-16-2017, "More Americans Are Living in Energy Poverty," Consumer Energy Alliance, https://consumerenergyalliance.org/2017/10/americans-living-energy-poverty/ sd
For Americans living t. Learn how we can make energy more affordable to Americans in poverty. | 904,506 |
365,449 | 379,442 | NEG 1 - Indigenous people | NEG
Supply and Demand
Currently, the US is tanking in the nuclear energy export market, but Trump wants us winning again – DiChristopher of CNBC writes in 2019 that
DiChristopher, 19 (Tom DiChristopher, 4-4-2019, CNBC, "The US is losing the nuclear energy export race to China and Russia. Here's the Trump team's plan to turn the tide", https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/21/trump-aims-to-beat-china-and-russia-in-nuclear-energy-export-race.html), accessed on 3-3-2020 //NM
Keep Me Logged In The Trump administration is … engage in 123 agreements,"
And Calma 2020 explains that
Justine Calma, 2-10-2020, "Trump’s budget continues to boost nuclear energy," Verge, https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/10/21131701/trump-budget-proposal-nuclear-energy-programs-spending//AD
Donald Trump’s budget proposal … to gain a larger foothold in the US.
Unfortunately, the domestic stimulus that comes alongside affirming only provides Trump with a clear route to pursue harmful legislative solutions. Specifically, ABC News 2019 writes that Trump has wanted to issue Section 232 which
Abc News, 10-9-2019, "US nuclear, uranium mining industries hope for Trump bailout," ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/us-nuclear-uranium-mining-industries-hope-trump-bailout-66167849 //BB
Trump is scheduled to receive … operators and utilities had opposed the production quota sought by mining interestss
Going forward when affirming, Carney 2020 of the LawFare Blog finds that
Todd Carney, 3-4-2020, "Trump Backs Away From Uranium Quota," Lawfare, https://www.lawfareblog.com/trump-backs-away-uranium-quota//AD
In January 2018, two American … administration, such as Fox News and the Washington Examiner.
It’s critical that this path is not pursued as the US’ supply can’t sustain the increased amount of demand. Empirically, after the debut of Section 232, Preiss 2019 finds that
Rainer Michael Preiss, 2-28-2019, "U-Turn For Uranium As U.S. Decides If Miners Pose National Security Threat," Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/rainermichaelpreiss/2019/02/28/u-turn-for-uranium-as-u-s-decides-if-miners-pose-national-security-threat/#f028d0a6043d //BB
Geopolitics in 2019 will also play are … construction and 41 planned.
As a result, Saefong 18 explains that the price of uranium is posed to rise to a higher level, with the driver being the reduction in supply and the increase in demand.
Myra P. Saefong, 9-7-2018, "Uranium Prices Poised to Power Higher," No Publication, https://www.barrons.com/articles/uranium-prices-poised-to-power-higher-1536323400//BB
The key price “drivers have been … top producing country.
And Tamasi 2018 points out that
David Tamasi, 12/27/2018 , "Don't impose a quota on uranium imports," Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/dont-impose-a-quota-on-uranium-imports //BB
Tariffs, quotas, or the like would … our national security at risk.
There is one main impact from price hikes: jobs.
The World Nuclear News in 2019 concludes that
Filing, 4-1-2019, "Uranium producers await US presidential decision : Uranium and Fuel," No Publication, https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Uranium-producers-await-US-presidential-decision //BB
"The variation in scope and effect of … creating national security concerns, it said.
Waste
Buncom 2018 of Stanford explains that
Frank Buncom, 3-5-2018, "Nuclear Waste Storage: Why We Should Avoid Nuclear Energy," Stanford University, http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/buncom1/ //DL
Renewable energy sources, … storage in which may last hundreds of years.
Moreover, the US Government Accountability Office reports in 2018 that
US Government Accountability Office, 2018, "Key Issues: Disposal of High-Level Nuclear Waste," https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary //DL
The United States has over 90,000 metric … for permanent disposal remain unclear.
However, Simpson 2018 of Harvard finds that current nuclear storage solutions are temporary, vulnerable to natural disasters that could overwhelm the storage sites.
James Simpson, 9-5-2018, "Looking for a Trash Can: Nuclear waste management in the United States," Science in the News, http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/looking-trash-can-nuclear-waste-management-united-states///DL
Nuclear waste storage facilities … is retrievable by future generations (geological disposition) or a sealed site that can’t be reopened (geological disposal).
And the storage situation is nowhere near being solved as France 24 explains in 2019 that after billions of dollars and decades, the US has failed to find any permanent storage sites.
AFP, 1-30-2019, "Storage of nuclear waste a 'global crisis': report," France 24, https://www.france24.com/en/20190130-storage-nuclear-waste-global-crisis-report //DL
French oversight bodies have.. , Finland and Britain.
Devastatingly, this nuclear waste historically is dumped near Native American tribes, destroying their land. The Scientific American in 2010 explains that
Scientific American, 3-31-2010, "Reservations about Toxic Waste: Native American Tribes Encouraged to Turn Down Lucrative Hazardous Disposal Deals," https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talk-reservations-about-toxic-waste/ //DL
start article Native tribes across … land, and is working with dozens of other tribes to try to do the same.
Nuclear waste destroying their land is disastrous in two ways –
First, destroying native culture and way of life. Vickery 15 that it prohibits
Jamie Vickery, 7-25-2015, "Native Americans: Where in Environmental Justice Research?," University of Colorado Boulder, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4835033/ //DL
Integration of “eco-cultural attributes” … and race effects in environmental exposure.
Second, it exploits Native American poverty.
Brook ’98 furthers that empirically,
Daniel Brook, Jan 1998, “Environmental Genocide: Native Americans and Toxic Waste,” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3487423.pdf?casa_token=Hq1ks_reM9YAAAAA:7vHzylXhJ2oPZ4g1sIjGEojrg2x2-JJtOoiQJOYngHS4NPXjkHU5xsyF8-FjiZ8DCdSC146bfbrJfWbtFCQVm6Yfi4QriQEaK_wErfu5fHyY2wZJ1AMr //DL
Although this type of … grants as well (Angel 1991, 16-17
This makes sense as the Scientific American furthers that
Scientific American, 3-31-2010, "Reservations about Toxic Waste: Native American Tribes Encouraged to Turn Down Lucrative Hazardous Disposal Deals," https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talk-reservations-about-toxic-waste/ //DL
start article Native tribes across the … with dozens of other tribes to try to do the same.
Thus, more waste would require the US government to exploit native poverty even more, pushing native groups to the brink of full genocide. That’s because Weaver 2010 highlights that
Hilary Weaver, 5-4-2010, "Native Americans and Cancer Risks: Moving Toward Multifaceted Solutions," Taylor and Francis Group, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19371910903240621
While it is clear that Native Americans … associated with cultural loss
And the scope of this slow but violent environmental genocide is massive, as Brook concludes
Daniel Brook, Jan 1998, “Environmental Genocide: Native Americans and Toxic Waste,” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3487423.pdf?casa_token=Hq1ks_reM9YAAAAA:7vHzylXhJ2oPZ4g1sIjGEojrg2x2-JJtOoiQJOYngHS4NPXjkHU5xsyF8-FjiZ8DCdSC146bfbrJfWbtFCQVm6Yfi4QriQEaK_wErfu5fHyY2wZJ1AMr //DL
The Band informed and educated … disposal facility may be sited on a reservation" (Haner 1994, 107). | 904,514 |
365,450 | 379,454 | TOC AFF - Relations | ====~~Hamidaddin ‘13~~====
**Abdullah Hamidaddin (PhD candidate in King’s College London), Al Arabiya, 9-20-2013** ~~"A window for Iranian-Gulf relations?" https://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2013/09/20/A-window-for-Iranian-Gulf-relations-~~Accessed4-3-2020 // RZ
Thus if I can show that Saudi Arabia can benefit from U.S.-
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security of Saudi Arabia creating a second barrier for Saudi-Iranian normalization.
====~~Seligman ‘20~~====
Lara **Seligman**, Robbie Gramer, **Foreign Policy, 1-14-2020**, ~~"Nervous U.S. Allies Brace for Iran Fallout" https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/14/nervous-allies-trump-iran-fallout-middle-east-tensions-suleimani-killing-conflict/~~ Accessed 4-11-2020 ~|~| jun Trump’s unpredictable behavior and inflammatory rhetoric have these nations worried that, while the U.S. president will respond forcefully when American lives are at stake, he may not have their backs if regional interests are threatened. Trump, for instance, declined to respond after Iran allegedly struck key Saudi oil facilities last September, a surprisingly subdued response for an administration that has said protecting Saudi Arabia is a policy priority. "On the one hand, they are happy that Trump is willing to sanction and pressure and take Iran down a notch," said Ilan Goldenberg, an expert on Middle East issues with the Center for a New American Security. But on the other: "They are nervous that he is unsteady and goes too far. … No one really knows what Donald Trump will do." Although there is no love lost for Suleimani, who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition forces in Iraq alone, behind closed doors, Gulf nations, in particular, blame the United States for unnecessarily escalating the crisis, current and former officials told Foreign Policy. After the strike, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly was so alarmed that he dispatched his younger brother Khalid bin Salman, the deputy defense minister, to Washington to urge restraint. Riyadh’s vulnerability to Iran was on sharp display in September by the drone and missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility. Next time, officials worry that Tehran could go after even more critical infrastructure—such as desalination plants, which provide clean water to the population. Barbara Leaf, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, said Gulf allies are watching Trump with trepidation—particularly his comments signaling that he wants to bring U.S. troops home from the Middle East and touting U.S. energy independence. "There is huge relief, even glee, I’m sure in private quarters, but great uncertainty on both counts: How will the Iranians ultimately respond because ~~the missile strike~~ was just an initial dish on the menu, and then what does the U.S. administration intend to do, and what is its larger strategy?" Leaf said. Top administration officials insist that killing Suleimani will make Iran think twice before lashing out at the United States again, though they still acknowledge that Iran poses a lingering threat. "We now enjoy a great position of strength regarding Iran. It’s as good as it has ever been, and Iran has never been in the place that it is today," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a speech at Stanford University on Monday. "We have reestablished deterrence, but we know it’s not everlasting, that risk remains. We are determined not to lose that deterrence." Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a close confidant of the president, said the attack on Suleimani was a "turning point" that has caused Iran to reevaluate its dealings in the region. Keane noted that the retaliatory strikes on U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq, which did damage to infrastructure but did not cause a single death, were "rather insignificant" compared with the regime’s rhetoric. It is "noteworthy" that Iran took direct responsibility for the strikes, rather than handing the job over to proxies, because it wanted to "control the outcome," he said. "Khamenei blinked," Keane said, referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "He’s only done it twice in 40 years, and both times it had to do with American use of force." But privately, some current and former officials said U.S. allies were not so sure. "None of them think we’ve deterred Iran," one former U.S. administration official said. Many Gulf and European partners are "panicking" because no one understands the U.S. strategy or can predict what Iran will do next, said Ariane Tabatabai, an analyst with the Rand Corp., a U.S.-based think tank. She said she was struck by the lack of coordination ahead of the attack and confusing messaging from the administration afterward. With its actions over the last six months since Iran started lashing out, the United States has sent a signal that it will respond only if U.S. interests are threatened—and even then the red line is unclear. In the eyes of U.S. allies, the Trump administration’s response to Iran’s aggression is difficult to predict. After Iran shot down a U.S. drone in June 2019, Trump said he approved and then abruptly called off strikes against Iranian targets. "We will go from 0 to 100 if there is a single American casualty, but we’re not going to do anything if Iran attacks major facilities" in the region, Tabatabai said. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, two countries that have taken a hard line on Iran, were likely more supportive of the strike than some other countries, but there is still concern about the impact on the region, Tabatabai said.
====~~Northam ‘20~~====
Jackie **Northam, NPR**.org, **1-8-2020**, ~~"Saudi Arabia Fears Being Drawn Into U.S.-Iran Conflict" https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794704361/saudi-arabia-fears-being-drawn-into-u-s-iran-conflict~~ Accessed 4-10-2020 ~|~| jun In September, Saudi Arabia's vulnerabilities were laid bare after an attack on Saudi Aramco by cruise missiles and drones. It was blamed on Iran. Rome says Saudi Arabia was surprised there was no response to the attack from the Trump administration. ROME: It became very clear to the leadership in Riyadh that Washington does not have its back from a military point of view and that they need to urgently try another avenue. NORTHAM: That avenue was diplomacy. Emily Hawthorne, a Middle East specialist at Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence company, says after the Aramco attack, Saudi Arabia focused on trying to de-escalate tension in the Persian Gulf region. EMILY HAWTHORNE: We have seen the Saudis back away from what was once a pretty sharply confrontational stance against Iran. And we've seen them move more toward - beginning to probe the idea of seeking a dialogue with Iran. NORTHAM: Hawthorne says efforts towards a Saudi-Iranian detente were in the very early stages and mediated by other countries such as Pakistan and Iraq. Trita Parsi, an executive vice president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says there were tangible signs that Saudi Arabia was serious about cooling tensions with Iranian proxies such as the Houthis. TRITA PARSI: We saw an 80 reduction in Saudi airstrikes on Yemen. We saw talks between the Houthis and the Saudis, which led to an exchange of more than a hundred prisoners of war. And now we apparently also saw that there were messages being sent between the Saudis and Iran. NORTHAM: In fact, Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told Parliament that he was mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia. He said Soleimani was bringing a message for the Saudis on the day he was killed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threw cold water on the idea that Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission.
====~~Luck ‘20~~====
**Taylor Luck, Christian Science Monitor, 1-8-2020** ~~"Iran crisis: Why Gulf Arabs increasingly see US as a liability" https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2020/0108/Iran-crisis-Why-Gulf-Arabs-increasingly-see-US-as-a-liability~~Accessed4-12-2020 // RZ
The Gulf’s dramatic turnabout and push for diplomacy with Iran was fueled in part by
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Al Thani discussed de-escalation with Mr. Trump by phone Tuesday.
===Asia===
====~~Janardhan ‘19~~====
**Narayanappa Janardhan (Fellow at the University of Exeter and senior research fellow at the Gulf-Asia Program at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy), Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 5-6-2019** ~~"Asian-led Collective Security Architecture for the Gulf" https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/25765949.2019.1605568~~Accessed4-12-2020 // RZ
Conclusion The crux of a new Gulf-Asia diplomacy rests on promoting cooperation between
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, especially the Chinese and Indian navies, could be tapped as alternatives,
====~~Garlick ‘20~~====
**Jeremy Garlick **and Radka Havlová,** Assistant Professors At The University Of Economics Prague, SAGE Journals, 1-30-2020**, ~~"China’s "Belt and Road" Economic Diplomacy in the Persian Gulf: Strategic Hedging amidst Saudi–Iranian Regional Rivalry" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1868102619898706~~Accessed4-16-2020RZ
Sino–Iranian relations must nevertheless be understood in the regional context and in the
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China to introduce sanctions on Iranian oil exports after US withdrawal from the JCPOA
====~~Su ‘19~~====
**Alice Su + Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 12-17-2019** ~~"China deepens ties to Middle East as Trump downsizes U.S. role" https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-12-17/china-pivots-to-middle-east-as-trump-downsizes-u-s-role~~Accessed4-12-2020 // RZ
WORLD and NATION China deepens ties to Middle East as Trump downsizes U.S
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projects to build up railroads, ports and electricity infrastructure across the region.
====~~Greer ‘19~~====
**Lucille Greer (Schwarzman Fellow at the Wilson Center), The Diplomat, 9-24-2019** ~~"China Should Broker Peace Between Saudi Arabia and Iran" https://thediplomat.com/2019/09/china-should-broker-peace-between-saudi-arabia-and-iran/~~Accessed4-11-2020 // RZ
THE DEBATE China Should Broker Peace Between Saudi Arabia and Iran Beijing has the motivation
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step in. Lucille Greer is a Schwarzman Fellow at the Wilson Center.
====~~Scita ‘20~~====
**Julia Gurol (research associate at the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO)) and Jacopo Scita (H.H. Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah doctoral fellow at Durham University), Atlantic Council, 1-24-2020**, ~~"China’s Persian Gulf strategy: Keep Tehran and Riyadh content" https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/chinas-persian-gulf-strategy-keep-tehran-and-riyadh-content/~~Accessed4-16-2020 // RZ
China leans on using supportive language in regards to Iran, by accusing the United
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the Saudi strategy to build a military industry, and support the theory that
====~~Janardhan ‘20~~====
**Narayanappa Janardhan (Fellow at the University of Exeter and senior research fellow at the Gulf-Asia Program at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy), Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 2-21-2020** ~~"Belt and Road Initiative: China’s Diplomatic Security Tool in the Gulf? " https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/25765949.2020.1728968~~Accessed4-12-2020 // RZ
Conclusion The Middle East is riven by conflicts. The common thread running through
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inconclusive. A new arrangement could evolve to simultaneously compete aggressively in some areas
====~~Janardhan ‘19~~====
**Narayanappa Janardhan (Fellow at the University of Exeter and senior research fellow at the Gulf-Asia Program at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy), Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, 5-6-2019** ~~"Asian-led Collective Security Architecture for the Gulf" https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/25765949.2019.1605568~~Accessed4-12-2020 // RZ
if required, as part of a larger collective security architecture that could include the
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thereby holding the possibility of contributing to peace and stability in the region.
===Iran===
====~~Jones ‘11~~====
**Toby C. Jones (Assistant Professor of history at Rutgers University), The Atlantic, 12-22-2011** ~~"Don't Stop at Iraq: Why the U.S. Should Withdraw From the Entire Persian Gulf" https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/dont-stop-at-iraq-why-the-us-should-withdraw-from-the-entire-persian-gulf/250389/~~Accessed4-3-2020 // RZ
It is difficult to untangle where American concerns about Iran overlap with its desire to
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posture has also emboldened its allies, sometimes to act in counterproductive ways.
====~~Zaccara ‘19~~====
Mehran **Haghirian and **Luciano **Zaccara (research assistant professor at Qatar University),** **Atlantic Council, 10-3-2019**, ~~"Making sense of HOPE: Can Iran’s Hormuz Peace Endeavor succeed?" https://atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/making-sense-of-hope-can-irans-hormuz-peace-endeavor-succeed/~~ Accessed 4-11-2020 ~|~| jun
Since President Hassan Rouhani’s election in 2013, Iran has proposed the establishment of a
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facilitated the ceasefire that ended the war between Iran and Iraq in 1988.
====~~Fassihi ‘19~~====
Farnaz **Fassihi and **Ben **Hubbard, New York Times, 10-4-2019**, ~~"Saudi Arabia and Iran Make Quiet Openings to Head Off War" https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-iran-talks.html~~ Accessed 4-7-2020 ~|~| jun After years of growing hostility and competition for influence, Saudi Arabia and Iran have taken steps toward indirect talks to try to reduce the tensions that have brought the Middle East to the brink of war, according to officials from several countries involved in the efforts. Even the prospect of such talks represents a remarkable turnaround, coming only a few weeks after a coordinated attack on Saudi oil installations led to bellicose threats in the Persian Gulf. Any reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran could have far-reaching consequences for conflicts across the region. It was President Trump’s refusal to retaliate against Iran for the Sept. 14 attack, analysts say, that prompted Saudi Arabia to seek its own solution to the conflict. That solution, in turn, could subvert Mr. Trump’s effort to build an Arab alliance to isolate Iran. In recent weeks, officials of Iraq and Pakistan said, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, asked the leaders of those two countries to speak with their Iranian counterparts about de-escalation. Iran welcomed the gestures, stating privately and publicly that it was open to talks with Saudi Arabia. In a statement to The New York Times on Friday, the Saudi government acknowledged that Iraq and Pakistan had offered to mediate talks between the two countries but denied that Prince Mohammed had taken the initiative. "Efforts at de-escalation must emanate from the party that began the escalation and launched attacks, not the kingdom," the statement said. Distrust between the two Middle Eastern powers remains intense, and the prospect of high-level direct talks any time soon appears remote. But even a slight warming could echo far outside their respective borders, where their rivalry fuels political divides from Lebanon to Yemen. Iran has long wanted to wrest the Saudis from their alliance with Iran’s archenemies, Israel and the United States, which are waging a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran to try to force it to restrict its nuclear program and stop backing militias in the region. Image Iran’s receptiveness for contact with the Saudis contrasts with its chilly tone toward the United States. Last week, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, dodged an opportunity to speak directly with Mr. Trump while both were attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The new overtures between Saudi Arabia and Iran began in the aftermath of last month’s drone and cruise missile strikes on two Saudi oil facilities, which Saudi Arabia and the United States accused Iran of orchestrating. Despite tough threats by the Trump administration, the president declined to order a military response. The demurral raised questions for the Saudis about the American commitment to Saudi security, which has underpinned the strategic layout of the Persian Gulf for decades. Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan met with Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, in Jeddah last month. Days later, while Mr. Khan was at the General Assembly, he told reporters that Prince Mohammed had asked him to talk to Iran. Prince Mohammed told Mr. Khan, "I want to avoid war," according to a senior Pakistani official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. "He asked the prime minister to get involved." Mr. Khan then spoke with Mr. Rouhani on the sidelines of the General Assembly. The Iraqi prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, visited Saudi Arabia a few days after Mr. Khan did. A senior Iraqi official said that Prince Mohammed asked Mr. Abdul Mahdi to mediate with Iran, and that Iraq had suggested Baghdad as the venue for a potential meeting. "There is a big response from Saudi Arabia and from Iran and even from Yemen," Mr. Abdul Mahdi told journalists in Iraq after his return from the kingdom. "And I think that these endeavors will have a good effect." Iran also endorsed the idea. "Iran is open to starting a dialogue with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region," Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, told Al Jazeera in an interview broadcast on Tuesday. "An Iranian-Saudi dialogue," he added, "could solve many of the region’s security and political problems." While they explore back-channel possibilities, both sides have continued to stake out staunchly opposing public positions. Image The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia had not asked anyone to send messages to Iran. Instead, he wrote, other countries he did not identify had offered to serve as intermediaries. "We informed them that the truce needs to come from the side that is escalating and spreading chaos through aggressive acts in the region," Mr. al-Jubeir wrote. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran said that his country would "definitely greet Saudi Arabia with open arms" — but only if it prioritized friendly relations with neighbors over purchasing weapons from the United States. Iran has long sought to pull Saudi Arabia away from the United States and Israel. But it was the lack of an American military response to the strikes on Saudi oil facilities that appeared to have created an opening. "There are cracks in the armor suggesting Saudi Arabia is interested in exploring a new relationship with Iran," said Philip Gordon, a former White House coordinator for the Middle East.
====~~Zaccara ‘19~~====
Mehran **Haghirian and **Luciano **Zaccara (research assistant professor at Qatar University),** **Atlantic Council, 10-3-2019**, ~~"Making sense of HOPE: Can Iran’s Hormuz Peace Endeavor succeed?" https://atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/making-sense-of-hope-can-irans-hormuz-peace-endeavor-succeed/~~ Accessed 4-11-2020 ~|~| jun
Paragraph eight of this resolution requests the UN Secretary General examine, in consultation with
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the UAE have been calling for similar propositions with regards to regional dialogue.
====~~Barzegar ‘10~~====
Kayhan **Barzegar** (Dr. Barzegar is a faculty member at Science and Research Campus, Islamic Azad University. He is also an associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a research affiliate at the MIT Center for International Studies, and a senior research fellow at the Center for Strategic Research (CSR) and the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran), **Harvard Belfer Center, 2010**, ~~"BALANCE OF POWER IN THE PERSIAN GULF: AN IRANIAN VIEW", https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/Barzegar-Balance-of-Power-in-the-Persian-Gulf.pdf~~ Accessed 4-11-2020 ~|~| jun As the cases of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Levant have shown, these two actors also have the potential to make coalitions and de facto alliances. For the United States, neutralizing the security threats against Iran is key to creating sustainable peace and stability in the region and to eliciting Iran’s constructive cooperation in the context of its own national security and interests. Most of Iran’s policies in the Persian Gulf are reactions to U.S. saber-rattling, especially to threats made by the Bush administration as it pursued a strategy of labeling Iran as the main threat in the region — a strategy aimed at creating a new coalition between the conservative Arab states and Israel in order to achieve U.S. strategic aims in the region, especially the conclusion of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.17 Despite the weakness of such threats at the rhetorical level, they have continued to appear in one form or another during the Obama administration, to the extent that Iran has enhanced its "interconnected security" strategy,18 which considers any threat against its security as jeopardizing the security of the entire region. Iran’s numerous military maneuvers indicate the increased level of tension with America. Such a strategy, which up to now may be regarded as successful, is based on the two concepts of "deterrence" and "offensive defense" through Iran’s active presence in the region’s politics19 and mainly adapted to balance the security threats stemming from the heavy presence of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region. If security threats against Iran are withdrawn, however, Iranian foreign policy will switch to a win-win calculus, with the genuine possibility of expanding regional cooperation in a scenario in which the role and influence of other regional and global actors are accepted.
====~~Friedman ‘14~~====
George **Friedman** in his book "The Next Decade", **Stratfor, 11-24-2014**, ~~"Strategic Reversal: The United States, Iran, and the Middle East" https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/strategic-reversal-united-states-iran-and-middle-east~~ Accessed 4-11-2020 ~|~| jun Indeed, in less than ten years, Iran has found itself with American troops on both its eastern and western borders. Iran's primary strategic interest is regime survival. It must avoid a crushing U.S. intervention while guaranteeing that Iraq never again becomes a threat. Meanwhile, Iran must increase its authority within the Muslim world against the Sunni Muslims who rival and sometimes threaten it. In trying to imagine a U.S.-Iranian detente, consider the overlaps in these countries' goals. The United States is in a war against some — but not all — Sunnis, and these Sunnis are also the enemies of Shiite Iran. Iran does not want U.S. troops along its eastern and western borders. (In point of fact, the United States does not want to be there either.) Just as the United States wants to see oil continue to flow freely through Hormuz, Iran wants to profit from that flow, not interrupt it. Finally, the Iranians understand that the United States alone poses the greatest threat to their security: solve the American problem and regime survival is assured. The United States understands, or should, that resurrecting the Iraqi counterweight to Iran is simply not an option in the short term. Unless the United States wants to make a huge, long-term commitment of ground forces in Iraq, which it clearly does not, the obvious solution to its problem in the region is to make an accommodation with Iran. The major threat that might arise from this strategy of accommodation would be that Iran oversteps its bounds and attempts to occupy the oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf directly. Given the logistical limitations of the Iranian army, this would be difficult. Also given that it would bring a rapid American intervention, such aggressive action on the part of the Iranians would be pointless and self-defeating. Iran is already the dominant power in the region, and the United States has no need to block indirect Iranian influence over its neighbors. Aspects of Iran's influence would range from financial participation in regional projects to significant influence over OPEC quotas to a degree of influence in the internal policies of the Arabian countries. Merely by showing a modicum of restraint, Iranians could gain unquestioned preeminence, and economic advantage, while seeing their oil find its way to the market. They could also see substantial investment begin to flow into their economy once more. Even with an understanding with the United States, Iranian domination of the region would have limits. Iran would enjoy a sphere of influence dependent on its alignment with the United States on other issues, which means not crossing any line that would trigger direct U.S. intervention. Over time, the growth of Iranian power within the limits of such clear understandings would benefit both the United States and Iran. Like the arrangements with Stalin and Mao, this U.S.-Iranian alliance would be distasteful yet necessary, but also temporary. The great losers in this alliance, of course, would be the Sunnis in the Arabian Peninsula, including the House of Saud. Without Iraq, they are incapable of defending themselves, and as long as the oil flows and no single power directly controls the entire region, the United States has no long-term interest in their economic and political well-being. Thus a U.S.-Iranian entente would also redefine the historic relationship of the United States with the Saudis. The Saudis will have to look at the United States as a guarantor of its interests while trying to reach some political accommodation with Iran. The geopolitical dynamic of the Persian Gulf would be transformed for everyone. The Israelis too would be threatened, although not as much as the Saudis and other principalities on the Persian Gulf. Over the years, Iran's anti-Israeli rhetoric has been extreme, but its actions have been cautious. Iran has played a waiting game, using rhetoric to cover inaction. In the end, the Israelis would be trapped by the American decision. Israel lacks the conventional capability for the kind of extensive air campaign needed to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. Certainly it lacks the military might to shape the geopolitical alignments of the Persian Gulf region. Moreover, an Iran presented with its dream of a secure western border and domination of the Persian Gulf could become quite conciliatory. Compared to such opportunities, Israel for them is a minor, distant, and symbolic issue. Until now, the Israelis still had the potential option of striking Iran unilaterally, in hopes of generating an Iranian response in the Strait of Hormuz, thereby drawing the United States into the conflict. Should the Americans and Iranians move toward an understanding, Israel would no longer have such sway over U.S. policy. An Israeli strike might trigger an entirely unwelcome American response rather than the chain reaction that Israel once could have hoped for. The greatest shock of a U.S.-Iranian entente would be political, on both sides. During World War II, the U.S.-Soviet agreement shocked Americans deeply (Soviets less so, because they had already absorbed Stalin's prewar nonaggression pact with Hitler). The Nixon-Mao entente, seen as utterly unthinkable at the time, shocked all sides. Once it happened, however, it turned out to be utterly thinkable, even manageable. When Roosevelt made his arrangement with Stalin, he was politically vulnerable to his right wing, the more extreme elements of which already regarded him as a socialist favorably inclined to the Soviets. Nixon, as a right-wing opponent of communism, had an easier time. Obama will be in Roosevelt's position, without the overwhelming threat of a comparatively much greater evil — that is, Nazi Germany. Obama's political standing would be enhanced by an air strike more than by a cynical deal. An accommodation with Iran will be particularly difficult for him because it will be seen as an example of weakness rather than of ruthlessness and cunning. Iranian president Ahmadinejad will have a much easier time selling such an arrangement to his people. But set against the options — a nuclear Iran, extended air strikes with all attendant consequences, the long-term, multidivisional, highly undesirable presence of American forces in Iraq — this alliance seems perfectly reasonable. Nixon and China showed that major diplomatic shifts can take place quite suddenly. There is often a long period of back-channel negotiations, followed by a breakthrough driven either by changing circumstances or by skillful negotiations. The current president will need considerable political craft to position the alliance as an aid to the war on al Qaeda, making it clear that Shiite-dominated Iran is as hostile to the Sunnis as it is to Americans. He will be opposed by two powerful lobbies in this, the Saudis and the Israelis. Israel will be outraged by the maneuver, but the Saudis will be terrified, which is one of the maneuver's great advantages, increasing American traction over its policies. The Israelis can in many ways be handled more easily, simply because the Israeli military and intelligence services have long seen the Iranians as occasional allies against Arab threats, even as the Iranians were supporting Hezbollah against Israel. They have had a complex relationship over the last thirty years. The Saudis will condemn this move, but the pressure it places on the Arab world would be attractive to Israel. Even so, the American Jewish community is not as sophisticated or cynical as Israel in these matters, and its members will be vocal. Even more difficult to manage will be the Saudi lobby, backed as it is by American companies that do business in the kingdom. There will be several advantages to the United States. First, without fundamentally threatening Israeli interests, the move will demonstrate that the United States is not controlled by Israel. Second, it will put a generally unpopular country, Saudi Arabia — a state that has been accustomed to having its way in Washington — on notice that the United States has other options. For their part, the Saudis have nowhere to go, and they will cling to whatever guarantees the United States provides them in the face of an American-Iranian entente. Recalling thirty years of hostilities with Iran, the American public will be outraged. The president will have to frame his maneuver by offering rhetoric about protecting the homeland against the greater threat. He will of course use China as an example of successful reconciliation with the irreconcilable. The president will have to deal with the swirling public battles of foreign lobbies and make the case for the entente. But he will ultimately have to maintain his moral bearings, remembering that in the end, Iran is not America's friend any more than Stalin and Mao were. If ever there was a need for secret understandings secretly arrived at, this is it, and much of this arrangement will remain unspoken. Neither country will want to incur the internal political damage from excessive public meetings and handshakes. But in the end, the United States needs to exit from the trap it is in, and Iran has to avoid a real confrontation with the United States. Iran is an inherently defensive country. It is not strong enough to be either the foundation of American policy in the region or the real long-term issue. Its population is concentrated in the mountains that ring its borders, while much of the center of the country is minimally or completely uninhabitable. Iran can project power under certain special conditions, such as those that obtain at the moment, but in the long run it is either a victim of outside powers or isolated.
====~~Keynoush ‘20~~====
Banafsheh **Keynoush, Atlantic Council, 1-27-2020**, ~~"Why mediation between Saudi Arabia and Iran keeps failing" https://atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/why-mediation-between-saudi-arabia-and-iran-keeps-failing/~~ Accessed 4-10-2020 ~|~| jun Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran hastened international efforts to mediate between them during 2019, after a series of oil tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf and upheavals in neighboring countries including Yemen and Iraq. With eyes on their next moves and the looming possibility of a war, Tehran and Riyadh accepted the goodwill efforts of several states to open talks. Speculations grew that they might even resolve their differences to avert a war. It’s worth noting that neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran is eager to start one. The two have never fought a direct war, and if it were to happen, it would be costly and destructive for both sides. Moreover, Riyadh and Tehran are already navigating spheres of influence in the war-torn countries of Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. But an attack on state-owned Saudi oil and gas facilities in September 2019 was a wake-up call that conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran could irreversibly flare up if left unresolved and threaten the security of both states. Since then, international efforts to mediate conflicts between Saudi Arabia and Iran have failed. Mediators do not have a say over how Riyadh and Tehran lead their regional policies, but they are also not independent actors. The US, for example, may have supported dual-track meetings between Riyadh and Tehran over the years—most organized by US-based organizations and involving policy experts with whom this author has spoken to. But the US or an organization that receives American funding is not an impartial observer of Saudi-Iranian relations, given frequent tensions between the two countries. Tehran’s provocations in the Persian Gulf during 2019 suggest plans in Iran to increase pressures on Saudi Arabia, but not at a steep cost of breaking all deals. Iran needs a breakthrough with the Trump administration if regional calm is to be restored. Since the US and Iran do not get along, and to make headway toward Tehran, Washington supports its allies like Japan and Pakistan to help mediate some of the tensions between Riyadh and Tehran. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has made several attempts to instill hope that this mediation might succeed. Rouhani traveled to Japan in December 2019, and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Tehran and Riyadh during October 2019 to facilitate a dialog between the two capitals, following his US trip earlier in July 2019. Khan wants to be on good terms with all three states to build strong economic ties and strengthen his powerbase in Islamabad. In return, Pakistan believes it can offer experience working with Iran’s armed forces to secure their 560-mile common border, and help Saudi Arabia lead a counter-terrorism military coalition of Muslim and Arab states to ensure regional security. Still, Iran and Pakistan have never been close or had a trusting partnership given Islamabad’s larger interests with the US and closer ties to Saudi Arabia. With that in mind, according to Tehran, Khan’s latest mediatory efforts have yet to yield any results. Increased regional tensions, in fact, means that Pakistan’s efforts would more likely be limited to de-escalating conflicts between Riyadh and Tehran rather than mediating them. After the US killing of Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani on January 3, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi traveled to Iran to convey that his country did not wish to be caught in the midst of fire if regional tensions were to flare up. After visiting Tehran, Qureshi planned to travel to Saudi Arabia and the US to advance mediation toward de-escalating regional tensions, assuring both Riyadh and Washington that was what Tehran wanted as well. Saudi Arabia shares Qureshi’s sentiments and has called for restraint after Soleimani’s killing. The kingdom has also said that it was not consulted by the US about the assassination, despite media reports suggesting that Soleimani was on a mission to discuss with the Iraqis mediation options between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Iran’s foreign minister had indeed asked Soleimani to mediate the disputes between Tehran and Riyadh months ago, and the Iranian commander was receptive to the idea which obviously never saw the light of day. Meanwhile, US interests can confuse the Saudi and Iranian regional roles. When Soleimani was killed, it was clear that the kingdom was concerned that it would escalate regional tensions. Iran has proposed several multilateral regional security pacts to de-escalate tensions, which Saudi Arabia has ignored because it demands to see a change in Tehran’s behavior first. Iran makes no secret that it does not seek to alter its regional behavior. But its latest HOPE initiative (Hormuz Peace Endeavor) aims to expand Iran’s power in regional affairs by securing the Gulf waterway in tandem with its Arab neighbors. While several smaller Gulf Arab states briefly entertained the initiative as a welcome sign by Iran, in general terms neither Saudi Arabia nor the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have given it serious consideration. There is no guarantee that giving Tehran a greater regional role will end its interventions in Arab affairs. These multilateral steps could perhaps be backed by workable solutions to accommodate Saudi Arabia and Iran in Arab conflict zones—such as Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—in which they are engaged. This is a lofty goal, and Iran’s hardliners are suspicious of any mediation by third countries that are allied with the United States. Hardliners claim that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe cannot be trusted because he is too close to US President Donald Trump. On his last trip to Tehran in June 2019, Abe called the US president and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before traveling to Iran. But his trip failed to yield tangible results. To secure the Gulf waterway in the event of future conflicts, Japan then decided to send its defense forces to the region instead of relying on Iran, Saudi Arabia or the United States. Mediating between Saudi Arabia and Iran means changing the balance of power in a way that pleases both countries. If Riyadh and Tehran are caught up dealing with predominant US interests in regional conflict zones, they are left with few options to fix their issues bilaterally and may drift apart when it comes to achieving the goal of stabilizing the region. Any mediation in this context is meaningless, especially ones in which the United States or American organizations, or staunch US allies, attempt to take charge.
====~~Mack ‘12~~====
Andrew **Mack **(Director of the Human Security Report Project at **Simon Fraser University** and Professor of IR at Simon Fraser University; From 1998-2001 he served as Director of the Strategic Planning Office in the Executive Office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan), Political Violence at a Glance, 8-10-20**12**, ~~"Even Failed Peace Agreements Save Lives" http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2012/08/10/even-failed-peace-agreements-save-lives/~~ Accessed 4-16-2020 ~|~| jun A greater percentage of conflicts are brought to a halt through negotiated settlements today than at any time since the end of World War II. But about a third of all peace agreements break down in less than five years, leading some critics to worry that negotiated settlements are an ineffective means of dealing with civil conflicts. The critics are wrong. Different forms of negotiated settlements — i.e., ceasefires and peace agreements — have different risks of failure. Peace agreements, unlike ceasefires, include concrete steps to resolve the issues over which the conflict is being fought. As might be expected, the peace agreement failure rate is lower than that of ceasefires. Between 1950 and 2004, 32 percent of peace agreements were followed by recurring violence, compared with 38 percent of ceasefires. Even though this is a significant failure rate, it is important to remember that two thirds of peace settlements hold with no resumption of conflict. And, as the last Human Security Report pointed out, there is evidence to suggest that peace agreements became more stable — i.e., less likely to recur — in the new millennium. When we read that peace agreements have "failed," we might conclude that the peace process is reversed entirely and the affected country relapses into full-scale war with no diminution of death and destruction. The evidence indicates that this is not the case. When renewed violence occurs after a peace deal, it is sometimes started by rebel groups that never signed the agreement in the first place. In other cases, only one of several signatories resumes fighting. The data show that when just two warring parties sign a peace agreement they rarely go back to war with each other––despite the presence of spoilers. But there is an even more telling rebuttal to the critics of peace talks and negotiated settlements. Wars that restart when peace agreements fall apart almost always experience a significant reduction in death tolls. In 10 out of the 11 collapsed peace agreements between 1989 and 2004 the annual death toll was lower after the conflict restarted. As Figure 6.5 (from the forthcoming Human Security Report, 2012) demonstrates, the reduction in deadliness associated with conflicts that start when peace agreements fail is very large. The average annual death toll of civil conflicts drops by more than 80 percent if they recur after a peace agreement. The percentage decline is only half as big for victories, while death tolls for ceasefires and other terminations show little change. Peace agreements, in other words, save lives, not only by stopping hostilities, but also by dramatically reducing fatalities if the fighting recurs.
====~~Goldenberg ‘17~~====
**Ilan Goldenberg, Foreign Policy, 12-7-2017** ~~"Here’s How Both Obama and Trump Stoked the Saudi-Iranian Rivalry" https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/07/heres-how-both-obama-and-trump-stoked-the-saudi-iranian-rivalry/~~Accessed3-29-2020 // RZ
From the surprise resignation (then un-resignation) of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad
AND
and confrontation with the United States and Saudi Arabia as the only option.
====~~Fisher ‘16~~====
**Max Fisher, NYT, 11-19-2016** ~~"How the Iranian-Saudi Proxy Struggle Tore Apart the Middle East" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/world/middleeast/iran-saudi-proxy-war.html?auth=login-google~~Accessed4-1-2020 // RZ
Behind much of the Middle East’s chaos — the wars in Syria and Yemen,
AND
said Kenneth M. Pollack, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
====~~NRC ‘20~~====
**NRC 20** (Nrc, 1-8-2020 "US-Iran tension threatens lifeline to millions across the Middle East", ReliefWeb, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/us-iran-tension-threatens-lifeline-millions-across-middle-east) //PSR 4-15-2020
Tens of millions of people across the Middle East need humanitarian assistance. Most of
AND
Iraqis and 2 million in need of aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. | 904,529 |
365,451 | 379,468 | Epsilon DMN GT Paraphrasing Interpretation | Interpretation: When evidence is introduced in round it must be read as full cut card and not paraphrased. | 904,548 |
365,452 | 379,498 | 0 - Contact Info | Reach out to either of us on FB Messenger (Satvik Mahendra or Brady Zeng). If you have any specific interps you would like us to meet, reach out to us with an appropriate amount of time (ie don't tell us 5 minutes before when you want us to disclose to start the process of disclosing because it takes time) and we will be glad to meet the interp. If this is not done, we automatically meet your interp. | 904,584 |
365,453 | 379,504 | Interps we want you to meet | Open Source Disclo
Debaters must disclose all previously read topical constructive positions Open Source on the 2020 NDCA PF wiki at least 30 minutes before round.
To be clear, this isn’t full text disclosure. Open Source Disclosure must include open source documents with all highlighted cut cards.
Friv Theory Interp
A is the interpretation - Debaters must disclose the name of their main character in Super Smash Brothers (any game) on the NDCA Public Forum wiki on the page with their school's name and their team code at least 30 minutes before the round is scheduled to start.
Another Friv theory interp!!!!!
Interp: Debaters must disclose their level on Duolingo and their level of Spanish proficiency on the NDCA Public Forum wiki on the page with their school's name and their team code at least 30 minutes before the round is scheduled to start.
Another Friv theory interp lmfao
Interpretation: Debaters must be from the state of Georgia | 904,590 |
365,454 | 379,512 | UBI - ADV - IPV | check osource | 904,597 |
365,455 | 379,530 | UBI - DA - Meat Riders | Clean meat will replace the US meat industry by 2030 - Watson 19
Elaine Watson , Food Navigator - USA, "‘By 2030, the US dairy and cattle industry will have collapsed,’ as microbial protein factories take over, predicts think tank", September 17 2019, https://outline.com/CLMKxZ
A new wave ... one it replaces. ?
Congress is attempting to add a rider that over regulates clean meat - Gholson 19
Kirsti Gholson, Times Union, "Letter: Clean meat rider to bill is ill advised", Jan 12 2019, https://www.timesunion.com./opinion/article/Letter-Clean-meat-rider-to-bill-is-ill-advised-13528849.php~~
Congress is attempting ... without this rider.
Unsustainable meat causes extinction - Barclay 19
Eliza Barclay , Vox , "Plant-based diet: why we might need it to survive as a species - Vox", Jan 24 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/1/23/18185446/climate-change-planet-based-diet-lancet-eat-commission
The way we ... grains, legumes, and nuts,
The meat industry is hell on earth – tens of billions of sentient beings are killed and tortured every year
Harari 15 (Yuval Noah, Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history, 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question)
The fate of ... survival and reproduction? | 904,609 |
365,456 | 379,533 | UBI - CT - Climate Change Good | The best experiments prove rising CO2 is needed for large increases in food yields
Taub 13 (Daniel Taub, Professor of Environmental Studies at Southwestern University, and Xianzhong Wang, Professor of Biology at Indiana University-Perdue University Indianapolis. Effects of carbon dioxide enrichment on plants. In Pielke, R. Editor-in-Chief, Climate Vulnerability. 2013. Academic Press: San Diego, ISBN 978012384703)
Concentrations of carbon ... 2010; Kimball 2010).
Increases in Ag is key to prevent extinction - famine leads to resource wars, terrorism, and instability which goes nuclear
Lugar, 2K – a US Senator from Indiana, is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a member and former chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee (Richard, “Calls for a new green revolution to combat global warming and reduce world instability,” http://www.unep.org/OurPlanet/imgversn/143/lugar.html)//VIVIENNE
In a world ... of our planet.
Independently Starvation OWS and leads to millions of deaths
Whiting 16 Alex Whiting is a professor of practice at Harvard Law School and writes on protection issues. (The Huffington Post, “Poor Nutrition Kills More Kids Than Aids, Malaria And TB Combined: UN,” 8/5/16, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/poor-nutrition-kills-more-kids-than-aids-malaria-and-tb-un_us_57a4a221e4b021fd987849d5) // SR
Major progress has ... the Children said.
CO2 solves ice age
Archer and Ganopolski, 5David, professor in the Department of The Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago; Andrey, Potsdam Institute for ¶ Climate Impact Research, “A movable trigger: Fossil fuel CO2 and the onset of the next¶ glaciation”, May, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1029/2004GC000891/asset/ggge651.pdf?v=1andt=hy346to5ands=7e57cc9392f2669741f6dd939b9997f78b7c10a4 zabner
Assuming for the ... years (Figure 3c)¶
Ice age leads to extinction— comparatively outweighs warming
Chapman, 8Phi., Managing Director at CMW Geosciences Pty Ltd, “Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh”, The Australian, 4/23, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/sorry-to-ruin-the-fun-but-an-ice-age-cometh/story-e6frg73o-1111116134873
There is no ... large enough scale.¶ | 904,613 |
365,457 | 380,105 | Neg | Our First Contention is Relationship Issues
In the status quo, the European Union stands in the middle of two superpowers. Chatzky 19 finds that
Chatzky 19. Andrew Chatzky and James McBride, "China’s Massive Belt and Road Initiative", Council on Foreign Relations, May 2019 //DG
Europe. Some European countries are torn between traditional ties to the United States and the economic opportunities that the BRI presents. Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe have accepted BRI financing for their own infrastructure shortfalls. French President Emmanuel Macron has urged prudence, suggesting during a trip to China that the BRI could make partner countries "vassfal states."
Nadege Rolland of the National Bureau of Asian Research writes in 2019
Nadège Rolland, Senior Fellow for Political and Security Affairs, The National Bureau of Asian Research, A Concise Guide to the Belt and Road Initiative, https://www.nbr.org/publication/a-guide-to-the-belt-and-road-initiative/
PUSHBACK .U.S suspicion about BRI’s intentions started to publicly emerge in 2017. Secretary of Defense James Mattis commented on BRI during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "There are many belts and many roads, and no one nation should put itself into a position of dictating ‘One Belt, One Road.’ " During a press conference in August 2018, Malaysia’s prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad commented that "free trade should also be fair trade," adding that there should not be a situation in which "there is a new version of colonialism happening because poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries." Mahathir’s comments were then interpreted as leading the charge against China amid rising concerns about BRI’s practices. In an interview with the BBC a few months later, however, he said this was an inaccurate portrayal of his comments. As BRI began to make progress in various countries and a series of controversial projects came to light, international criticism became more focused on China’s dubious practices and the initiative’s negative impact on local countries. In early 2017, Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, described BRI as a way for the Chinese leadership to ensnare strategically located developing countries "in a debt trap that leaves them vulnerable to China’s influence." Echoing the same criticism, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in October 2017 described China’s model of financing infrastructure projects as "predatory economics" resulting in "financing default and conversion of debt into equity." In March 2018, a report from the Center for Global Development warned that 23 of the 68 Belt and Road countries were "significantly or highly vulnerable to debt distress," of which eight—Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Maldives, Mongolia, Montenegro, Pakistan, and Tajikistan—were particularly at risk. The authors underlined their concern that debt problems "will create an unfavorable degree of dependency on China as a creditor." In September 2018, the head of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government international finance development agency, accused China of purposefully plunging recipient countries into debt in order to "grab their assets" and to go after "their rare earths and minerals and things like that as collateral for their loans." At the November 2018 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, without specifically mentioning China by name, Vice President Mike Pence encouraged regional countries to choose the "better option" of U.S. financing: "We don’t drown our partners in a sea of debt. We don’t coerce or compromise your independence. We do not offer a constricting belt or a one-way road." In May 2017, the European Union’s 28 member states declined to sign a statement prepared by Beijing to mark the end of the Belt and Road Forum because of a lack of guarantees regarding transparency, sustainability, and tendering processes. A year later, a report co-signed by 27 out of 28 EU ambassadors in Beijing (with the exception of Hungary) condemned BRI for hampering free trade, giving an unfair advantage to Chinese companies, and attempting to shape globalization to suit China’s own interests. Concomitantly, an increasing number of recipient countries expressed a willingness to return to the negotiating table or even to cancel some BRI contracts because of the financial burden they would impose. For example, Indonesia and Thailand halted high-speed rail projects with China in 2015 (though both countries ultimately went forward after Beijing adjusted its financial terms), Nepal canceled two hydroelectric dam projects, Pakistan put a stop to the $14 billion Diamer-Bhasha dam project due to "unacceptable" funding conditions, and the government of Sierra Leone canceled the China-funded Mamamah International Airport project. In May 2018, Malaysia announced its intention to renegotiate its contracts with China, describing them as "unequal treaties." Maldives and Myanmar also began to reconsider the scale and scope of their infrastructure cooperation with China.
Ivan Dikov of European Views contextualizes in 2019 that
Dikov 19. Ivan Dikov, "Commissioner Proposes EU Veto Power on Chinese Infrastructure Investments after Italy’s BRI Deal", March 2019, European Views //DG
On Saturday, Italy became the first G-7 member and EU heavyweight to become part of the signature foreign policy initiative of Chinese President Xi Jinping, also known as the New Silk Road. Until now, the largest EU member state to have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative had been Poland. A total of 14 other EU member states, mostly in Eastern Europe, have become part of the BRI. However, Italy’s scope and its status as the first major Western power to do so has sent shockwaves throughout the capitals of its main allies. The United States, the EU, Germany, and France have been the most vocal in the West about their worries that China might be using its BRI infrastructure investments to project its political clout and acquire sensitive technology, including through what has been called "debt-trap diplomacy", a term derived from the case of Sri Lanka which in 2017 had to cede control of a strategic port to China as it could no longer service its BRI loans. The EU Commissioner for Budget, Germany’s Gunther Oettinger, proposed on Sunday that the EU should have the right to exercise veto over Chinese infrastructure investments throughout the Union that might ultimately prove detrimental to its common interests. Oettinger’s Chinese investment veto right suggestion came just as Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas piled criticism on Italy for its accession to the Belt and Road Initiative, warning about the risks associated with doing business with China. One of the deals that are part of the Italy – China memorandum of understanding signed on Saturday concerns projected Chinese investments of EUR 7 billion (USD 7.9 billion) in the strategic Italian ports of Genoa and Trieste. "~~It~~ Italy and other European countries, infrastructure of strategic importance like power networks, rapid rail lines, or harbors are no longer in European but in Chinese hands," the German EU Commissioner told Funke Media group on Sunday, as cited by DW. "The expansion of transport links between Europe and Asia is in itself a good thing — as long as the autonomy and sovereignty of Europe is not endangered," he elaborated. In his words, the EU leaders should consider either an EU veto right to block future Chinese-funded infrastructure projects, or a requirement that such projects first receive the consent of the European Commission, the executive of the European Union. Oettinger is convinced that EU member states do not always take into account national and European interests adequately enough, referring to their desire to attract foreign investment, including from China. "Europe urgently needs a China strategy, that lives up to its name," the EU Budget Commissioner urged. "An European veto right, or a requirement of European consent — exercised by the Commission — could be worth considering ~~with respect to Chinese infrastructure investments~~," he said.
However, voting affirmative leads to US backlash.
Charles Stevens, the founder of The New Silk Road Project, finds in 2019 that if the EU were to join, it
Stevens 18. Charles Stevens, "New Silk Road Project founder: Developments in Azerbaijan are significant", March 2018, Azernews interview with Charles Steven //DG
Q.: What would it mean for Western European countries to join the Belt and Road initiative? Do you expect more countries to join it in future A.: I think it would mark a great success for BRI as a strategy. With the UK leaving the European Union the economic region has had a jolt to its confidence. Whilst the EU does not have a united policy towards BRI some countries, particularly in Eastern Europe have been more receptive. This includes Belarus which is not formally part of the EU but participates in the EU’s Eastern Partnership. It would signal a decisive shift in strategic direction and historic allegiances were Western European countries to align more closely with BRI. China has been clever in presenting BRI as a development which is open for any countries to participate in this includes the U.S.
This has already been seen in Italy, as Horowitz 19 writes that
Jason Horowitz, New York Times, 3-30-2019 ~~"Italy’s Deal With China Signals a Shift as U.S. Influence Recedes", https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/world/europe/italy-one-belt-one-road-china.html 7-21-2019~~ //DG
But this month, as the United States continued to engage in a trade standoff with China, and leaders of the European Union banded together to demand an end to unfair Chinese business practices, Italy took another route — China’s new Silk Road. In a move that signaled geopolitical shifts from West to East, Italy broke with its European and American allies during last week’s visit by President Xi Jinping of China, and became the first member of the Group of 7 major economies to officially sign up to China’s vast new One Belt One Road global infrastructure project.
Increased Chinese influence in Europe would anger the US, as Jativa 19 wrote that when Italy joined the BRI,
Daniel Jativa, Washington Examiner, 7-21-2019 ~~"US issues warning to Italy on China economic initiative", https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/us-issues-warning-to-italy-on-china-economic-initiative 7-21-2019~~ //DG
The U.S. issued an indirect warning to Italy on Saturday for its coziness with China. The European Union country is weighing signing up with China's global economic effort, called the Belt and Road Initiative. "Italy is a major global economy and a great investment destination. ~~The US said~~ Endorsing BRI lends legitimacy to China’s predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people," the tweet said.
US backlash leads to recession in two key ways.
The first way is through harming US-EU relations.
Vasilis Trigkas of South China Morning Post writes in 2018 that
Vasilis Trigkas, Vasilis Trigkas is an Onassis Scholar and research fellow in the Belt andamp; Road Strategy Centre at Tsinghua University, South China Morning Post, 7-6-2018 ~~"Nato And China Summits Give Europe A Chance To Assert Its Interests And Stabilise The Global Order", https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2153948/nato-and-china-summits-give-europe-chance 7-21-2019~~ //DG
In Beijing, EU leaders may have a seemingly easier task negotiating with the Chinese on trade but caution is always a wise counsellor. According to reports from the meeting of the vice-president of the European Commission, Jyrki Katainen, and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He in June, the two sides are ready to present their detailed market access conditions by mid-July and reboot the dormant discussions on a bilateral investment treaty. If negotiations accelerate and China and the EU reach a final accord by the end of the year or early 2019, this would complicate US efforts to rebalance its economic relations with China. It could push trigger-happy Trump to unleash tariffs against European exporters at a moment when the EU has just found its economic pace. Any benefits from a bilateral investment treaty with China may be undone by a full-scale transatlantic trade war and an utterly divided West.
Trump thinks tariffs are good for the economy because Bermingham of Politico in 2019 explains Trump tweeted that tariffs are a powerful way to get companies to come to the USA and bring back jobs
Adam Behsudi and Finbarr Bermingham, 8-21-2019, POLITICO, "Trump thinks tariffs will add U.S. manufacturing jobs. Economic reality says they won’t.",10-11-2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/21/trump-tariffs-bikes-manufacturing-1470361
President Donald Trump had promised that his steep tariffs on Chinese goods would help bring jobs back to the U.S. But five years later, paradoxically, it is the very tariffs that Trump has imposed that have kept that plant in Manning, S.C., from expanding, Kamler said in an interview..."Tariffs are a great negotiating tool, a great revenue producer and, most importantly, a powerful way to get companies to come to the USA and to get companies that have left us for other lands to COME BACK HOME," Trump tweeted last month.
According to Reuters 19, the EU and the US are currently in the middle of trade negotiations.
Reuters Editorial, U.S., 2-20-2019 ~~"Trump threatens tariffs on European cars if no EU trade deal", https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-eu/trump-threatens-tariffs-on-european-cars-if-no-eu-trade-deal-idUSKCN1Q92M0 7-21-2019~~ //DG
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the United States would impose tariffs on European car imports if it cannot reach a trade deal with the European Union. Speaking to reporters at a White House meeting with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Trump said the auto tariffs were something his administration was considering. "We’re trying to make a deal. They’re very tough to make a deal with - the EU," Trump said. "If we don’t make the deal, we’ll do the tariffs."
If the EU joins the BRI, it would show the US that they are uncooperative in the trade negotiations, making the US place auto tariffs on European automobiles. This impact is terminalized by Gina Heeb 19 of Market Watch who finds that a 20 auto tariff on the EU would
Gina Heeb, Markets Insider, 7-23-2019 ~~"Trump'S Proposed Car Tariffs Could Trigger A Global Growth Recession, Baml Says", https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-tariffs-cars-could-trigger-global-growth-recession-baml-2019-2-1027973273 7-24-2019~~ //DG
President Donald Trump has doubled down on threats to levy duties on car imports from Europe, a move that analysts warn could lead the world economy toward a sharp downturn in growth. "If we don't do the deal, we'll do the tariffs," the president said Wednesday of broader negotiations with the European Union. His administration has wielded protectionist policies in an effort to win concessions from trading partners. A Commerce Department report submitted to the White House this week was widely expected to present auto imports as a threat to national security, giving Trump 90 days to decide whether to follow through with threats to impose import taxes of 20 to 25 on vehicles and parts. While that could benefit some American automakers and reduce bilateral trade deficits, it would also risk adding thousands of dollars to the price of vehicles, and raises the threat of retaliatory duties that could worsen global trade tensions. "In a worst case scenario, full¬blown tit¬for¬tat auto tariffs could trigger a global recession," analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a research note out this week, adding they would expect growth in the world economy to fall nearly a percentage point to 1.2. By increasing the price of vehicles and imported materials, they could threaten jobs, consumer spending, and investment. The analysts estimated that they would add $2,000 to $7,000 to price tags of both imported and American-made vehicles, posing even greater risks than the global trade tensions that emerged last year. "The auto tariffs will directly hit consumers in a way that the other tariffs have not," the analysts said. "We have to consider the direct impact via auto sales and production as well as the indirect through a confidence shock."... But he warned higher costs would most likely have uneven consequences, raising particular risks to the labor market. A report from the Center for Automotive Research projects that auto tariffs could slash up to 750,000 jobs from the US economy. "The automakers tend to be able to take advantage of this," he said. "They can raise prices. It's going to ultimately hurt the workers." The effects of auto tariffs could be even more dismal in Europe. In Germany, which is home to companies like Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen, cars makes up one-fifth of the country's total exports. The US is their second-largest destination. On Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed back against the claim that German cars threatened US national security.
The second way is through the US-China trade war.
Currently, the trade war is at a halt.
Uri Berliner, 10-11-2019, NPR.org, "Trump Announces Phase One Of Trade Deal With China",10-11-2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/10/11/769469085/trump-announces-phase-one-of-trade-deal-with-china
President Trump on Friday announced what he calls "phase one" of a larger trade deal with China. As part of the deal, a tariff increase planned for next Tuesday will not be imposed. The U.S. was scheduled to raise tariffs on about $250 billion worth of goods on October 15 from 25 to 30. The specifics of the deal are still being hammered out, and they haven't been signed yet. President Trump said he hopes that will happen in the next month or so. The leaders of the U.S. and China are expected to meet in November. "We'll do a formal signing with President Xi and myself," Trump said of the meeting in Chile, which is hosting the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in November. Leading up to the latest talks, the president had said he wanted to strike a comprehensive agreement which would include more Chinese enforcement of intellectual property rights, an end to the forced transfer of U.S. technology, greater access to Chinese markets and limits on subsidies of China's state owned businesses. Progress appears to have been made on some of these issues.
However, voting Affirmative restarts the war, as Anwar 2018 finds that
(Anu Anwar, visiting fellow with Kobe Gakuin University in Japan, geopolitical analyst focusing on BRI. September 10, 2018. South China Morning Post. "Facing a trade war and bumps along the belt and road, China may have to revisit the cost of its grand plan", https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2163280/facing-trade-war-and-bumps-along-belt-and-road . DOA: July 21, 2019.) ALP
Moreover, it is evident that Chinese projects are less open to local and international participation. Out of all contractors participating in Chinese-funded projects within the Reconnecting Asia database, 89 per cent are Chinese companies, 7.6 per cent are local companies (companies headquartered in the same country the project was taking place in), and 3.4 per cent are foreign companies (non-Chinese companies from a country other than the one the project was taking place in). In comparison, out of the contractors participating in projects funded by the multilateral development banks, 29 per cent are Chinese, 40.8 per cent are local, and 30.2 per cent are foreign. The US has been cynical about this initiative since its genesis, but it took Washington – under the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations – almost five years to come up with a response to it. In many experts’ view, that response is the trade war. However, the most substantial countermeasure from Washington to date is its declaration of its "Indo-Pacific strategy" which allocates US$113 million to investments in new technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives in emerging Asia, among other measures.
Yuwen of the SCMP in 2018 explains trade conflict is only a proxy for the larger battle for dominance between the two powers.
Deng Yuwen, 7-4-2018, South China Morning Post, "The US sees the trade war as China containment policy. So does Beijing",10-11-2019, https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2153587/us-sees-trade-war-tactic-contain-china-so-does
The US sees the trade war as a tactic to contain China. So does Beijing
Deng Yuwen says the trade conflict is only a proxy for the larger battle for dominance between the two powers. With all signs pointing to a Chinese government determined to fight back, given that its goal of national rejuvenation is at stake, China is unlikely to cave in to US pressure
China and the US are heading into an epic trade war. Does this signal the beginning of an era of all-out confrontation between the two powers, or will the fight be limited to the economy? There are different views on this. For the US, this trade war must be seen in the larger context of a shift in America’s perception of China. Many experts, scholars and even regular folk recognise that the Trump administration’s targeting of Chinese trade is not being done on a whim; it is supported by the two political parties, Congress and the US public, including the business sector. In other words, the whole of American society appears to have reached a consensus on a new approach to dealing with China. For the first time in 40 years, the US now sees China as a rival nation to be contained and beaten. This view is reflected in the US security strategy unveiled late last year, in which China was named as a major competitor seeking to challenge US power and undermine its interests. To use the language of the hawks in US policy circles, China is now the enemy. So, it’s not surprising at all that President Donald Trump has taken such an uncompromising stance on trade against China. While divergent views within the administration may emerge on occasion, the general trend is clear: the China hawks are on the ascent.
Holland of the SCMP explains in 2018 the U.S objective is not to win trade concessions, but to force a change in China’s mercantilist policy approach. Trump is retaliating against China for protecting its domestic market through erecting barriers to entry and heavily subsidized state owned enterprises because China is no longer a weak developing country. The willingness Trump displayed to disrupt global supply chains by prohibiting US suppliers from selling to Chinese telecom company ZTE proves that the administration’s main interest is not in fact trade.
Tom Holland, 4-23-18, South China Morning Post, "Don’t call this Trump’s trade war. It’s much bigger than that",10-11-2019, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142568/us-china-trade-war-not-about-trade-not-about-trump-heres-what-it
As the long-running US legal action against Standard Chartered demonstrated, US enforcement against companies for supposed breaches of sanctions against Iran are wildly inconsistent, and largely motivated by political considerations. It’s latest move against ZTE is no different. Beijing’s action against Qualcomm is similarly political. Up until last week the Chinese authorities had raised no serious competitive complaints about the proposed Qualcomm-NXP merger, and had signalled they would not object to the deal. So what’s going on? Many observers assume that the US administration’s main goal is to wring deficit-reducing trade concessions from China that Trump can trumpet to his blue-collar voter base ahead of this year’s midterm elections. But if that were really the case, it would make no sense at this stage for Washington to aggravate Beijing by suddenly springing a surprise, and surprisingly severe, penalty against ZTE. And if Beijing was really the great champion of the established rules-based international economic system that it likes to claim, it would hardly be holding up a US company’s merger deal on trumped up competition complaints. The willingness Washington displayed last week to disrupt global supply chains by prohibiting US suppliers from selling to ZTE proves that the administration’s main interest is not in fact trade. Sure, Trump has long had a bee in his bonnet about the bilateral deficit with China. But the US business community and ascendant factions within the administration have other concerns. US businesspeople and politicians have long complained about how China protects its domestic market, erecting barriers to entry, heavily subsidising state-backed champions and demanding technology transfers from foreign companies as a condition of doing business. For years China defended these practices on the grounds that it was a developing country. However, now that China has grown to become the world’s second-largest economy, a consensus is building in the US that Beijing can no longer go on thumbing its nose at the international order by pursuing such blatantly mercantilist policies. Recently, this view has been reinforced by hardliners within the US national security establishment, who fear that continued forced technology transfers and generous Chinese state subsidies threaten to erode the US technological edge over China, and ultimately its military edge. The US objective, then, is not to win trade concessions, which would be meaningless against such a backdrop, but to force a change in China’s whole economic and industrial policy approach. Hence Washington’s preparedness to take actions like last week’s against ZTE that threaten to harm, not improve, the US trade balance with China.
WP - china increases influence and SOE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/14/beijing-is-counting-its-massive-bridge-road-initiative-are-chinese-firms-board/
To achieve these goals, Beijing expects Chinese companies, as well as foreign companies and governments, to invest in infrastructure, energy and industrial parks in BRI countries. It also needs to persuade Chinese companies to modify their practices to address growing concerns about BRI-related corruption and environmental impacts. Our research shows that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China are more likely than non-state firms to support the BRI. Why is this important? Private sector involvement has proven critical to the success of large-scale infrastructure initiatives — and this suggests the BRI goals may be in trouble if these firms are not on board, and not willing to invest. Notably, SOEs lead most of the existing investments in BRI projects. Our research suggests that the clientelistic relationship between the government and SOEs makes it harder for these firms to resist government requests to change their trade and investment patterns to support China’s overall goals. Analysts tend to see the BRI as a major Chinese government push to increase the country’s political influence and diplomatic leverage — using tools of economic statecraft like promises of trade, aid and financing to expand China’s global influence. For the past five years, Beijing has deployed these tools strategically to persuade governments in partner countries to pursue greater cooperation through infrastructure and financial investment.
A report by Morgan Stanley analysts finds that
(Mike Murphy, editor at MarketWatch, has worked extensively in the Bay Area media landscape. June 2, 2019. MarketWatch. "Home Economy and Politics Trade war could cause U.S. recession in less than a year, Morgan Stanley says", https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trade-war-could-cause-us-recession-in-less-than-a-year-morgan-stanley-says-2019-06-02 . DOA: July 21, 2019.) ALP
President Donald Trump's trade war with China could send the U.S. into recession in less than a year, Morgan Stanley warned in a research note published Sunday. If the U.S. follows through with threats to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to 25, and if China retaliates, "We could end up in a recession in three quarters," said Chetan Ahya, Morgan Stanley's chief economist. Investors "appear to be overlooking its potential impact on the global macro outlook," Ahya wrote. U.S. growth will be impacted as costs increase, demand slows and companies cut back on spending, he said, and government policies aimed to ease the pain likely won't take effect in time.
Mack 18 finds that
Mack 18. Christopher Lim and Vincent Mack, "The Four Challenges of the Belt and Road", June 2018, China-US Focus
While China has achieved economic greatness in the past few decades, this has not been without trade-offs. The speed and scale of China’s massive industrialization and urbanization had led to severe environmental degradation, exacting a cost on the environment and public health. Second, as part of China’s response to the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, her economic stimulus plan led to the building of many cities over the past decade. However, due to the mismatch of supply and demand in economic activities in these newly built urban areas, many of these became "ghost cities". Given that current demographic forecasts project a future decline in China’s population, it is unlikely these cities will be filled up soon. Moreover, the money spent on construction has swelled China’s bad debt. Third, given the scope and scale of the BRI and its vague milestones, China’s ability to finance the entire project remains questionable. One possible solution would be the Chinese stock market; which considerable size makes it an ideal platform to raise funds for the BRI projects. As of Feb 2016, its total market capitalization was estimated to be $11,049 billion (including $3,165 billion from Hong Kong) i.e. 15.9 of the 60 major stock exchanges globally. However, in 2015, $5 trillion of wealth was lost when the mainland Chinese stock market collapsed, damaging public confidence in the Chinese government’s ability to manage it. Furthermore, this may create the perception that the Chinese stock market is the world’s largest de facto "casino" and engenders fears of spill-over effects to countries in the future BRI network. Last but not least, the cumulative effect of the digitization tsunami – i.e. 3D Printing, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Human Cloud - has the potential to disrupt businesses and job markets in both manufacturing and services globally. This is of particular concern for China as the "factory of the world". While some might argue that China’s technology companies and AI expertise has made it one of the leaders in the 4th Industrial Revolution, these firms are concentrated in the Eastern coastal regions and the economic benefits may not trickle down to the rest of China. The resulting economic inequality could be dangerous tinder for identity politics, especially when the comparatively poorer Central and Western regions are populous with a notably higher concentration of ethnic minorities. At a time of uncertain global outlook and rising trade protectionism, the arrival of the technology tsunami and impending unemployment would be a key challenge to the most populous nation on earth. Exorcising the four "ghosts" of the BRI to realise the "Chinese Dream" These events cast a doubt on China’s BRI as a solution to the woes of the global economy. This concern is particularly poignant as the BRI in its completed state would cover more than 62.5 of the world population and 65 countries. In short, more than half of the world humanity’s social economic well-being will be connected with this initiative. Given that China’s BRI partners would be intricately connected with China upon completion of the initiative, any ripples in the Chinese economy would likely reverberate outwards to the other countries in the network; both positively and negatively. This may cause a global crisis even larger than the one that began in 2007. Finally, these challenges are not limited to China but shared by many countries in the world. Thus, for China to gain the world’s trust in her economic leadership, she must needs demonstrate the credibility of the BRI through her competent management of her domestic challenges. Only then would China be able to convince the world of the tangibility of the "Chinese Dream".
The impact of a global recession is poverty.
World-wide recession is dangerous, as Bradford 13 of the Huffington Post writes that
Big Poverty
Harry Bradford, Huffington Post, "Economic Shock Could Throw 900 Million People Into Poverty, IMF Study Warns ~| HuffPost", April 5, 2013, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/global-poverty-900-million-economic-shock'n'3022420?fbclid=IwAR3aZ8snOk5kx9hGMa'uFDKPEBjDgu6WZW4EcshopuUA1EyB59bKhWuo3cM
A recent study by the International Monetary Fund warns that as many as 900 million people could fall back into poverty in the event of an economic shock like the Great Recession. That figure is three times the size of the U.S. population.
Thus, we negate. | 905,403 |
365,458 | 380,101 | NDF R6 - AFF Overcapacity, Climate change adaptation | =AFF 2.6 Overcapacity, adaptation=
===Overcapacity===
====Stimulus from Great Recession continued – high subsidization and loans to infrastructure, causing economic slowdown and productivity decreases.====
**Noah Smith 19 of Bloomberg** ~~1-15-2019, accessed 7-19-2019, https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:on2FFDMbPQMJ:https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-15/china-economy-now-slowed-by-stimulus-used-in-great-recession~~ NY
China's economy is slowing. The downturn may be the result of recent events —
AND
would cause its growth to slow; we now may have an answer.
====Overcapacity coming – on the brink for economic collapse with local governments granting cheap loans, subsidizing manufacturing ====
**Shuaihua Cheng 15 of the SCMP **~~9-28-2015, accessed 7-19-2019, https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1862024/overcapacity-time-bomb-chinas-economy~~ NY
China has narrowly escaped major financial crises for over two decades. But the good
AND
loans from state-owned banks. These favours unnaturally decrease production costs.
====Europe joining reduces overcapacity====
**Project 2049 18 **~~12-5-2018, accessed 7-21-2019, https://project2049.net/2018/12/05/the-final-link-the-future-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative-in-europe/~~ NY
Unveiled by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (
AND
and lack of transparency have caused many European officials to have second thoughts.
====5 percent increase in infrastructure investment creates demand, decreasing overcapacity 14 percent====
**Chas Freeman 17 of the Watson Institute **~~2-8-2017, accessed 7-20-2019, https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/people/fellows/freeman/The20Geoeconomic20Implications20of20ChinaE28099s20Belt20and20Road20Initiative.pdf~~ NY
This raises a key question. Many of the countries that lie between China and
AND
U.S. Treasury bonds and other instruments with very low yields.
====Threatens Chinese economy====
**Shuaihua Cheng 15 of the SCMP **~~9-28-2015, accessed 7-19-2019, https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1862024/overcapacity-time-bomb-chinas-economy~~ NY
Industrial overcapacity has become a time bomb that threatens the Chinese economy because it has
AND
only an economic blow-up but also serious social and political upheaval.
===Climate change===
====Best-case scenario kills 153 million====
**David Wallace-Wells 19 of NY Magazine **~~5-13-2019, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/05/13/climate-change-uninhabitable-earth-david-wallace-wells~~ NY
Wallace-Wells isn't the only one sounding the alarm. The U.N
AND
-case scenario, I think it's, practically speaking, baked in."
==== "We're toast. Fried. Steamed. Poached."====
**Spencer Reiss 9 of Wired **~~11-9-2009, accessed 7-23-2019, https://www.wired.com/2009/11/st-essay-globalwarming/~~ NY
In the waning weeks of 2009, planeloads of scientists, politicians, and assorted
AND
—evolve. And then start getting ready for the next ice age.
====Climate change kills====
**Nitin Desai 09 of the Global Humanitarian Forum **~~2009, accessed 7-21-2019, http://www.ghf-ge.org/human-impact-report.pdf~~ NY
Above all, climate change affects the world's poorest first and foremost. 99 percent
AND
sustainable development, constituting a serious threat to socio-economic progress worldwide.
====Infrastructure construction under BRI in developing nations====
**David Dollar 19 of Brookings **~~4-2019, accessed 7-21-2019, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/FP_20190419_bri_interview.pdf~~ NY
If I were going to make the positive case for BRI, I would say
AND
? Or, are they dead set on a different kind of model?
===Expansion===
====Need financing – source is EU====
**Alicia Herrero 17 of Bruegel **~~5-12-2017, accessed 7-14-2019, https://bruegel.org/2017/05/china-cannot-finance-the-belt-and-road-alone/~~ NY
There is no doubt that Asia needs infrastructure. The Asian Development Bank (ADB
AND
for Xi Jinping's Grand Plan. This should bring Europe closer to China.
====Changing propensity for private investment based on time of development – early injunctions into unproven markets means little return on investment but later stages around China's infrastructure are more certain ====
**David Ho 17 of South China Morning Post **~~9-27-2017, accessed 7-20-2019, https://www.scmp.com/special-reports/business/topics/special-report-belt-and-road/article/2112978/cost-funding-belt-and~~ NY
As China pushes development projects around the region through its "Belt and Road Initiative
AND
to create some tailwind that will bring in other investors," he says.
====Past abroad investments not turning profit – previous efforts had different purpose (resources), difficult in calculating returns, but China's current investment strategy is capturing foreign markets, increasing interest in investment returns. Other nations joining and creating multilateral credit rating reduces the cost of capital for newer investments====
**Jianmin Jin 15 of Fujitsu Research Institute **~~4-21-2015, accessed 7-20-2019, https://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/fri/en/column/message/2015/2015-08-25.html~~ NY
3. Securing Multilateral Credit Functionality One might ask why China, after creating a
AND
Japan and the US, is partly underpinned by this purely economic calculation.
===Economic development===
====You know…====
**World Bank 19 **~~2019, accessed 7-21-2019, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/31878/9781464813924.pdf~~ NY
Countries that lie along the Belt and Road corridors are ill-served by existing
AND
moderate poverty (those earning less than $3.20 a day).
====Developing nations more vulnerable – multiwarrant====
**Rebecca Reynolds 02 of London School of Economics **~~5-2002, accessed 7-20-2019, https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/3449.pdf~~ NY
(b) Vulnerability Before outlining how and why poorer countries and communities are more
AND
. Suggested areas for research are presented in the final framework for negotiators.
====Development best way to address climate uncertainties – slight changes for subsistence farmers wrecks livelihoods====
**David Chandler 07 of Centre for the Study of Democracy **~~2-2-2007, accessed 7-20-2019, https://www.fanrpan.org/archive/documents/d00209/Chandler_African_poverty_Feb2007.pdf~~ NY
'Many places in Africa are overwhelmingly dependent on rain-fed agriculture and so
AND
that would consign Africa to a future of poverty - and climate dependency.
====Prioritizing vague impacts to climate change over tangible economic benefits is eco-imperialism, when energy or other growth projects are rejected to maintain a status quo of underdevelopment. Development lets countries cope with climate change impacts since rural poor are hit hardest – carbon limitations hurt long-term sustainability====
**Andrew Chambers 10 of the Guardian** ~~4-1-2010, accessed 7-20-2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/apr/11/eco-imperialism-climate-change-carbon~~ NY
Last Thursday the World Bank approved a £2.4bn loan to build a
AND
– where the poor are held back for the benefit of the rich.
===Healthcare access===
====BRI good for health and stuff====
**Director-General Tedros 17 of WHO **~~8-1-2017, accessed 7-22-2019, https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2017/health-silk-road/en/~~ NY
As you know, the world faces increasing and more complex epidemics, pandemics and
AND
here, we must seize the opportunities the Belt and Road Initiative provides.
====Distance and travel to healthcare crucial to accessibility – squo infrastructure infeasible creating barrier to medical resources====
**Sadia Ali 16 of Harvard Health Policy Review **~~11-10-2016, accessed 7-22-2019, http://www.hhpronline.org/articles/2016/11/10/healthcare-in-the-remote-developing-world-why-healthcare-is-inaccessible-and-strategies-towards-improving-current-healthcare-models~~ NY
HEALTHCARE ACCESSIBILITY: Accessibility to basic healthcare in remote communities is rooted in four dimensions
AND
less dependent on human resources and health clinics found in urban regions.2
====Adaptation decreases disease impacts of CC====
**Africa Development Bank 11 **~~10-2011, accessed 7-22-2019, https://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Project-and-Operations/Cost20of20Adaptation20in20Africa.pdf~~ NY
4.1.2 Bottom-up analysis The case study analysis undertaken by
AND
in the case of malaria, insecticide treated bednets and indoor residual spraying. | 905,390 |
365,459 | 379,434 | Tricky Trick | Nothing is a cause of anything
Empiricus 200 A.D. (Sextus Empiricus, Greek philosopher, pioneer of skepticism, all around good guy. Veeeerrry niiice! “Outlines of Skepticism” p. 148-149)
That it is also plausible to say that nothing is a cause of anything will be evident when we have set out for the present a few of the many arguments which suggest this. Thus, it is impossible to conceive of a cause before apprehending its effect as an effect of it; for we recognize that it is a cause of its effect only when we apprehend the latter as an effect. But we cannot apprehend the effect of a cause as its effect if we have not apprehended the cause of the effect as its cause; for we think that we know that it is its effect only when we have apprehended its cause as a cause of it. Thus if, in order to conceive of a cause, we mustalready have recognized its effect, and in order to know its effect as I have said, we must already know the cause, the reciprocal mode of puzzlement shows that both are inconceivable: the cause cannot be conceived of as a cause nor the effect as an effect; for each of them needs to be made convincing by the other, and we shall not know from which to begin to form the concept. Hence we shall not be able to assert that anything is a cause of anything. To concede that it is possible to conceive of causes, they will be deemed to be inapprehensible because of the dispute. For some say that some things are causes of others, some say that they are not, and some have suspended judgment. Anyone therefore, who says that some things are causes of others either statesthat he says this simply and impelled by no reasonable cause or else will say that he came to give assent to this because of certain causes. If simply, then he will not be more convincing than someone who says simply that nothing is a cause of anything; and if he states causes because of which he deems that some things are causes of others, then he will be attempting to establish the matter under investigation by way of the matter under investigation - for we are investigating whether anything is a cause of anything, and he says, as though there were causes, that there is a cause of there being causes. Again, since we are investigating the reality of causes, he will have to provide a cause for the cause of there being causes - and another for that, and so ad infinitum. But it is impossible to provide infinitely many causes. Therefore, it is impossible to assert firmly that anything is a cause of anything. | 904,499 |
365,460 | 379,483 | Disclosure at Zoom and Boom | Please text me at 669-243-0522 | 904,565 |
365,461 | 379,480 | Disclosure Theory | ??????????????????????????????????
Is everyone ready? … My time may begin now!
??????????????????????????????????
A. Interpretation : Debaters must disclose taglines and full citations in their case prior to the start of the tournament.
B. Violation : They didn’t disclose, they didn’t meet specific parts (*say the specific parts they didn’t meet*****ex. Taglines**) despite the TOC invitation asking all teams to disclose in advance
C. Standards :
1. Argument Quality
No disclosure rewards debaters for running arguments that the opponents cant respond to. This kills argument quality because no disclosure disincentivizes thoughtful responses to the case.
Debaters can use each other's arguments and meta strats to figure out what the most educational arguments are.
i. IL to Fairness bc we are disadvantaged they’re running arguments we have no responses to
ii. IL to education cause we can’t have good responses that increase education
2. Inclusivity
Schools with bigger programs have access to more prep groups, coaches, judges, intel etc. Disclosure is an equalizer and allows access to better evidence, and strats.
i. IL to fairness cause no disclosure accentuates prep disadvantages
ii. IL to education because better strats give us better understandings of case
3. Evidence Ethics
Disclosure allows debaters to check each others evidence
Misconstruing evidence kills engagement with the literature because they can just lie
i. IL to education becuz fake or misconstrued evidence is uneducational
ii. IL to fairness because misconstrued evidence gives teams unfair advantages
D. Voters :
1. Fairness
Deb8 isn’t functional without fairness
2. Education
Only portable skill from deb8
3. No RVI’s
RVI’s allow debaters to be rewarded for being fair and educational instead of being punished for being unfair and non educational
4. Drop the debater
Its the same as dropping the argument cause the argument is the case
Sets a precedent that disclosure is good!
5. Competing Interps over Reasonability
Theres no brightline for reasonability. They should be forced to engage with our claims to maximize education
6. A Priori
You have to know the rules of the game before u can play it
Theory impx are the most proximal becuz they affect the debaters in round | 904,562 |
365,462 | 379,478 | 1 Contact Info | Please contact us if you have any questions or want us to meet any interps.
Sanjit: [email protected]
Pranav: [email protected] | 904,560 |
365,463 | 379,493 | Nuclear Middle East | Etzioni 20’ "Donald Trump Could Push Iran Toward Nuclear Weapons". 2020. The National Interest. Accessed March 30 2020. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/donald-trump-could-push-iran-toward-nuclear-weapons-129827 //MD
To proceed, we need to realize that we have come to false conclusions. This belief that we lost the war in Afghanistan and are doing poorly in Iraq is based on a basic misconception. We have conflated the wars—which we won easily, in a few weeks, with few casualties on both fronts—with the eighteen years of nation-building, which is a failing effort. It is this vain attempt to turn these nations into democracies and U.S. allies that costs a great number of lives and half a trillion dollars. The United States would have little trouble taking on Iran militarily (though it is more powerful than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which, by the way, Iran was unable to defeat). Indeed, there is good reason to believe that threatening military action is the only way to bring Iran to the negotiating table. The United States should avoid making the same mistakes it made in Afghanistan and Iraq by seeking only to change the regime by use of force, without engaging in nation-building, leaving it to the people of Iran to fight for the kind of government they want. If Iran faces no forceful reactions to its provocations, then sooner or later it will either openly or clandestinely seek to expand its nuclear armament program. Iran has long-observed how well North Korea is treated compared to Libya, which gave up its program of building weapons of mass destruction. It has good reason to believe that nukes are the best guarantees to its national security and proactive shield, under which it can continue to dominate the region.
Sokolski 18’ "In The Middle East, Soon Everyone Will Want The Bomb". Foreign Policy. Accessed April 3 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/21/in-the-middle-east-soon-everyone-will-want-the-bomb/ //MD
President Donald Trump’s recent decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and his offer to help Saudi Arabia build nuclear reactors raise the question of just how wild a nuclearized Middle East might get. The dangers of a regional arms race are real. If Iran resumes its nuclear weapons program, the Saudis will certainly pursue their own — and Algeria, Egypt, and Turkey might well follow. Fortunately, the worst is hardly inevitable. But avoiding it will require deference to energy economics (which, in the Middle East, favor nonnuclear over nuclear forms of energy) and promoting rules against enriching uranium and reprocessing spent reactor fuel (the keys to nuclear weapons development). Iran could get a bomb within a year. We already know it worked on a 10-kiloton bomb design. As for enriching weapons-grade uranium, Tehran could likely revamp its existing fleet of centrifuges to produce enough for its first bomb in eight to 10 months. Then, there is the unspoken option of culling plutonium from spent fuel generated from its power reactor at Bushehr. Assuming Iran currently lacks a small, crude chemical separation plant (which could be hidden within a moderate sized warehouse), Tehran could build one from scratch in as little as six months. (The design for such a plant was made public 40 years ago.) Such a plant could process one bomb’s worth of plutonium in about a week and a bomb’s worth per day after that. Given Tehran’s past work on weapons design, it’s reasonable to assume that Iran would have a working implosion device on the ready and could prepare plutonium or highly enriched uranium to place into the device’s core relatively quickly. Recent analysis also shows that even if Iran used “reactor-grade plutonium” from its power reactor at Bushehr, it could produce a compact 9- to 12-kiloton weapon, (which would accord with Iran’s earlier effort to perfect a 10-kiloton missile warhead) ) using 1950s weapons technology. If Iran unloaded Bushehr’s fuel before it was fully burned, as it did in 2012, it could build even more powerful weapons still. Tehran, though, is unlikely to sprint toward such bomb options if for no other reason than that Trump has warned it against doing so; the mullahs know that a rush to build a bomb could lead to U.S. military strikes. Iran also would like to keep China, Russia, Britain, and the European Union on its good side. Getting a bomb or rushing to build one would risk all this. Iranian nuclear or military provocations could prompt Riyadh to develop a nuclear weapons capability as a hedge. Indeed, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir both are on record saying that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapons capability, Saudi Arabia will do whatever it takes to “do the same.” This could mean a number of things. Riyadh could call on China, which sold the Saudis nuclear-capable missiles, or Pakistan, whose bomb program the Saudis funded, to base their nuclear weapons on Saudi soil. China and Pakistan could do this legally under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty so long as the nuclear weapons remained under Chinese or Pakistani control. The Saudis, however, would surely prefer to maintain control themselves, which gives rise to the possibility of China or Pakistan helping Riyadh acquire the means to enrich its own uranium. This could be done by sharing information that would allow the Saudis to get the parts and plans needed to complete a plant of their own. Based on an analysis of past centrifuge enrichment programs, the Saudis might perfect a plant in one to three years and produce their first bomb’s worth of uranium a year or so later at a cost of only tens of millions of dollars. As for perfecting a nuclear weapons design, this would likely be accomplished in parallel as has been done in nearly every other bomb program. Alternatively, Riyadh might buy a 1,000-megawatt reactor from one of the major nuclear suppliers — the Korea Electric Power Corporation, Westinghouse, EDF, Rosatom, or China — bring it online; build a crude, small reprocessing plant; and separate plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel. Judging from the recent nuclear experience of the United Arab Emirates, completing a large power reactor might take roughly a decade. If the Saudis made good on their promise to build a smaller South Korean-designed 100-megawatt electrical power reactor and decided to construct a small reprocessing plant, Riyadh could conceivably have its first batch of plutonium for use in weapons in as little as five years. The worry, then, would be that others might follow. Egypt has long operated a large Argentine-designed research reactor capable of producing more than a bomb’s worth of plutonium each year and has tinkered with reprocessing. Both Turkey and Egypt have begun construction of several large, Russian-built VVER pressurized-water reactors. Turkey is also developing a series of indigenous nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. If Egypt develops a weapons option, some fear that its traditional rival, Algeria, would then play catch-up. For decades, Algiers has operated a large research reactor that has generated tons of spent reactor fuel containing what could potentially be many bombs’ worth of plutonium. It also has hot cells — small labs that allow the safe handling of radioactive materials, which can be used to separate plutonium from the other hot spent reactor fuel waste products.
The New York Times 19’ "Israelis Watch U.S. Abandon Kurds, And Worry: Who’S Next?". 2020. Nytimes.Com. Accessed March 30 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/world/middleeast/israel-us-syria-kurds.html //MD
Israel under Mr. Netanyahu has depended heavily on the Trump administration’s support in confronting Tehran over its nuclear ambitions and over its expansionist moves in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Israel believes Iran’s long-term strategy is to base missiles in those countries that can threaten Israel, as a deterrent to a pre-emptive strike — whether by Israel or the United States — on an Iranian nuclear weapons project. The White House came through for Mr. Netanyahu when Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, which President Barack Obama had negotiated over Mr. Netanyahu’s loud protests.
Horovitz 19’ "Trump’S New Actions, Inactions On Kurds, Syria, Iran Have Israel Deeply Worried". 2019. Timesofisrael.Com. Accessed March 30 2020. https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-new-actions-inactions-on-kurds-syria-iran-have-israel-deeply-worried/ //MD
The concern in Israel, TV analyst Heller said Wednesday, is that the US president’s hands-off approach in the wake of the Abqaiq attack “will encourage the Iranians to act against Israel” in the same way, “with cruise missiles and drones.” Soleimani’s al-Quds force has “an account to settle with Israel,” because of Israeli strikes at Iranian targets in Syria and Lebanon, he noted. Uzi Even, one of the founders of Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility, wrote in Haaretz on Sunday that work at Dimona should be halted in the light of Iran’s demonstrable capabilities. “The Iranians, or their proxies, showed that they can hit specific targets with great precision and from a distance of hundreds of kilometers. We have to accept the fact that we are now vulnerable to such a strike.” Israel has missile defense systems and other capabilities that the Saudis do not, and the Israeli defense establishment is far less bleak than Even. A senior officer in the IDF’s Military Intelligence unit told Channel 13 TV on Monday that the Iranians “get a high mark, too high,” for the Abqaiq attack, but stressed that Tehran would “absolutely” not succeed if it attempted to launch a similar assault on Israel. Still, the IDF’s chief of staff, Aviv Kohavi, felt moved to issue a warning Monday that any attack on Israel would be met with a “forceful” response. “We are keeping our eyes open, having daily situation assessments, and taking professional decisions that lead to attacks and the thwarting of threats.” Finally, however, in terms of the dependability, or otherwise, of the Trump administration in an Israeli hour of need, the president’s latest policies — notably regarding what had been the US alliance with the Kurds — are causing overt dismay in some Israeli circles. Netanyahu has closely allied himself with Trump, hailing their friendship at the risk of alienating the president’s Democratic opponents, and being rewarded with presidential recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, and of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory this past March. Writing in Israel’s biggest-selling Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth on the eve of Yom Kippur, veteran diplomatic correspondent Shimon Shiffer warned that Trump’s decision on the Syrian withdrawal, and his “abandoning of the Kurdish allies, who believed that the US would stand with them… must set all our red lights flashing.” And the conclusion for Israel, Shiffer charged, “needs to be unequivocal: Trump has become unreliable for Israel. He can no longer be trusted.”
Horschig 19’ "Israel Could Strike First As Tensions With Iran Flare". 2019. The Conversation. Accessed March 30 2020. https://theconversation.com/israel-could-strike-first-as-tensions-with-iran-flare-119146 //MD
“Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on June 17. Netanyahu also said Iran must be punished for violating the nuclear agreement. Israel, which has faced threats to its national security since its founding as a Jewish homeland in the Middle East in 1948, is known to take aggressive, preventive action to protect itself – including by launching preemptive strikes on neighboring nations it perceives as threatening. If international relations with Iran grow more volatile, Israel could take dramatic, unilateral action against its neighbor and longtime adversary. How the Begin Doctrine justifies preemptive strikes I’m an international security scholar who studies Israel’s proactive use of its military to prevent nuclear buildup in the Middle East. Israel has a counterproliferation policy, called the Begin Doctrine, which allows it to wage preventive strikes against enemies with weapons of mass destruction programs. Using the Begin Doctrine as a justification for preemptive strikes, the Israeli government has for decades quietly decimated nuclear and chemical facilities across the Middle East. When President Saddam Hussein’s potential nuclear military ambitions raised concerns in 1981, the Israeli government destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in a surprise attack called Operation Opera. “On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of Israel,” a government release stated at the time. “We shall defend the citizens of Israel in good time and with all the means at our disposal.” In 2007, Israel responded to Syria’s failure to report its uranium processing by striking a nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region. The United States, which was reportedly informed ahead of the attack, made no effort to stop Israel. Israel has also been accused of sponsoring the assassinations of at least four Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010. The incidents have never been fully investigated, and Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the targeted killings. Israel has also deterred nuclear proliferation in the Mideast using less lethal, more high tech strategies. In 2008 and 2009, Israel used computer malware called Stuxnet to disrupt Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The program infected the software that controlled centrifuge speed at the Natanz nuclear plant, alternately speeding up and slowing down the machines that produce enriched uranium to cripple production of the material. The Obama administration secretly supported the cyberattacks. Though the United States, United Nations and other world powers officially condemned some of these unprovoked Israeli military aggression, other preemptive Israeli attacks have been met with silence from the international community. The international community may even appreciate Israel’s role as a nuclear nonproliferation watchdog in the Middle East, my research suggests. Israel has never been punished for attacking its neighbors’ weapons programs. Decades after Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear plant, President Bill Clinton called it “a really good thing.” “It kept Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear power,” he said at the 2005 Davos World Economic Forum. “But it’s not clear to me they have that option in Iran,” he added. Israel vs. Iran That was 14 years ago. In 2005, Iran was just beginning its nuclear buildup. Today, Israel’s government seems strong in its belief that it has the option to strike Iran. Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist government is openly hostile to Israel. Citing fears that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, Netanyahu has warned, “Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be infinitely more costly than any scenario you can imagine to stop it.” He told Iran and other adversaries not to “test” Israel. If the nuclear deal ruptures further and Iran does restarting uranium enrichment, Israel might launch targeted airstrikes against it. Risks of an Israeli strike History suggests other countries are unlikely to actively deter Israeli military aggression in the guise of nuclear nonproliferation. The Trump administration has expressed anti-Iranian sentiment and is a staunch backer of Netanyahu’s government. And while European powers will recognize preemptive Israeli strikes on nuclear facilities as a violation of international law and of the sovereignty of Israel’s neighbors, they also see Iran’s nuclear program as a grave global security concern. A nuclear Iran could escalate ongoing Middle East conflicts into nuclear exchanges, and, as some commentators say, spur other regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to develop nuclear weapons themselves. Of course, potential Israeli attacks on Iran present their own serious risks. Because most of Iran’s reactors are in full operations, air strikes may mean cutting off the power supply to Iranian citizens and could release large amounts of radioactive contaminants into the air. Iran, a militarily well-equipped country, would surely retaliate against any Israeli attacks. That, too, would trigger a conflict that would spiral throughout the Middle East. Of course, Israel faced similar dangers when it went after the weapons programs of Syria, Iraq and other neighbors. If history is any guide, Israel may strike Iran while the world quietly watches.
Farley 19’ "If Israel And Iran Go To War, Would Israel Launch A Nuclear War?". 2019. The National Interest. Accessed March 30 2020. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/if-israel-and-iran-go-war-would-israel-launch-nuclear-war-96296 //MD
If a hostile power (let’s say Iran, for sake of discussion) appeared to be on the verge of mating nuclear devices with the systems needed to deliver them, Israel might well consider a preventive nuclear attack. In the case of Iran, we can imagine scenarios in which Israeli planners would no longer deem a conventional attack sufficiently lethal to destroy or delay the Iranian program. In such a scenario, and absent direct intervention from the United States, Israel might well decide to undertake a limited nuclear attack against Iranian facilities. Would it work? Nuclear weapons would deal more damage than most imaginable conventional attacks, and would also convey a level of seriousness that might take even the Iranians aback. On the other hand, the active use of nuclear weapons by Israel would probably heighten the interest of everyone in the region (and potentially across the world) to develop their own nuclear arsenals.
Mahdi Nazemroaya, Research Associate, Centre for Research on Globalization,” The Next World War: The ‘Great Game’ and The Threat of Nuclear War,” Global Research, 1—10—11, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-next-world-war-the-great-game-and-the-threat-of-nuclear-war/22169?print=1 //MD
Any attack on Iran will be a joint operation between Israel, the U.S., and NATO. Such an attack will escalate into a major war. The U.S. could attack Iran, but can not win a conventional war. General Yuri Baluyevsky, the former chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff and Russian deputy defence minister, even publicly came forward in 2007 to warn that an attack on Iran would be a global disaster and unwinnable for the Pentagon. 97¶ Such a war against Iran and its allies in the Middle East would lead to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran as the only means to defeat it. Even Saddam Hussein, who during his day once commanded the most powerful Arab state and military force, was aware of this. In July 25, 1990, in a meeting with April C. Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein stated: “But you know you meaning the U.S. are not the ones who protected your friends during the war with Iran. I assure you, had the Iranians overrun the region, the American troops would not have stopped them, except by the use of nuclear weapons.” 98¶ The diabolically unthinkable is no longer a taboo: the use of nuclear weapons once again against another country by the U.S. military. This will be a violation of the NPT and international law. Any nuclear attack on Iran will have major, long-term environmental impacts. A nuclear attack on Iran will also contaminate far-reaching areas that will go far beyond Iran to places such as Europe, Turkey, the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, Pakistan, and India.¶ Within the NATO alliance and amongst U.S. allies a consensus has been underway to legitimize and normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons. This consenus aims at paving the way for a nuclear strike against Iran and/or other countries in the future. This groundwork also includes the normalization of Israeli nukes.¶ Towards the end of 2006, Robert Gates stated that Israel has nuclear weapons, which was soon followed by a conveniently-timed slip of the tongue by Ehud Olmert stating that Tel Aviv possessed nuclear weapons. 99 Within this framework, Fumio Kyuma, a former Japanese defence minister, during a speech at Reitaku University in 2007 that followed the statements of Gates and Olmert, tried to publicly legitimize the dropping of atom bombs by the U.S. on Japanese civilians. 100 Because of the massive public outrage in Japanese society, Kyuma was forced to resign his post as defence minister. 101¶ The Uncertain Road Ahead: Armageddon at Our Doorstep? The March into the Unknown Horizon...¶ According to theChristian Science Monitor, Beijing is a barometre on whether Iran will be attacked and it seems unlikely by the acceleration in trade between China and Iran. 102 Still a major war in the Middle East and an even more dangerous global war with the use of nuclear weapons should not be ruled out. The globe is facing a state of worldwide military escalation. What is looming in front of humanity is the possibility of an all-out nuclear war and the extinction of most life on this planet as we know it.
Middle East Monitor 20’ "Saudi Warns Of Dire Consequence If US Withdraws From Iraq ". 2020. Middle East Monitor. Accessed March 21 2020. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200128-saudi-warns-of-dire-consequence-if-us-withdraws-from-iraq/ //MD
Saudi Arabi has issued a striking warning over the return of Daesh if the US withdraws its troops from Iraq. In an interview with CNN yesterday, the country’s Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud said the American presence in the region played a crucial role in defeating the terrorist group and was key to preventing its resurgence in the region. “The US has proven time and again to be a reliable ally of the Kingdom, and this is also the case with the Trump administration,” Bin Farhan told CNN. “We work very well with President Trump and with the State Department and the Pentagon and we coordinate on issues of regional security,” he said. Regarding Daesh, Bin Farhan insisted that a US withdrawal could increase the risk of its return. “We believe that the defeat of ISIS was very much based on the contribution of the international coalition, including the US,” he said referring to the terror group with other widely used acronym. “We think that while ISIS is geographically defeated, they continue to pose a threat and it’s very important that the international community continue to support the Iraqi forces to remain vigilant and the American presence is of importance,” he added. There are said to be around 3,000 US troops currently stationed in the kingdom. It’s estimated that Saudi has paid the US roughly $500 million in compensation for the costs associated with stationing American forces in its territory. President Donald Trump, however, has boasted that he managed to extract $1 billion in return for deploying US troops. OPINION: Global protests reassert opposition to the US presence in the Middle East The presence of American troops in the region is vital to the kingdom’s security. Facing threats on three fronts, US security umbrella is thought to be more critical now than ever before. Riyadh has been locked in a stalemate with Houthis in Yemen, in a brutal conflict that was expected to last only a few months; it is at the centre of a dangerous escalation of tension with regional rival Iran. Simultaneously, the royals in Riyadh, with the aid of the UAE, have cast a wide net over potential threats to their rule, moved to crush calls for reform and democracy, domestically and across the region. Given Saudi’s estimation that the US is the primary guarantor of security in the region, Riyadh is very likely to have met calls for American troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, following the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, with deep concern. Following the death of Soleimani, the Iraqi parliament voted on a resolution calling on the Americans to pull their troops from the country. Iraqis have also expressed outrage at America’s presence with a series of protests demanding the withdrawal of US troops.
Edelman 11’ "The Dangers Of A Nuclear Iran". 2010. Foreign Affairs. Accessed March 26 2020. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/persian-gulf/2011-01-01/dangers-nuclear-iran //MD
The Islamabad option raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how India would respond. Would it target Pakistan’s weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear weapons? How would this expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia? Regardless of India’s reaction, any decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means, would be highly destabilizing. It would increase the incentives of other nations in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do so by eroding the remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime, even if its particular method of acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the NPT.
Hägerdal 19’ "Should America Pull Out Of The Middle East? – Center For Strategic Studies". 2019. Sites.Tufts.Edu. Accessed April 12 2020. https://sites.tufts.edu/css/should-america-pull-out-of-the-middle-east/ //MD
An abrupt U.S. withdrawal would most likely spur a regional arms race of conventional forces and intensify the temptation to develop a nuclear deterrent. A toxic cocktail of mutual insecurity, escalating arms races, and perceptions of a shifting regional power balance could spark military confrontations of various kinds. The U.S. presence reduces the risk of a military confrontation by preserving regional stability. A U.S. military presence is also the best insurance policy for containing the effects of a regional military confrontation if it occurred. U.S. interventions managed to keep oil markets relatively stable throughout the 8 years of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, partly by protecting and even reflagging oil tankers servicing Gulf ports.
Bar 13’ "The Danger Of A Poly-Nuclear Mideast". 2020. Hoover Institution. Accessed March 24 2020. https://www.hoover.org/research/danger-poly-nuclear-mideast //MD
Nuclear aspirations in the Middle East have been motivated by a variety of considerations: deterrence, a need for a weapon of compellence, honor, regional and international stature, and others. The motivation to acquire nuclear weapons and the circumstances through which the state achieves nuclear weapons will influence the development of c3 and the considerations that will guide the operational concept. Some (such as Iran) may see nuclear weapons as a means to undermine the balance of power in the region. Others may see them as necessary in order to counterbalance the former. In any case, the strategic environment of a poly-nuclear Middle East will be exceedingly dynamic and even volatile. It will differ from the stability of the latter part of the Cold War — and will probably be more like the instability of its early years, but with many nuclear players. In such a volatile environment, the paradigms of command and control may mean the difference between controlled tensions and nuclear confrontation. Attitudes toward nuclear weapons The basic building block for command and control of nuclear weapons will be the country’s perception of their purpose; are they perceived as a sui generis weapon — so destructive and terrible that they must be controlled far past any other weapon? Or are they just more powerful manifestations of existing weapons?4 Will these countries assimilate the view of use of nuclear weapons as a “taboo” to be avoided at all cost? From the public discourse in the Middle East, there are few traces of the collective traumas of World War II and the fear of worldwide nuclear conflagration during the Cold War that brought most of the international community — and particularly the Western world — to subscribe to such a taboo. The perceived legitimacy for acquisition and use of nuclear weapons in Islamic discourse is not drawn from “international law” (these are frequently even seen as “discriminatory infidel conventions” imposed on the Muslims in order to weaken or exploit them), but from Islamic jurisprudence. In this context, nuclear weapons are perceived as latter-day manifestations of categories of weapons that existed in the early days of Islam; if the Prophet permitted use of the latter, use of the former must be permissible as well. The most common analogy in Sunni Islamic discourse on wmd is between nuclear weapons and the ancient use of catapults.5 The potential nuclear states in the region will not universally adopt the same attitude towards the role of nuclear weapons in their strategic posture. Schematically, we can portray two possible roles that nuclear weapons may be seen to play: As weapons of deterrence and last resort. This attitude resembles that of the West during most of the Cold War. The underlying assumption would be that the weapons will probably not be used, and that the country may not have to deal with a second strike scenario or a need to respond after the political leadership has been incapacitated or “decapitated.” They will serve as a “last resort” weapon only when attacked by nuclear weapons. This attitude may bring its proponents to place more emphasis on safeguards to prevent the weapons from being used by mistake. A regime which views nuclear weapons as purely a deterrent may have a greater tendency towards a centralized structure: deployment in few high security areas; direct lines of control to the political leadership cutting out intermediary echelons; simplification of the storage and operation of the arsenal and total separation of weapons and delivery systems, reliance on authentication systems and “fail-safe” mechanisms. As weapons of compellence as a means to achieve regional hegemony, or to realize religiously or ideologically deterministic victory. To adopt such an attitude, it would not be necessary for the regime leadership to be devoid of a sense of the enormity of use of nuclear weapons, or to be irrational; rather it would suffice for it to suffer from the hubris of the belief that it can “handle” nuclear brinksmanship situations. This scenario opens up a vast expanse of potential nuclear exchanges, war by catastrophic miscalculation. Countries that subscribe to this view may put the emphasis on facilitation of their operation in certain contingencies, including frequent or permanent high alert (defcon) levels. The above notwithstanding, the nuclear postures of such new nuclear powers will have a reciprocal influence over each other. Thus, while a country such as Saudi Arabia may view nuclear weapons as essentially a weapon of deterrence, and attempt to maintain a low profile accordingly, it may be forced to develop a higher profile that calls for more sophisticated levels of command and control in the face of provocations and nuclear “one-upmanship” of other powers in the region (e.g., Iran). Cultural, religious, and external and internal political factors will certainly have an influence on the crafting of these countries’ nuclear postures. Such factors may include: The Sunni or Shiite orientation of the regime. The clerical establishment in countries likes Saudi Arabia and Iran — or the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and potentially in other countries — may have a pivotal role in determining how the utility of nuclear weapons will be perceived. The relationship with the U.S. and the West. Pro-Western regimes will be more prone to respond to Western pressures to maintain strong controls over their weapons, and to accept Western guidance in this regard. Risk proclivity. Countries with a history of conventional brinkmanship are more likely to view nuclear weapons as additional tools in such a policy toolbox. Regional aspirations that are seen as being achievable through political use of nuclear weapons. Confidence that the regimes have it in their capability to operate the weapons on short notice, or to posture a plausible second-strike capability if attacked. An important issue in this regard will be the option for nuclear ambiguity, along the lines of the Israeli model. Although an ambiguous stance by Iran cannot be ruled out, due to its international obligations and considerations, it now seems that the chances of Iran acquiring a military nuclear capability and maintaining ambiguity are slim — both for reasons relating to the Iranian regime itself, and since Iran’s adversaries in the region will expose Iran’s capabilities. Therefore, it seems that the option for nuclear ambiguity for the rest of the countries in the region will not be on the table for long. Custody of weapons, security of assets A key issue will be the custody of nuclear assets. This includes: decisions regarding means of delivery, deployment of the weapons and delivery systems, separation of assets (weapons and delivery systems) to safeguard against unauthorized use; and the designation of the organization within the state that has physical possession of the assets. The choice of delivery means will influence a wide range of considerations for command and control: deployment, custody, and authority for delivery/launch. For most of these countries, the preferred means of delivery will most likely be surface-to-surface missiles, of which they already have significant capabilities. However, ssms are vulnerable to pre-emptive attacks, both in storage and in launching sites, and deployment considerations will have to take this into account. The Iranian regime has dispersed its strategic assets and installations, including nuclear production facilities and ssm assets. The logic for deployment in distant sparsely populated areas would (as in the Cold War) be to minimize the threat to the civilian population and to impose on the enemy counterforce strikes to deal with a large and widely dispersed number of targets. Such a deployment would render the enemy’s intelligence collection, building of target banks, and battle damage assessment more difficult. On the other hand, in many of the states in question, such areas (frequently populated by minorities) are, in many cases, perceived as a priori disloyal to the regime. This raises the dilemma (for example, the current dilemma of the current Syrian regime in Northern Syria in regards to its chemical weapons stockpiles) of the security of the installations in those areas. The Iranian regime, however, has dispersed its strategic assets and installations, including nuclear production facilities and ssm assets, over a wide geographical expanse, and shows relatively little concern regarding this consideration. This may not hold true for other, less confident, regimes in the region. Fear of infiltration and betrayal may encourage separation of weapons from delivery systems. However, keeping the two separate would extract a price in terms of operational flexibility, and would constrain flexibility of alert levels, undermining the credibility of deterrent threats and reducing escalation dominance. In some regimes, security considerations may be subordinated to the necessity for flexible response, and hair-trigger readiness. Keeping warheads unassembled or a step away from operational status would render the theft of fully operational weapons difficult, but would not solve the problem and the danger of the theft of near-operational weapons, materials and expertise and would contradict a credible deterrence or compellence posture. In most of the regimes in the region, custody of the weapons and the delivery systems will have to be put in the hands of organizations or family members whose loyalty to the leaders is beyond doubt. This may lead to weapons and delivery systems being under unified command. This will simplify command and control, but at the same time increase the risk of unauthorized or hasty use. Having acquired nuclear weapons in contravention to their npt obligations, Middle Eastern regimes will probably be extremely sensitive regarding the possibility of further unauthorized transfer — from ideological or material motives — of nuclear materials, expertise, hardware, components, or weapons from themselves to adversaries. This is a critical issue already today in the Pakistani context. The randd organizations in the Middle East — unlike their Cold War predecessors — may be more likely to emulate A.Q. Khan in Pakistan, not only maintaining a role in the decision-making processes after completing development of the weapons, but also becoming “back doors” to the weapons they devised, particularly in scenarios of breakdown of the states. Unlike the scientific institutions of the Soviet Union, which had little or no prior interaction with potential customers for their know-how, and whose efforts to capitalize on their access could be relatively easily monitored and disrupted by the successor state (Russia) and the West, these elements have wide access to potential clients. One of the ramifications of a common interest of a number of Sunni Arab states (Saudi Arabia, uae, Egypt) facing the need for a fast track to a nuclear randd joint custody and command and control of the nuclear weapons, possibly along the lines of the nato example as between allies. Theoretically, this could create a unique relationship of joint command, and unique problems of command and control. Authority over use In the veteran nuclear states civilian control of the nuclear arsenal was decided at the inception of the nuclear age and was, for the most part, not an issue for large-scale struggles within the respective regimes. The tendency throughout the Cold War was to lower the political profile of nuclear tests, exercises, and planning out of concern that publicity would result in possible escalation. Western (American, British, and French) systems of delegation of authority were based on the ex officio assumption of loyalty of the officers who received the orders, while the ethnic, regional, or family affiliation of the individual officers was deemed irrelevant. While the Soviet system did, apparently, take into account ethnic background of senior officers, this was not, so it seems, a constant concern of the political leadership. It was relegated to the security services to perform appropriate weeding and vetting. The Middle East in this regard will be fundamentally different. The nuclear capability, once achieved, will be an important lever for influence within the regimes. The very identification of the nuclear capability with the political leader is, in the Middle East, a source of legitimacy and public support. Therefore, we can expect that even technical issues relating to building, deploying, or training the nuclear force will receive a high profile and publicized reference in these regimes, to enhance the legitimacy of the leadership in the eyes of its constituents. All the regimes and military establishments in question are loath to delegate authority in matters relating to strategic weapons and strategic interests. The hyper-centralized structures of some of these regimes and the deep involvement in military affairs of the political leadership would probably extend to the latter’s direct involvement in vetting each link in the chain of command over nuclear weapons. We should expect a more personalized chain of command consisting of fewer — but highly trusted — individuals, with less compartmentalization between them. Collective identification — tribal, ethnic, and even social networks, such as affiliation with certain religious institutions — will probably influence who would have access to nuclear weapons, and to whom, and when, authority would be delegated. Similarly, the field units entrusted with nuclear assets are likely to be fiercely loyal, disciplined, and ideologically unshakable (e.g., the irgc in the case of Iran). Communication safeguards with nuclear units are far less advanced than in any of the existing nuclear states. The safeguards for communication with nuclear units are far less advanced in the military structures in the Middle East than in any of the existing nuclear states. Communicating a command authorizing the launch of nuclear weapons at an adversary would probably mandate redundancy, including both modern as well as primitive means, given that communications in a crisis or war might be vulnerable to disruption. The solution for a breakdown of communications — due to nuclear warfare, electronic warfare (ew) attacks or even intensive conventional strikes — can range from low-level physical communication (ptp telephone), through covert trusted civilian chains of communication (Iranian or Saudi clergy channels for those states), dependable runners, and others. Such measures would also reduce flexibility and escalation dominance. The key issue with respect to delegation of authority, though, is not the default authorization (Saddam Hussein’s example of delegating authorization of wmd and ssm use in 1991 and 2003 to field commanders) through the chain of command when the leader is alive and in the loop, but how to authorize use in case the authorized leadership is incapacitated and primary c3 assets are disrupted. The tendency of Middle Eastern regimes to personalize the state may lead to broad authorization to launch nuclear weapons in case the leader is presumed dead — even if no nuclear attack has taken place. A Soviet style “dead-man’s hand” system, would, theoretically, be attractive to many of the regimes in the region, and particularly to autocratic authoritarian regimes. However, the logic behind this system in the Cold War was a reflection of the assumptions that if the leadership were destroyed, it would mean that a large part of the country had been decimated and that only the other superpower could have executed such a blow. These assumptions will not be true in the Middle East. As opposed to the mutually assured destruction of the Cold War, nuclear war in the Middle East may be perceived as survivable, especially in the larger and more populous states, like Iran or Egypt. Therefore, the regime may fear that surviving elements to which authority was delegated (even family members or high level members of the ruling party) may opt not to automatically escalate to a full-fledged nuclear war in the case of the incapacitation of the top leadership. The solution might be a standing order for automatic launch if communication with the leadership is lost and it may be presumed to have been destroyed. Verification and authentication Prevention of deliberate unauthorized use will be a paramount concern for all the regimes in the region. Over the years, the means that have evolved for prevention of deliberate unauthorized use (and to prevent accidental use) have moved from the human to the electronic spectrum. Systems based on split codes held by separate senior officers may be problematic for reasons of regime structure noted above, and regimes may rightly fear that an entire nuclear unit may mutiny and take control over the weapons. Cold War technical means took decades to fully develop, including the evolution of Permissible Access Links (pals) to reduce the risk of deliberate or erroneous unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. Early Cold War technical intelligence capabilities were limited, and an early poly-nuclear Middle East may resemble this environment in some ways. c3 systems in the veteran nuclear powers have gradually moved towards the technological, leaving behind slow, cumbersome, and potentially compromising human methods. Authentication redundancies of the authority to launch nuclear weapons developed over the years in the existing nuclear powers (the American “football,” or the Russian Cheget). However, integration of such technologies into the c3 structures of regimes in the Middle East is doubtful, at least in the early stages. Each fledgling nuclear country will initially have small arsenals and a much larger set of enemy targets. This will encumber pre-designation of weapons for targets and exclude the use of pals, which preclude the accidental use of a weapon against targets that are not pre-defined. Furthermore, the inherent (and in the light of the cyberattacks on Iran not unjustified) suspicion that the enemy may be capable of planting Trojan horses in technological systems in order to manipulate them may inhibit use of highly technological means. This would have an adverse effect on the regime’s ability to maintain flexible time-sensitive response mechanisms and hence would influence other elements of the nuclear doctrine. The fact that the same types of delivery systems may be used for both conventional and nonconventional warheads will further complicate c3, as different standard operating procedures (sop) will probably be applied to those delivery systems which are dedicated for nuclear weapons. The defender will not know for sure whether the ssm launched against him is carrying a conventional or wmd warhead until it explodes, and the attacker may assume that the defender understands that he is only employing conventional warheads, or may deliberately allow the ambiguity involved to intimidate the defender and enhance the credibility of his deterrence. Furthermore, the possibility that nuclear weapons may be delivered in unorthodox ways (from civilian ships, neighboring countries’ territory) in order to obfuscate responsibility will also reduce the use of technological means of command and control. Human verification may be implemented at operational levels (for example, the need to combine codes held by more than one senior officer in order to override safeguards and arm weapons). However, it is very unlikely that any of the regimes in the region would be able to adopt human verification of the orders of the head of state. In the authoritarian regime model, the leader would probably not want restrictions on his authority to launch weapons — even authentication by a “trusted” deputy. In regimes such as the Iranian or future Jihadi-Salafi regimes in which the leader is perceived as the Amir al-Mu’minin (Commander of the Believers) or (as in Iran) the Vali-Faqih, the leader is thought to have inspiration from Allah, and restriction of his discretion by a lesser individual would be tantamount to imposing restrictions on the will of Allah. Even the argument that the verification is not meant for regular situations but for contingencies during which the leader may be incapacitated, for any reason, may be difficult to support in these regimes. Intelligence The confidence of a nuclear-enabled regime in its intelligence capabilities will play a pivotal role in determining the spectrum of alert levels, and the routine in regards to those levels. Such an operational nuclear deployment will require strategic early warning and intelligence capabilities covering all relevant threats: day and night airborne visual intelligence (visint) and signals intelligence (sigint) assets, ground sigint and radar deployment in effective ranges, an advanced satellite deployment, and more. The indigenous early warning capabilities of all these countries to ssm threats in general — conventional, cbw, and then nuclear, are either weak or nonexistent, and the potential for error is very high. Consequently, these new nuclear countries may opt to rely on intelligence allies: the U.S., Russia, and China. However, such reliance may bring about situations not dissimilar to the role the Soviet Union played in 1967, but with far more dire consequences, in which an external player feeds alarming information that provokes nuclear alert. Without the ability to assess such information, countries receiving it will have no choice but to go on nuclear alert. Much of the discussion relating to the potential dangers of a poly-nuclear Middle East focuses on the feasibility of deterrence to prevent premeditated intentional use of nuclear weapons. However, not enough attention is paid to the potential for nuclear confrontation during a multilateral spiral of escalation and absence of escalation dominance. In this context, the flexibility and robustness of the command and control structures of fledgling nuclear powers in the region will be critical. The factors that will influence the c3 paradigms of nuclear weapons in the region include a wide range of political, military, bureaucratic, religious and technological issues. In the early stages, such paradigms will probably be closer to the early structures of the veteran nuclear powers, with adaptations for regional cultural, political, and religious idiosyncrasies, and will not necessarily integrate the lessons learned by those veteran powers over time and in thoroughly different strategic and cultural contexts. Furthermore, it stands to reason that the new nuclear powers will not welcome imported solutions based on “off the shelf” Western technology, and will prefer local solutions, which will be, initially at least, less sophisticated. Among the considerations in crafting nuclear command and control paradigms, considerable weight will be given to the perception of the role of nuclear weapons and the acceptance of a cultural “taboo” on their use that developed in the international community. The integration of such a taboo would be a key factor in the motivation of the leaderships of the new nuclear states to prevent their use. Even ideologically, or religiously, highly charged leaderships may be aware of the dangers inherent in nuclear war and behave rationally. However, such awareness and rational decision-making processes are a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Nuclear confrontation may not be the result of some irrational but premeditated decision by leaders to initiate a nuclear strike, but of faulty intelligence, command, and control in escalatory situations. In such situations, it appears that the command and control structures that may develop in new nuclear states in the Middle East are likely to exacerbate the dangers inherent in escalation and brinkmanship, and to result ultimately in perennial nuclear instability or even nuclear war.
Harper 18’ "Could Donald Trump Start A Nuclear War?". 2020. British GQ. Accessed April 15 2020. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/trump-madman-theory-strategy //MD
In 1961, a document from the most senior officers in the US military landed on President John F Kennedy's desk marked "For the president's eyes only". This document answered his question to the joint chiefs of staff: "How many people will be killed if plans for nuclear war are carried out?" Daniel Ellsberg, the man who helped end the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers, happened to see this document before it got to Kennedy's desk. In his chilling book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, which tells the story of the US's nuclear secrets, he recalls from memory what was on the first page: a line chart that estimated 275 million deaths on the first day of a global nuclear war, rising to 325 million after six months. If the US struck first, more than 600 million people would die, equivalent to "a hundred Holocausts". Today, we know that the reality of a nuclear war would be much worse. Even a limited exchange could cause a "nuclear winter", that would wipe out all human life on earth within a couple of years. The power to realise this horrible vision is now in the greasy hands of a volatile, paranoid narcissist who threatens foreign states with violent rhetoric, sends early-morning maniacal tweets and runs the White House in a constant state of crisis, full of inexperienced staffers.
Allison ‘18 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323457828_Proxy_War_as_Strategic_Avoidance_A_Quantitative_Study_of_Great_Power_Intervention_in_Intrastate_Wars_1816-2010 //MD
Results from Model 2 demonstrate that the possession of nuclear weapons increases the chances of states engaging in proxy war. Dyads in which both states possessed nuclear weapons were more likely to experience proxy war than dyads in which only one or neither state had such weapons. In fact, when either or both states in a dyad possess nuclear weapons, there is a 54 increase in the likelihood that they will engage in proxy war. In a seeming contradiction of that finding, however, dyads with a greater disparity in nuclear arsenals are 11 less likely to experience proxy war.14 Unfortunately, there were no statistically significant results relating to this hypothesis in Model 1, and thus the present research cannot quantitatively assess the impact of nuclear weapons on direct conflicts. | 904,579 |
365,464 | 379,494 | Diplomacy, Alliance Formation, Securitization | Forign Policy 20’ "The Middle East Is More Stable When The United States Stays Away". Foreign Policy. Accessed March 31 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/ MD
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole. Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished. It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it? Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a new doctrine: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region,” he stated, “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” In the context of the Cold War, preventing the Soviets—the main outside force Carter was worried about—from gaining control over the energy-rich region had a strategic logic. But over time, that logic shifted. In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan expanded the doctrine to include threats to the flow of oil originating from inside the region, too. As the geopolitical context changed still further, subsequent presidents found even more ways to justify America’s growing military presence in the Middle East. What started as a policy to prevent others from establishing hegemony over the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf morphed into a policy of asserting American hegemony in the region in order to “save” it. As long as U.S. allies lack the capability or competence to secure the region, the thinking went, Washington would have no choice but to shoulder this responsibility. U.S. President George W. Bush was explicit about that; without an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, he claimed, there would be chaos in the region. He missed the irony, of course, that his invasion of Iraq was the single most destabilizing event in the Middle East of the past decades. As the scholars Hal Brands, Steven Cook, and Kenneth Pollack wrote endorsing the Carter Doctrine and its continuation, “the United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” This account is accurate enough (although the last rule on the list always exempted Israel), but the story glosses over how the policy also gave cover to U.S. allies for some fairly destabilizing behaviors of their own. That’s an omission Brands makes in a Bloomberg article, too, where he points to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to argue that a “post-American Middle East will not be stable and peaceful. It will be even nastier and more turbulent than it is today.” And in the words of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2018, “If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.” All this without a nod to the fact that, if anything, the United States’ protection of the Saudi regime has enabled its promotion of terrorism and its destabilizing activities in the region, which have, in turn, prompted further Iranian response. Assertions about the United States’ pivotal role in the Middle East, no matter how often repeated, have not been proved true. Iran, ravaged by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement, is nowhere near establishing hegemony in the region. Saudi Arabia spends more than five times as much on its military than does Iran; the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE—outspends Iran by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, whereas Iran has no nuclear weapons yet undergoes more inspections than any other country, Israel has a nuclear weapons program with no international transparency whatsoever. Iran may have been adept at taking advantage of U.S. overextension and missteps in the last few decades, but establishing hegemony is a different matter altogether. Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons. Instead, recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks. Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times. Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression. An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security. It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy. Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted. Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments. In the wake of the U.S. assassination of Suleimani—which some former U.S. officials have called an act of war—the calculations may change once more. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Suleimani was in Iraq to bring him Tehran’s response to a message from Riyadh on how to defuse regional tensions, presumably as part of the House of Saud’s renewed interest in diplomacy. The Iraqis, according to him, were mediating between the two rivals, an initiative that has now been thrown into question. Iran may very well conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Saudi Arabia and the UAE conspired with Washington to assassinate Suleimani and as a result not only end the recent diplomacy but also target Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as part of the revenge for Suleimani’s death. This is yet one more instance, it seems, in which U.S. activities in the region have brought more turmoil than stability. To be sure, there is no guarantee that recent diplomatic efforts would have been successful. A more responsible Riyadh might not have begotten a more responsible Tehran. But it is noteworthy that diplomacy did not even begin in earnest until Washington clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to entangle itself in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And by returning to the region in a show of military force, Trump may once again disincentivize the United States’ allies from taking diplomacy seriously. They may even interpret Suleimani’s killing as a license to resume their recklessness—activities like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s purported kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister and ordering of the dismemberment of Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s imposition of a blockade on Qatar; and the two countries’ further destabilization of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. As in the past, in other words, it seems as if the Middle East’s descent into chaos is more likely with the United States than without it.
Hubbard 19’ "With U.S. Help No Longer Assured, Saudis Try A New Strategy: Talks". 2020. Nytimes.Com. Accessed March 31 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/world/middleeast/saudi-iran-qatar-talks.html MD
In the months since a missile and drone attack widely seen as the work of Iran left two Saudi oil facilities smoldering, the Saudi crown prince has taken an uncharacteristic turn to diplomacy to cool tensions with his regional enemies. The prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has stepped up direct talks with the rebels he has been fighting in Yemen for over four years, leading to a decline in attacks by both sides. He has made gestures to ease, if not end, the stifling blockade he and his allies imposed on his tiny, wealthy neighbor, Qatar. He has even engaged in indirect talks with the kingdom’s archnemesis, Iran, to try to dampen the shadow war raging across the region. Fueling the shift from confrontation to negotiation, analysts say, is the sobering realization that a decades-old cornerstone of American policy in the Middle East — the understanding that the United States would defend the Saudi oil industry from foreign attacks — can no longer be taken for granted. Even though American and Saudi officials agreed that Iran was behind the Sept. 14 attacks on the petroleum processing plants at Abqaiq and Khurais, temporarily halving Saudi Arabia’s oil production, President Trump responded with heated rhetoric but little else. For the Saudis, the tepid response drove home the reality that despite the tens of billions of dollars they have spent on American weapons — more than $170 billion since 1973 — they could no longer count on the United States to come to their aid, at least not with the force they expected. Worried about having to fend for themselves in a tough and unpredictable neighborhood, analysts say, the Saudis have quietly reached out to their enemies to de-escalate conflicts. “I think we will look at Sept. 14 as a seminal moment in gulf history,” said David B. Roberts, a scholar of the region at King’s College London. With the presumption shattered that the United States would protect the Saudis, Dr. Roberts said, “they realize the need to be more accommodating.” For the United States, the shift toward diplomacy is an awkward paradox. The Trump administration and Congress have been pressing the Saudis to end the war in Yemen, and the administration has pushed them to reconcile with Qatar, largely in vain. Now, the presumed Iranian strikes may have done more to advance those goals than American pressure ever did. Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy turned more aggressive after Prince Mohammed, then 29, emerged as its driving force in 2015. He plunged the kingdom into a devastating war against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen; imposed a punishing boycott on Qatar, which he accused of supporting terrorism and cozying up to Iran; and vowed to confront Iran across the Middle East. Critics said the young prince was brash and headstrong, and a destabilizing force in the region. Moreover, the Yemen and Qatar campaigns failed to achieve the desired results. The war in Yemen settled into a costly stalemate with the side effect of a devastating humanitarian crisis, while Qatar employed its vast wealth and other international relationships to weather the blockade. Then the refinery attacks highlighted the vulnerability of the Saudi oil industry, the country’s economic jewel. Those events led to what Rob Malley, a top official for the Middle East in the Obama administration, describes as a “semi-recalibration” of Saudi policies. The sudden willingness to pursue diplomacy in Qatar and Yemen, he said, “reflects a Saudi desire to solidify its regional posture at a time of uncertainty and vulnerability.” Analysts saw the lack of a significant American response to the attacks as a blow to the policy known as the Carter doctrine, which dates to 1980, when President Jimmy Carter vowed to use force to ensure the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf after the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Subsequent presidents, Democrats and Republicans, upheld it, seeing Saudi oil exports as essential to the global economy and America’s interests. “For as long as I have been working on the Middle East, that’s why we were there: to protect the free flow of oil,” said Steven Cook, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to a period dating to the 1980s. After the attacks, Mr. Trump sent more American troops to Saudi Arabia to operate Patriot missile systems, support that fell far short of what the Saudis had expected from a president whom they considered a close friend and who shared their animosity toward Iran. Mr. Trump ordered, then abruptly called off, airstrikes on Iran. “What the Saudis didn’t understand,” Dr. Cook said, “was that Donald Trump is a lot closer to Barack Obama’s worldview than they realized. It’s about getting out of the Middle East.” The Saudis’ reputation in Washington had suffered gravely because of the war in Yemen, the Qatar blockade and the killing of the dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul last year. While anger spread in Congress and other parts of the government, Mr. Trump continued to support the kingdom as an important Arab ally and a reliable buyer of American arms. But as a presidential election looms, the Saudis realize that Mr. Trump could find that position to be a liability with voters, and a new president could take an entirely different approach. “It is a hard ask, even for Trump, to defend Saudi Arabia at every turn during a campaign,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “So I think the Saudis are smart enough to tone it down for a time.” Daylight also broke between Saudi Arabia and its closest regional ally, the United Arab Emirates. In June, the Emirates began withdrawing its troops from Yemen, leaving the Saudis with the burden of an ugly war that few believe they can win. In July, the Emirates hosted rare talks with Iran about maritime security, an effort to calm tensions in the Persian Gulf and safeguard the country’s reputation as a safe business hub. Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment on the recent diplomacy. While those overtures have yet to yield official agreements, they have eased pressures in the region. In Yemen, both sides have released more than 100 prisoners to show good will, and cross-border attacks by the Houthis have grown less frequent. Last month the United Nations envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition over the previous two weeks. Since then, no Yemeni civilians have been killed in airstrikes, said Radhya Almutawakel, the chairwoman of Mwatana, a Yemeni human rights group. The current de-escalation, she noted, is the first that resulted from direct talks with the Houthis. She suspected that the Saudis would not have chosen that route if the war had been going their way at the time of the Abqaiq attack.“They would not have chosen to speak with the Houthis,” she said. “They would have escalated the war.” In the standoff between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Qatar, demonstrable progress has been scarce but quiet talks between the countries’ leaders have softened the conflict’s rougher edges. Saudi social media accounts that often insulted Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, have toned it down. And while Qatar has not shut down its Al Jazeera satellite network as the Saudis demanded, criticism of Qatar from pro-government news outlets and social media accounts in Saudi Arabia has noticeably quieted in recent months, Qatari officials say. Instead of punishing citizens who travel to Qatar, Saudi Arabia now looks the other way, and has even sent soccer teams to play in tournaments in Doha, the Qatari capital. And although Qatar’s emir did not accept an invitation by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, to attend a regional summit meeting in Saudi Arabia this month, Qatar’s foreign minister did. The Qataris have also gained ground in Washington. While Mr. Trump initially cheered the blockade, endorsing the Saudi allegation that Qatar supported terrorism, he later switched tracks. Last year, he welcomed Qatar’s emir in Washington and this month sent his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, to a major conference in Doha. But the antagonism toward Qatar has not softened in the Emirates, which has been a leader of the embargo and which still sees Qatar as dangerously close to the region’s Islamists. The distrust is reciprocated by Qatar, where officials have spoken of possibly reconciling with Saudi Arabia but not the Emirates, effectively splitting their alliance. Concrete progress has been scarcest where the stakes are highest: between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But after years of heated statements and competing support for opposite sides in regional conflicts, officials from Pakistan and Iraq have stepped in as intermediaries for back-channel talks aimed at averting a wider conflict. It remains unclear how far such talks will go in reducing tensions, especially since an official Saudi opening with Iran could infuriate Mr. Trump, who has tried to isolate and punish Iran. “Washington would not look kindly upon a Saudi-Iranian channel at a time when the U.S. is trying to isolate Iran,” said Mr. Malley, the Obama administration official. “Not to fully trust the Trump administration is one thing. To openly defy it is another altogether, and Prince Mohammed is unlikely to do that.”
Forign Policy 20’ "The Middle East Is More Stable When The United States Stays Away". Foreign Policy. Accessed March 31 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/ MD
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole. Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished. It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it? Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a new doctrine: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region,” he stated, “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” In the context of the Cold War, preventing the Soviets—the main outside force Carter was worried about—from gaining control over the energy-rich region had a strategic logic. But over time, that logic shifted. In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan expanded the doctrine to include threats to the flow of oil originating from inside the region, too. As the geopolitical context changed still further, subsequent presidents found even more ways to justify America’s growing military presence in the Middle East. What started as a policy to prevent others from establishing hegemony over the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf morphed into a policy of asserting American hegemony in the region in order to “save” it. As long as U.S. allies lack the capability or competence to secure the region, the thinking went, Washington would have no choice but to shoulder this responsibility. U.S. President George W. Bush was explicit about that; without an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, he claimed, there would be chaos in the region. He missed the irony, of course, that his invasion of Iraq was the single most destabilizing event in the Middle East of the past decades. As the scholars Hal Brands, Steven Cook, and Kenneth Pollack wrote endorsing the Carter Doctrine and its continuation, “the United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” This account is accurate enough (although the last rule on the list always exempted Israel), but the story glosses over how the policy also gave cover to U.S. allies for some fairly destabilizing behaviors of their own. That’s an omission Brands makes in a Bloomberg article, too, where he points to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to argue that a “post-American Middle East will not be stable and peaceful. It will be even nastier and more turbulent than it is today.” And in the words of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2018, “If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.” All this without a nod to the fact that, if anything, the United States’ protection of the Saudi regime has enabled its promotion of terrorism and its destabilizing activities in the region, which have, in turn, prompted further Iranian response. Assertions about the United States’ pivotal role in the Middle East, no matter how often repeated, have not been proved true. Iran, ravaged by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement, is nowhere near establishing hegemony in the region. Saudi Arabia spends more than five times as much on its military than does Iran; the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE—outspends Iran by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, whereas Iran has no nuclear weapons yet undergoes more inspections than any other country, Israel has a nuclear weapons program with no international transparency whatsoever. Iran may have been adept at taking advantage of U.S. overextension and missteps in the last few decades, but establishing hegemony is a different matter altogether. Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons. Instead, recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks. Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times. Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression. An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security. It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy. Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted. Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments. In the wake of the U.S. assassination of Suleimani—which some former U.S. officials have called an act of war—the calculations may change once more. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Suleimani was in Iraq to bring him Tehran’s response to a message from Riyadh on how to defuse regional tensions, presumably as part of the House of Saud’s renewed interest in diplomacy. The Iraqis, according to him, were mediating between the two rivals, an initiative that has now been thrown into question. Iran may very well conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Saudi Arabia and the UAE conspired with Washington to assassinate Suleimani and as a result not only end the recent diplomacy but also target Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as part of the revenge for Suleimani’s death. This is yet one more instance, it seems, in which U.S. activities in the region have brought more turmoil than stability. To be sure, there is no guarantee that recent diplomatic efforts would have been successful. A more responsible Riyadh might not have begotten a more responsible Tehran. But it is noteworthy that diplomacy did not even begin in earnest until Washington clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to entangle itself in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And by returning to the region in a show of military force, Trump may once again disincentivize the United States’ allies from taking diplomacy seriously. They may even interpret Suleimani’s killing as a license to resume their recklessness—activities like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s purported kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister and ordering of the dismemberment of Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s imposition of a blockade on Qatar; and the two countries’ further destabilization of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. As in the past, in other words, it seems as if the Middle East’s descent into chaos is more likely with the United States than without it.
Harb 19’ "Saudi Arabia And Iran May Finally Be Ready For Rapprochement". Aljazeera.Com. Accessed April 1 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/saudi-arabia-iran-finally-ready-rapprochement-191015103242982.html MD
Still, only time will tell how the attack will impact the general atmosphere in the already-volatile Gulf region and the wider Middle East. What is apparent, however, is that the current state of uncertainty, mistrust and confusion cannot be sustained if Iran wants to rejoin the international community after decades of isolation and if Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies seek further economic and social development. Only a return to quiet and purposeful diplomacy - with the assistance of third parties - can bridge differences between the two sides and help prevent what could arguably be one of the most calamitous military confrontations in the region's history. Saudi Arabia is not interested in a confrontation It is improbable that Saudi Arabia is behind the attack on the Iranian tanker, despite its assumed desire to avenge the many attacks it sustained over the last few months. On September 14, for example, attacks on two of its main oil production facilities knocked out more than half of the kingdom's production. Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility but US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo swiftly accused Iran, which rejected the allegations. In light of all this, some argued that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who has come under much domestic criticism for failing to prevent the devastating attacks on the country's oil facilities, might have ordered the attack on the Iranian oil tanker to save face. This scenario, however, is highly improbable since a small-scale attack on an Iranian tanker like the one we witnessed last week is unlikely to yield significant positive results for MBS. First, if Iran concludes that Riyadh is indeed behind such an attack, it can easily find many overt and secret ways to retaliate. MBS is well aware that if he orders an attack on an Iranian vessel, he would be opening the kingdom to renewed attacks by Houthi insurgents. Second, despite the ongoing friction between the two sides, Riyadh does not want to rule out the possibility of a rapprochement with Tehran in the near future. MBS was clear, in a recent interview with CBS, about his preference for a political solution to the region's ongoing problems. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan's visits this week to Iran and Saudi Arabia can only be seen as an effort at reconciliation that he could not have undertaken without a green light from the leaders of both countries. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi is also known to have relayed messages between MBS and Iranian officials about de-escalation. Third, Saudi Arabia can no longer count on Washington's direct assistance in the event of a confrontation with Iran. Whatever existed of Saudi enthusiasm for such a confrontation has dissipated after US President Donald Trump aborted the mission to punish Tehran over its downing of an American spy drone last June. His latest decision to allow Turkey to attack Kurdish forces allied with the US and responsible for defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in northeastern Syria also gave the Saudis a signal that allies are not immune to Trump's whimsical foreign policy. The Saudi leadership cannot ignore the US president's reluctance to take on Iran and his betrayal of allies simply because he agreed to dispatch extra American troops to Saudi Arabia. Iran cannot remain a pariah in the region Despite the defiant rhetoric emanating from its leaders and institutions, the Islamic Republic is also interested in a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. Tehran understands that it cannot remain outside the confines of regional and international systems. It also understands that it needs to make compromises, both in the region and in the international arena, to find necessary accommodations. To be sure, its signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 clearly signalled its willingness to meet the international community's expectations if that helps it in preserving national pride and interests and escaping debilitating sanctions. However, on the regional front, Iran's insistence on interfering in the domestic affairs of Arab countries continues to stymie its good relations with its neighbours. To be sure, no other outside force has been able to secure the kind of influence that Iran maintains in Iraq and Lebanon. Yemen's Houthis, meanwhile, have become closer to Iran than ever before and have benefited from Iranian technology in manufacturing offensive weapons used against Saudi Arabia over the last few years. But Iran's role in Syria's war is the starkest example of overreach that makes it impossible for Tehran to join the current Saudi-led regional order. It is this last important part of Iran's regional policy that stands at the heart of its acrimonious relationship with Saudi Arabia, and it is here that the two may or may not find a compromise. Iranian officials have for quite some time now spoken of their desire for Iran to be considered a normal part of the regional subsystem, bearing equal responsibilities and sharing collective benefits. In a recent op-ed, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reiterated the Islamic Republic's view that "security in the region is a collective responsibility" and that "either everyone is safe or everyone is deprived of it." No one can find much fault with Zarif's statements, however, such words will only gain meaning and lead to meaningful change if Iran takes concrete steps to demonstrate that it is ready to respect the sovereignty of Arab states and in return, the Arab side agrees to treat Iran as an equal shareholder in the region's affairs. What is to come? In the current atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust, it is hard to accurately postulate what could be in store for Saudi-Iranian relations. But both Riyadh and Tehran have recently been talking about the dangers of escalation and expressing their desire to find a compromise that would allow for the two regional powers to peacefully co-exist. This, above anything else, signals a real possibility for sustainable peace in the Gulf. Friendly but neutral third parties can also assist in finding the means to bridge differences that have stymied a closer relationship between arguably the two most consequential states in the Muslim world. One thing is sure, however: peaceful co-existence can only work if Tehran scales down its interference in the affairs of Arab states and Riyadh accepts that Iran also has a say in regional issues. Iran should not expect to be allowed to continue controlling the fates of Iraq and Lebanon through affiliated militias or supporting the Houthis in their assault on Yemen's legitimate authority. It should also understand that it cannot re-join the regional system while insisting on supporting the thuggish regime of Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Reciprocally, Saudi Arabia must understand that Iran is of the region and that it cannot simply be excluded from the region's development. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia's apparent eagerness to de-escalate the situation following the October 11 attack on an Iranian tanker is perhaps the most significant sign yet that the two regional rivals are finally ready for a rapprochement. Peaceful co-existence, however, is difficult and requires the will to talk and compromise. If either party shows reluctance to change its ways, the region will continue to live with the possibility of a war that could make all past wars look minor in comparison.
Ashford 18’ Cato.Org. Accessed March 8 2020. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/ashford-ssq-november-2018.pdf MD
Yet perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that American predominance in the region prevents states from balancing or bandwagoning in the face of threats, as they would do in the absence of US presence. As many scholars have noted, the Middle East has typically exhibited “underbalancing,” meaning that states that might be expected to form alliances have rarely done so. The most obvious example is the antiIranian axis of Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has also repeatedly failed to build joint military infrastructure. The recent GCC crisis between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates likewise suggests that these states prioritize ideological factors over security concerns. As long as the United States continues to act as a regional security guarantor, theory suggests that ideological factors will continue to inhibit alliances.47 In fact, though the Obama administration’s pivot away from the Middle East was more rhetoric than reality, it did encourage tentative attempts to build better regional alliances. Private rapprochement and cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the issue of Iran has been growing. The two countries disagree on a variety of issues, the most problematic of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet when retired top Saudi and Israeli officials spoke about the issue at a 2016 forum in Washington, DC, they were keen to highlight that cooperation is possible even if these issues go unresolved.48 The two states regularly hold informal meetings on security issues. Even the relative lack of criticism expressed by the Gulf States during the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah may be indicative of shifting opinion within the region.49 In providing security guarantees and by acting as a third party cutout, US involvement inhibits these developing ties.
Gause 17’ “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalancing in the New Middle East Cold War: PS: Political Science andamp; Politics.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, 12 June 2017, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/ideologies-alignments-and-underbalancing-in-the-new-middle-east-cold-war/739C0AB7ACDAD0E8ADE7D36C3CD37AA6 MD
The pattern of alliances and alignments in the Middle East following the Arab uprisings challenges established theories of regional international relations (IR) in intriguing ways (Gause 2014; see also Lynch 2016; Ryan 2012; Salloukh 2013). One notable element of current regional geopolitics is the failure of other local powers to form effective blocking or balancing alliances against Iran, the state that has most clearly improved its regional position as a result of upheavals that go back to the 2003 Iraq War. Even as they fail to form new alliances, however, regional actors are taking steps domestically to increase their military power and cultivating non-state actors to increase their regional influence. This “underbalancing” (Schweller 2004, 2006) in terms of stateto-state alignment is best explained not by sectarianism or balance of power logic but rather by a variant of Walt’s (1987) balance-of-threat framework that emphasizes ideology and domestic-regime security issues. Explaining these patterns, therefore, requires grappling with constructivist theories of identity, the drivers of regime insecurity, and the relative importance of state-to-state and transnational policies. These patterns make for an interesting case not only for thinking through contemporary regional politics but also for testing more general theories about alliances. This effort is a response to Valbjørn’s (2017) call in this symposium for scholars of Middle East IR to engage more directly in the broader theoretical field and to use their empirical work on the region to suggest ways that more general IR theories can be amended to explain a wider array of cases. “UNDERBALANCING” AND THE NEW MIDDLE EAST COLD WAR Iran is the undoubted winner in regional-power terms in the past decade of Middle Eastern upheaval. For years, Iraq balanced against Iranian power in ways ranging from political competition to the massively destructive eight-year war in the 1980s. Today, Iran is the most influential player in Iraqi politics, having close relations with the Baghdad government, sponsoring if not controlling a number of Shi’i militias, maintaining a cooperative relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government, and indirectly fighting alongside the United States in the campaign against the Islamic State. Its client Hizballah remains the dominant force in Lebanese politics. Iranian support is essential to the preservation of the Assad regime in Damascus, even as other rulers challenged by the Arab Spring have fallen. Although Tehran’s relationship with the Huthi movement in Yemen is not as strong or as direct as that with Hizballah or the Iraqi militias, the success of the Huthis further contributes to the regional sense that Iran is “on the march.” Efforts by other regional powers to challenge Iranian gains have largely failed, whether Turkish and Saudi support for the Syrian opposition (although different elements of it), Saudi financing of the March 14 coalition in Lebanon and military aid to the Lebanese government (now cut off ), or half-hearted Saudi efforts to challenge Iran’s influence in Iraq. The Saudi–Emirati military campaign in Yemen against the Huthis succeeded in pushing them out of the southern part of the country but not (as of March 2017) out of San’a, the capital. Iran certainly has problems. Its Syrian ally is an increasing burden and will be for some time. Lower oil prices hurt Iran more than the Saudis because Tehran does not have the financial cushion that Riyadh built during recent years of high oil prices. However, it is difficult to argue with the fact that Iran is the regional state that gained the most from changes that commenced with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. By pure balance-of-power logic, the region should have witnessed a Turkish–Saudi–Israeli–Egyptian alignment aimed at checking and rolling back Iranian power. All four states have reason to be concerned about Iran, and all have taken steps to check Iranian power and interests. Israel and Saudi Arabia both identify Iran as their primary threat. Turkey has been a consistent supporter of the armed opposition to the Assad regime since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Three fourths of this hypothetical balancing alignment—a Turkish– Saudi–Egyptian understanding—makes perfect sense by the sectarian logic that many believe is driving regional politics because all three are overwhelmingly Sunni-majority states. However, neither the trilateral nor the quadrilateral balancing alignment against Iran has emerged. Instead, at most, Israel and Saudi Arabia have considered open coordination, whereas at various points, Turkey and Egypt have leaned toward Iran. Haas (2014) provided a framework to understand this example of regional “underbalancing.” He argued that it is not simply power that defines the structure of an international system; identity also plays a role in the way that states define friends and foes. States that share common ideas about appropriate and legitimate principles of governance tend to group together. In systems characterized by ideological bipolarity, in which the great powers divide between two overarching systems of governance, alliances tend to follow ideological lines and be stable. However, when there are more than two transnational ideological principles present in the system being advanced by great powers, the likelihood of underbalancing increases. Haas did not adequately appreciate how regimes that share those common ideas—at least rhetorically—also can be perceived as threats to one another’s security. The Communist USSR and the People’s Republic of China fell out in the 1960s. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser was as harsh with fellow “progressive” Arab nationalists who did not toe his line in the 1950s and 1960s as he was with the “reactionary” Arab monarchs (Kerr 1971). However, Haas’s argument can be refined to accommodate these anomalies. Common ideas about appropriate domestic governance will bring states together as long as respect for state independence and sovereignty underlies those ideas. If those common ideas call for hierarchical institutional forms (e.g., integral unity or formal subordination to a movement’s leader), they eventually will be perceived as threats by others in the same ideological camp. Haas (2014, 729) argued that in ideological multipolarity, state leaders will eschew alliances that seem logical from a power perspective because they dislike and fear the ideological stance of a potential ally: “Thus, all other things being equal, a shift from ideological bipolarity to multipolarity will make it more difficult for at least some states to form alliances because there are likely to be fewer ideologically acceptable allies in the system. The greater the impediments to alliance formation, the less efficient the balancing process will be against potential threats.” His paradigmatic example was the refusal of conservative politicians in Great Britain and France to consider an alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He added another impediment to effective balancing in ideological multipolarity, already recognized in more Realist accounts of alliance behavior (Christensen and Snyder 1990): that is, the greater incentives for buck passing. Why pay the price for balancing a threat if a third party will do it for free? Why cooperate with an ideological rival in balancing against a third party when cooperating with the rival could have negative repercussions at both home and abroad? In ideologically multipolar situations, therefore, the likelihood of underbalancing is considerable.
Ashford 18’ Cato.Org. Accessed March 8 2020. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/ashford-ssq-november-2018.pdf MD
Yet perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that American predominance in the region prevents states from balancing or bandwagoning in the face of threats, as they would do in the absence of US presence. As many scholars have noted, the Middle East has typically exhibited “underbalancing,” meaning that states that might be expected to form alliances have rarely done so. The most obvious example is the antiIranian axis of Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has also repeatedly failed to build joint military infrastructure. The recent GCC crisis between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates likewise suggests that these states prioritize ideological factors over security concerns. As long as the United States continues to act as a regional security guarantor, theory suggests that ideological factors will continue to inhibit alliances.47 In fact, though the Obama administration’s pivot away from the Middle East was more rhetoric than reality, it did encourage tentative attempts to build better regional alliances. Private rapprochement and cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the issue of Iran has been growing. The two countries disagree on a variety of issues, the most problematic of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet when retired top Saudi and Israeli officials spoke about the issue at a 2016 forum in Washington, DC, they were keen to highlight that cooperation is possible even if these issues go unresolved.48 The two states regularly hold informal meetings on security issues. Even the relative lack of criticism expressed by the Gulf States during the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah may be indicative of shifting opinion within the region.49 In providing security guarantees and by acting as a third party cutout, US involvement inhibits these developing ties.
Leeds 03’, Brett Ashley. “Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Influence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science, Midwest Political Science Association, 12 June 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/3186107 MD
The typical alliance that most imagine is a mutual defense pact. In such a treaty, the parties promise one another active military support in the event one or more is attacked. Based upon the informational theories discussed above, these alliances should have a deterrent effect. Potential aggressors know that if the alliance is reliable, they will find themselves in conflict with not only their intended target, but also the state or states allied with the target. If we assume that aggressors are more likely to initiate conflicts that they think they can win, and if we assume that usually aggressors are more optimistic about their ability to win a bilateral conflict than a multilateral conflict, it follows that potential aggressors should be more reluctant to challenge potential targets with allies committed to intervene on their behalf. This leads to a first hypothesis: HI: Potential challengers are less likely to initiate a militarized dispute against a potential target if the target has one or more allies committed to intervene on behalf of the target if attacked by this challenger.
Leeds 03’, Brett Ashley. “Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Influence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science, Midwest Political Science Association, 12 June 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/3186107 MD
This is easiest to see by examining the bar graph pictured in Figure 1. This figure shows the percentage change in the probability of dispute initiation that can be attributed to outside allies when all other variables are held at their mean values. The first bar shows that when a target state has an ally committed to its defense, the probability of dispute initiation is 28 lower than the probability of dispute initiation in a dyad with the mean characteristics in the dataset but no outside allies. The second bar represents the case in which the challenger has an offensive ally; in this instance, the probability of dispute initiation is 47 higher than it is in the case in which neither the challenger nor the target has any allies committed to intervene. Finally, the bar on the right shows that when challengers have obtained promises of neutrality from outside states, the probability of dispute initiation is 57 higher than it is when neither state has any allies. Notably, these substantive effects are similar to those associated with variables like power relations and similarity in alliance portfolios, which scholars of international politics have long considered crucial to predicting and preventing dispute initiation. Given the rare occurrence and severe implications of military conflict, the substantive effects of outside alliance commitments to potential conflict initiators and targets are important enough that they should influence scholarship and policy.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Ahmed 12’ (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, . Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD), an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, 2012, “Islamophobia and Insecurity The Exclusionary Logic of Imperial Geopolitics”, PDF MD
Here, the mainstream media plays a critical function in ideologically linking the international to the domestic, in particular, the trajectory of Western foreign policy in Muslim-majority theatres across the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as the processes of Islamophobia and radicalisation experienced within Muslim diaspora communities in the West. On the one hand, Islamophobic media narratives buttress anti-Muslim public opinion at home, alienating Muslims and fuelling the extremist rhetoric of far right groups. Simultaneously, images of devastation and destruction from Muslim-majority theatres of war such as Iraq and Afghanistan also distress and anger Muslim diaspora communities, further exacerbating alienation. In effect, the media acts as a symbiotic link between Islamophobia at home and abroad, as it mediates extremist rhetoric from neoconservative and right-wing factions and the official language of government and security agencies who attempt to pander to Islamophobic public opinion on political issues such as immigration and terrorism. Thus, there is perhaps no clearer instantiation of the security-dynamics of Islamophobia than the actual activities of Western security agencies. After the US Department of Justice passed a regulation allowing indefinite detention on 20th September 2001, nearly 1,200 Arabs and Muslims were secretly arrested and detained without charge.31 The US National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) “call-in” program required male visitors from twenty-four Arab and Muslim countries and North Korea to register with INS offices. No terrorists were found, yet over 13,000 of the 80,000 men who registered were threatened with deportation, and many were “detained in harsh conditions.”32 In the UK, more than a thousand Muslims have been detained without charge under anti-terror laws, out of which only a handful have been convicted of terrorist offences. Worldwide, more than 100,000 Muslim men – victims of the CIA?s extraordinary rendition programme – are being detained without charges “in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison” under conditions which violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners, and UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.33 Such practices accompany Anglo-American military engagements in predominantly Muslim theatres of war, regions often described as dangerous failed zones harbouring potential Islamist terrorists planning to inflict apocalyptic forms of mass destruction on Western civilization.34 Such military engagements also tend to result in the indiscriminate killings of predominantly Muslim civilians, and correlate invariably with their strategic location vis-à-vis contested energy reserves in the Middle East, Central Asia and Northwest Africa. Iraq provides a case-in-point. From 1991 to 2007, the total civilian death toll in Iraq as a direct and indirect consequence of Anglo-American invasions, socio-economic deprivation, infrastructure destruction, and occupation amounts to approximately 3 million over a period of sixteen years.35 The scale of this violence is thus larger than some of the most well-known cases of twentieth century genocide such as in Cambodia, Kampuchea, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. As Walt points out, estimating the number of Muslims killed directly and indirectly by U.S. forces over the last 30 years suggests at least 100 Muslim fatalities for every US one. He thus observes: “When you kill tens of thousands of people in other countries – and sometimes for no good reason – you shouldn?t be surprised when people in those countries are enraged by this behavior and interested in revenge.”36 This argument amply refutes the assumption that foreign policy has no relationship to terrorism and violent radicalisation. In particular, taking a broader historical view of the continuity of US-UK interventionism in the Gulf region going back to 1991 demonstrates not only the immense scale of the violence inflicted upon Iraqi civilians, but also illustrates that British interventionism in the region preceded the emergence and proliferation of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks against Western targets. Thus, Ralph argues that the massive military violence that has been inflicted predominantly on the civilian populations of Muslim-majority regions is only possible by their having been “Islamophobically” constructed as having lives that are of less value compared to those of Western citizens.37 But while the irrational fear of Islam and Muslims is clearly a significant factor in all these disparate phenomena, Islamophobia as a sociological concept offers little by way of a coherent causal explanation of how or why these phenomena are escalating simultaneously.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
In practice, this generates an excessive preoccupation not with the causes of global crisis acceleration and how to ameliorate them through structural transformation, but with their purportedly inevitable impacts, and how to prepare for them by controlling problematic populations. Paradoxically, this ‘securitisation’ of global crises does not render us safer. Instead, by necessitating more violence, while inhibiting preventive action, it guarantees greater insecurity. Thus, a recent US Department of Defense report explores the future of international conflict up to 2050. It warns of ‘resource competition induced by growing populations and expanding economies’, particularly due to a projected ‘youth bulge’ in the South, which ‘will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy’. This will prompt a ‘return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets’. Finally, climate change will ‘compound’ these stressors by generating humanitarian crises, population migrations and other complex emergencies.96 A similar study by the US Joint Forces Command draws attention to the danger of global energy depletion through to 2030. Warning of ‘the dangerous vulnerabilities the growing energy crisis presents’, the report concludes that ‘The implications for future conflict are ominous.’ 97 Once again, the subject turns to demographics: ‘In total, the world will add approximately 60 million people each year and reach a total of 8 billion by the 2030s’, 95 per cent accruing to developing countries, while populations in developed countries slow or decline. ‘Regions such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the youth bulge will reach over 50 of the population, will possess fewer inhibitions about engaging in conflict.’ 98 The assumption is that regions which happen to be both energy-rich and Muslim-majority will also be sites of violent conflict due to their rapidly growing populations. A British Ministry of Defence report concurs with this assessment, highlighting an inevitable ‘youth bulge’ by 2035, with some 87 per cent of all people under the age of 25 inhabiting developing countries. In particular, the Middle East population will increase by 132 per cent and sub-Saharan Africa by 81 per cent. Growing resentment due to ‘endemic unemployment’ will be channelled through ‘political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces’. More strangely, predicting an intensifying global against social divide between a super-rich elite, the middle classes and an urban under-class, the report warns: ‘The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.’ 99 3.3 Exclusionary logics of global crisis securitisation? Thus, the securitisation of global crisis leads not only to the problematisation of particular religious and ethnic groups in foreign regions of geopolitical interest, but potentially extends this problematisation to any social group which might challenge prevailing global political economic structures across racial, national and class lines. The previous examples illustrate how securitisation paradoxically generates insecurity by reifying a process of militarisation against social groups that are constructed as external to the prevailing geopolitical and economic order. In other words, the internal reductionism, fragmentation and compartmentalisation that plagues orthodox theory and policy reproduces precisely these characteristics by externalising global crises from one another, externalising states from one another, externalising the inter-state system from its biophysical environment, and externalising new social groups as dangerous ‘outsiders’. Hence, a simple discursive analysis of state militarisation and the construction of new ‘outsider’ identities is insufficient to understand the causal dynamics driving the process of ‘Otherisation’. As Doug Stokes points out, the Western state preoccupation with the ongoing military struggle against international terrorism reveals an underlying ‘discursive complex’, where representations about terrorism and non-Western populations are premised on ‘the construction of stark boundaries’ that ‘operate to exclude and include’. Yet these exclusionary discourses are ‘intimately bound up with political and economic processes’, such as strategic interests in proliferating military bases in the Middle East, economic interests in control of oil, and the wider political goal of ‘maintaining American hegemony’ by dominating a resource-rich region critical for global capitalism.100 But even this does not go far enough, for arguably the construction of certain hegemonic discourses is mutually constituted by these geopolitical, strategic and economic interests – exclusionary discourses are politically constituted. New conceptual developments in genocide studies throw further light on this in terms of the concrete socio-political dynamics of securitisation processes. It is now widely recognised, for instance, that the distinguishing criterion of genocide is not the pre-existence of primordial groups, one of which destroys the other on the basis of a preeminence in bureaucratic military–political power. Rather, genocide is the intentional attempt to destroy a particular social group that has been socially constructed as different. 101 As Hinton observes, genocides precisely constitute a process of ‘othering’ in which an imagined community becomes reshaped so that previously ‘included’ groups become ‘ideologically recast’ and dehumanised as threatening and dangerous outsiders, be it along ethnic, religious, political or economic lines – eventually legitimising their annihilation.102 In other words, genocidal violence is inherently rooted in a prior and ongoing ideological process, whereby exclusionary group categories are innovated, constructed and ‘Otherised’ in accordance with a specific socio-political programme. The very process of identifying and classifying particular groups as outside the boundaries of an imagined community of ‘inclusion’, justifying exculpatory violence toward them, is itself a political act without which genocide would be impossible.103 This recalls Lemkin’s recognition that the intention to destroy a group is integrally connected with a wider socio-political project – or colonial project – designed to perpetuate the political, economic, cultural and ideological relations of the perpetrators in the place of that of the victims, by interrupting or eradicating their means of social reproduction. Only by interrogating the dynamic and origins of this programme to uncover the social relations from which that programme derives can the emergence of genocidal intent become explicable.104 Building on this insight, Semelin demonstrates that the process of exclusionary social group construction invariably derives from political processes emerging from deep-seated sociopolitical crises that undermine the prevailing framework of civil order and social norms; and which can, for one social group, be seemingly resolved by projecting anxieties onto a new ‘outsider’ group deemed to be somehow responsible for crisis conditions. It is in this context that various forms of mass violence, which may or may not eventually culminate in actual genocide, can become legitimised as contributing to the resolution of crises.105 This does not imply that the securitisation of global crises by Western defence agencies is genocidal. Rather, the same essential dynamics of social polarisation and exclusionary group identity formation evident in genocides are highly relevant in understanding the radicalisation processes behind mass violence. This highlights the fundamental connection between social crisis, the breakdown of prevailing norms, the formation of new exclusionary group identities, and the projection of blame for crisis onto a newly constructed ‘outsider’ group vindicating various forms of violence
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Wæver 98’ Securitisation and Desecuritisation?, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995); Barry Buzan, Ola Wæver and Jaape de Wilde, Security: A New Framework
for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1998) p. 23 MD
In a way, the most interesting about a speech act is that it might fail. And this is an essential part of its meaning. . . . In our context this is clearly the case: the invocation of "security" is only possible because it invokes the image of what would happen if it did not work. And not only this ( . . . ): the security speech act is only a problematic and thereby political move because it has a price. The securitizer is raising the stakes and investing some (real) risk of losing (general) sovereignty in order to fence off a specific challenge. In the present post-structuralist usage of speech act theory the meaning of the particular speech act is thus equally constituted by its possible success and its possible failure~-~-one is not primary and the other derived
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
González 18’ "Costs Of War: 17 Years After 9/11, Nearly Half A Million People Have Died In Global “War On Terror”". 2020. Democracy Now!. Accessed April 10 2020. https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/21/costs_of_war_17_years_after MD
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with the costs of America’s endless war in the Middle East, as a new report reveals that nearly half a million people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001, when George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” in the wake of September 11th. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. … It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Bush referred to the war as a “crusade.” More than 17 years later, the war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history. A major new report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project has found that more than 480,000 people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, including soldiers, militants, police, contractors, journalists, humanitarian workers and civilians. Several times as many people have died indirectly because of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural problems, and war-related disease. The wars have uprooted 21 million Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani and Syrian people, who are now refugees of war or internally displaced.
NRC 18’ "12,000 People A Day Internally Displaced By Conflict Across The Middle East In 2017 | NRC". 2020. NRC. Accessed April 2 2020. https://www.nrc.no/news/2018/may/12000-people-a-day-internally-displaced-by-conflict-across-the-middle-east-in-2017/ MD
12,000 people a day internally displaced by conflict across the middle east in 2017. New displacement associated with conflict doubled, largely due to Syria’s ongoing civil war. Almost 4.5 million people fled within their own countries to escape conflict and violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2017, according to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Key findings from the Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID 2018) show that the region accounted for 38 per cent of the global total of 11.8 million, with new displacements concentrated in Syria, 2.9 million; Iraq, 1.4 million and Yemen, 160,000. The figures for Yemen are not as high as expected for one of | 904,580 |
365,465 | 379,505 | Neg v1 | Open Source | 904,591 |
365,466 | 379,522 | K - Black Fem | Their method for Militancy plays into white fantasies of black masculine violence and is nothing more than a capitulation to the status quo - turns case
Hooks 04 Bell Hooks , "Chapter 4 don’t make me hurt you black male violence “We Real Cool” https://www.coursehero.com/file/p43etvc/Black-males-who-reject-racist-sexist-stereotypes-must-still-cope-with-the/
Writing about this ...the cul-tural norms.
The spectacle of militancy erases the mundane foundation-building of black women in favor of masculine hypervisibility - turns case
James 99 James J, Social Identities , "Sci-Hub | Black Revolutionary Icons and “Neoslave” Narratives. Social Identities, 5(2), 135–159 | 10.1080/13504639951536", 1999, https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1080/13504639951536
Influential male narratives ... specificity, of militancy. | 904,603 |
365,467 | 379,532 | UBI - DA - Inflation v3 | It's the same as v2 w this card at the end
Even Small Nuclear War Causes Extinction
Robock ’11 (Alan, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, “Nuclear winter is a real and present danger”, May 18, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7347/full/473275a.html, CMR)
In the 1980s ... nuclear arsenals politically3. | 904,612 |
365,468 | 379,517 | DA vs K - Eco | Rejecting capitalism causes massive ecological disasters
Butters 07 (Roger B., Ph.D., President – Nebraska Council on Economic Education, Assistant Professor of Economics – University of Nebraska at Lincoln, “Teaching the Benefits of Capitalism”, http://www.hillsdale.edu/images/userImages/afolsom/Page_6281/Butters.pdf)
Property rights create ... that protect property.
Extinction
Kline 98 (Gary, Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia Southwestern State University, Journal of Third World Studies, 15(1), Spring)
Additionally, natural ecosystems ... our existence: agriculture. | 904,601 |
365,469 | 379,527 | UBI - DA - Immigration PTX | Trump is making calls for mass deportation key to his 2020 run but a lack of ICE funding is blocking him from implementing his plan
Miroff and Sacchetti 19 Nick Miroff, Maria Sacchetti, Abigail Hauslohner and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post, Nick Miroff, Maria Sacchetti , "Trump renews pledge to deport millions, but ICE reality is more limited | The Texas Tribune", June 19 2019, https://www.texastribune.org/2019/06/19/trump-renews-pledge-deport-millions-ice-reality-more-limited/
President Donald Trump ... the internal fissures.
Democrats are the political barrier to ICE funding in the status quo
Elis 19 Niv Elis , The Hill, "ICE emerges as stumbling block in government funding talks | TheHill", 12/06/19, https://thehill.com/latino/473319-ice-emerges-as-stumbling-block-in-government-funding-talks
The debate around ... made little headway.
UBI leads to immigration shutdown and backlash – resolves status quo barriers to Trump’s deportation plans
McArdle 14 Megan, journalist and blogger based in Washington, D.C., “How a basic income in the U.S. could increase global poverty” April 18th 2014 PBS News Hour, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/how-a-basic-income-in-the-u-s-could-increase-global-poverty/ SJ MC
Why couldn’t that ... it would to
Riders magnify the link – affirming makes the plan must pass which makes it primed for riders that crack down on immigration- Switzerland politics proves.
Williamson 16 Kevin Williamson (Correspondent for National Review), The UBI and Immigration, National Review, 6/10/2016. https://www.nationalreview.com/blog/corner/how-immigration-concerns-undermined-ubi/
Switzerland is very ... to ignore them.
mass deportation escalates to genocide and totalitarianism
Allen 16 (Danielle Allen and Richard Ashby Wilson, “Mass deportation isn’t just impractical. It’s very, very dangerous,” 9-23-16, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mass-deportation-isnt-just-impractical-its-very-very-dangerous/2016/09/23/c6d3b4ee-7b77-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html?utm_term=.e4deabe64545)
We’ve hit the ... our police forces. | 904,606 |
365,470 | 379,546 | 0-Contact | If you have any questions or want us to disclose, contact us at [email protected] or on Facebook Aryan Jasani. Discord is AwesomeAJ23#7366 and poot nab#1649. Rest of the positions for other topics are disclosed on Plano Senior wiki | 904,627 |
365,471 | 379,549 | gtfo K | The affirmative’s stance of radical engagement is re-appropriated by the forces they criticize; perceptions of American ‘economic openness’ towards difference are empirically used to advance imperialist goals of Manifest Destiny.
Steven G. Calabresi, 4-22-2006, Professor of Constitutional Law, Northwestern University, “‘A Shining City on a Hill’: American Exceptionalism and the Supreme Court’s Practice of Relying on Foreign Law,” http://www.bu.edu/law/central/jd/organizations/journals/bulr/volume86n5/documents/CALABRESIv.2.pdf
*ellipsis and brackets in original text*
The most striking example of nineteenth century American exceptionalism is found in the concept of Manifest Destiny. The phrase originated in an essay written by John L. O’Sullivan in 1845, in which he described “our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free 177 See MADSEN, supra note 12, at 70-71. Bercovitch notes that one Melville novel “opens with a eulogy to the American Way (‘Out of some past Egypt we have come to this new Canaan; and from this new Canaan we press on to some Circassia’).” BERCOVITCH, supra note 18, at 28. 178 MADSEN, supra note 12, at 71. 179 See BERCOVITCH, supra note 18, at 176-77 (second and third alterations in original). 180 Daniel Webster, Fourth of July Oration (July 4, 1802), in 15 THE WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF DANIEL WEBSTER 513, 520 (1903). 2006 development of our yearly multiplying millions.”181 “A SHINING CITY ON A HILL” 1361 Madsen argues that the concept of Manifest Destiny required the United States to fight the Mexican War and acquire ever larger parts of the American West, because “the acquisition of more land, then, was necessary to keep the American experiment in democracy going. This was the visible or ‘manifest’ destiny of the United States . . . .”182 It appeared to mid-nineteenth century American Protestants that just as God had made the promised land of New England available to the Puritans, he was now signaling that the nascent United States should settle the North American continent from sea to shining sea.183 This ideology had mixed consequences for those Native Americans, Mexicans, and bison that stood in the way. Madsen notes that Senator John Dix of New York described the process as follows: The aboriginal races, which occupy and overrun a portion of California and New Mexico, must there, as everywhere else, give way before the advancing wave of civilization, either to be overwhelmed by it, or to be driven upon perpetually contracting areas, where, from a diminution of their accustomed sources of subsistence, they must ultimately become extinct by force of an invincible law. We see the operation of this law in every portion of this continent. We have no power to control it, if we would. It is the behest of Providence that idleness, and ignorance, and barbarism, shall give way to industry, and knowledge, and civilization.184 Anders Stephanson offers a similar account, arguing that American nationalism in the early nineteenth century “shared . . . a sense of an entirely new kind of country, uniquely marked by social, economic, and spatial openness.”185 He adds that the United States was viewed as “a sacred-secular project, a mission of world-historical significance in a designated continental setting of no determinate limits.”186 Stephanson notes that O’Sullivan specifically warned against the “tendency to ape European models.”187 Instead, “the nation . . . was bound by nothing except its founding principles, the eternal and universal principles.”188
This is especially true in the context of Latin America; rhetoric of openness towards the region obscures the reality of US domination.
Sarah Hines, 7-22-2009, writer for Socialist Worker, “Obama's not-so-new Latin America policy,” http://socialistworker.org/2009/07/22/obamas-latin-america-policy
Sarah Hines writes from Bolivia on the gap between Barack Obama's rhetoric about a more cooperative Latin American policy and the reality of continued U.S. domination. July 22, 2009 Bolivian President Evo Morales (Sebastian Baryli) Bolivian President Evo Morales (Sebastian Baryli) PRESIDENT BARACK Obama declared at the Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad and Tobago in April that there would no longer be junior and senior partners in the Americas~-~-but his actions are sending a different message. The most egregious case is Honduras, where the U.S. has played ball with the coup-makers who overthrew democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya earlier this month. The Obama administration also failed to speak out against last month's Peruvian police massacre of more than 50 indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon who were protesting the incursion of petroleum transnational corporations into their territory. In Bolivia, too, Obama failed another important test. On June 30, the Obama administration rejected renewal of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) for Bolivia, citing the country's alleged failure to cooperate in drug eradication efforts. With this pronouncement, the administration ratified George W. Bush's decision last November to suspend the trade agreement with Bolivia on the basis of supposed non-cooperation in counter-narcotics operations. In reality, the suspension was one of a series of tit-for-tat moves that began when Bolivian President Evo Morales declared U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg persona non grata after he advised opposition politicians plotting a coup last September. Bush overrode the decision of Congress to extend the agreement for six months just a few weeks after Morales announced that the Drug Enforcement Agency was no longer welcome in Bolivia. A few months earlier, Morales had supported the decision of coca growers in the Chapare region, where Morales was a union leader before becoming president, to expel the United States Agency for International Development from the area. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE U.S. allegation that Bolivia has failed to cooperate in the "drug war" carries serious economic penalties under the terms of the 1991 Andean Trade Preference Act. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the law was intended to help Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia "in their fight against drug production and trafficking by expanding their economic alternatives. To this end, the ATPA provided reduced-duty or duty-free treatment to most of these countries' exports to the United States." It was renewed in 2002 under the ATPDEA name. The criteria for continued participation fall into four categories: investment policies, trade policies, counter-narcotics operations and workers' rights. While the decision cited Bolivia's supposed failure to meet its counter-narcotics commitments as the reason for non-renewal, it is clear from the text of the U.S. Trade Representative's report that Bolivia had offended the U.S. in other areas as well. The report cites Bolivia's nationalization of hydrocarbons, the country's withdrawal from the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a "difficult investment climate," and increased tariffs. These are described in matter-of-fact language~-~-but it's clear that the U.S. is none too pleased. In the area of counter-narcotics, the trade representative's report claims that the "loss of the DEA presence and its information network has severely diminished Bolivia's interdiction capacity in both the short and the long term." The report concedes that the Bolivian government has "maintained its support for interdiction efforts" and that "interdiction of drugs and precursor chemicals continues to rise," and that "the Bolivian counter-narcotics police and other CN counter-narcotics units have improved coordination effectiveness." Yet even Bolivia's success in these efforts is seen as a problem~-~-the U.S. report concludes that Bolivia's increased drug interdiction is evidence of "increased cocaine production and transshipment." While it appears that cocaine production has, in fact, increased in Bolivia, this is being used as an excuse for the U.S. to punish a government that is challenging American interference within its borders. If the U.S. government was truly concerned with stopping the production and distribution of illegal drugs, and believed that ending trade preference agreements could have such an effect, it would refuse to extend trade preferences to U.S. ally Colombia, a country at the heart of cocaine production. According to the Andean Information Network, coca production has risen in three of the four Andean countries participating in the ATPDEA: Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that land area under coca cultivation in the region grew by 16 percent from 2006 to 2007. Colombia led the way with a 27 percent increase, while growth in Bolivia was 5 percent and in Peru 4 percent. "Overall, Colombia accounted for 85 percent of the net 24,700 hectare increase region-wide, while Peru accounted for 9 percent and Bolivia for 6 percent," the UN agency reported. Despite this region-wide spike in cocaine production, only Bolivia faces non-renewal of trade preferences. The U.S. recently renewed the ATPDEA for Peru and Colombia, and renewed it for Ecuador the same day it denied renewal to Bolivia. The suspension of preferred trade status as of December 2008 had already led to a 14 percent decline in Bolivian sales to the U.S. and the loss of more than 2,000 jobs in the country's largest textile exporter. The textile industry had benefited the most from trade preference and is being hit the hardest by its suspension. According to AmericaEconomic.com, "Bolivian exports to the U.S., in large part due to the ATPDEA, reached $171,920,000 dollars in the first five months of 2008. In the same period in 2009, exports fell 19.5 percent to $138,370,000. The textile industry has protested that the suspension of the ATPDEA will lose the sector close to 9,000 jobs." The Agencia de Noticias Fides (ANF) estimates that 46,000 jobs will be lost nationally and between 5,000 and 7,000 businesses will be affected in the department (region) of La Paz alone. The Santa Cruz Chamber of Exporters estimates that exports from its department to the U.S. will decline 60 percent by the end of the year. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - IN THE lead-up to the decision on ATPDEA, President Morales appealed to the U.S. to renew the agreement, even sending a delegation to the U.S. to make the case. "If President Obama wants to have good relations," Morales said, "I want to publicly tell him that hopefully he can mend the ways of ex-President Bush." When Obama followed Bush's lead and refused to renew Bolivia's status as a cooperating government in anti-drug efforts, Morales said the decision was "clearly political." "I feel deceived by the suspension of the ATPDEA because the Obama government has lied and made slanderous and false accusations against the Bolivian government to suspend the trade preferences," he told reporters. So much for the Obama administration's stated aim of improving relations with Latin America by establishing mutual respect and cooperation. Rather, recent events indicate that Obama is committed to re-establishing U.S. hegemony in the region in order to counter the "pink tide" of center-left governments that have been elected from Central America to the Southern Cone. Morales put it well: In the U.S., the appearance of the leaders has changed, but the politics of empire have not. When he told us in Trinidad and Tobago that they are no longer senior and junior partners, President Obama lied to Latin America. Now there is not only a senior partner, there is a patron boss, a policeman... They told me not to trust Obama~-~-that the empire is the empire. To those who made this recommendation to me, I thank you. Truly, the empire is the empire. But thankfully, the battle will continue with the consciousness of not only the Bolivian people, but all of the peoples of Latin America.
Their supposedly ‘engaging’ academic discussion concerning Latin America is a form of fetishism; the attempt to know the Latin American Other commodifies their identities and forecloses the possibility of authentic openness.
Sara Ahmed, 2-01-2013, Professor of Race and Cultural Studies @ Goldsmiths, “Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality,” http://books.google.com/books?id=Af0mtGfAv_gCandpg=PT177andlpg=PT177anddq=sara+ahmed+hospitality+forgetting+of+nameandsource=blandots=FGIcDZTbE8andsig=UcyVCC3PRI35meWFjzYkQhcoktQandhl=enandsa=Xandei=NMztUcuWAsXCyAG7gIHICgandved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepageandq=sara20ahmed20hospitality20forgetting20of20nameandf=false
The critical literature on Levinasian ethics has placed considerable emphasis on his model of hospitality towards strangers (Vasseleu 1998: 103). Indeed, Jacques Derrida suggests, in his most recent and loving encounter with Levinas, that hospitality or ‘welcoming’ is the ‘immense treatise’ of Totality and Infinity (1999: 21). In his reading of Levinas, ‘the stranger’ is the one who is loved, if love is understood as an opening which does not reveal the presence or absence of the one who is loved: ‘Who loves the stranger. Who loves the stranger? Whom else is there to love?’ (Derrida 1999: 105). Hospitality is also bound up with the figure of the stranger in Edith Wyschogrod’s ethics of remembering. She suggests that hospitality is the act of welcoming in the absence of commonality; it establishes ‘a community of strangers’ (Wyschogrod 1998: xvi). However, as I have argued throughout this book, the ‘stranger’ cannot be simply used as a word to describe the one who is distant, the one whom I do not yet know. To name some-body as a stranger is already to recognise them, to know them again: the stranger becomes a commodity fetish that is circulated and exchanged in order to define the borders and boundaries of given communities. To welcome an other as a Stranger is to assimilate that which cannot be assimilated: it is to establish a community based on a principle of uncommonality in which their difference becomes ‘our own’ (see Chapter 5). The model of hospitality based on ‘welcoming the stranger’ assumes that to welcome the stranger is to welcome the unassimilable: it hence conceals how that very act of welcoming already assimilates others into an economy of difference. In order to problematise such a model of hospitality we need a double approach: first, we need an analysis of the economies of differentiation that already assimilate others as the strangers (which is economic in the precise sense of involving circuits of production, exchange and consumption); second, we need an analysis of how encounters with others who are already differentiated in this way can move beyond the economic by welcoming, or being open or hospitable to, that which is yet to be assimilated.
This makes neoliberalism predatory on their stance of ‘radical openness’ – hijacks and co-opts activist movements to hasten the spread of inequality.
Robert McRuer, Spring-xx-2012, Professor of English @ George Washington University, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Cripping Queer Politics, or the Dangers of Neoliberalism,” http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/cripping-queer-politics-or-the-dangers-of-neoliberalism/2/
Neoliberalism is the dominant economic and cultural system of our time. It is a system that positions the market as the answer to everything. Any problem is supposed to be best addressed—most effectively and efficiently—through the market. Neoliberalism positions the move of previously public functions into the private sphere of the market as an unequivocal good and unquestionable common sense. As a corollary, any barriers to the workings of that market (and barriers to the flow of capital) should be eliminated through various kinds of deregulation. Proponents of neoliberalism advocate deregulation even if that deregulation requires (or has required in practice) an increasing regulation on the movement of peoples. And neoliberalism, while promising unparalleled freedom and unstoppable growth, exacerbates all kinds of inequalities around the globe. Neoliberal ideology displays a special genius at making lopsided growth, wealth for a few, and immiseration for many more, seem sexy, progressive, and “modern.” This positioning of neoliberalism as more progressive than conservative regulation, and as the wave of development and the future, means that activist projects can become vehicles for neoliberal policies rather than for social change that will actually challenge the distribution of wealth and power in contemporary societies. “Neoliberalism is,” as Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy write, “a predatory system:” it is predatory on the liberatory energies our movements have generated, the resistant identifications we shape, the resources we might access, and the radical openness to alternative futures that (appears to be a common desire) across progressive movements.1
The alternative is to get the hell out of Latin America.
Latin America is revolting against dominant Westernized paradigms now – the US should give up the façade of openness towards the Other and allow for a delinking to occur.
Sarah Hines, 7-22-2009, writer for Socialist Worker, “Obama's not-so-new Latin America policy,” http://socialistworker.org/2009/07/22/obamas-latin-america-policy
So much for the Obama administration's stated aim of improving relations with Latin America by establishing mutual respect and cooperation. Rather, recent events indicate that Obama is committed to re-establishing U.S. hegemony in the region in order to counter the "pink tide" of center-left governments that have been elected from Central America to the Southern Cone. Morales put it well: In the U.S., the appearance of the leaders has changed, but the politics of empire have not. When he told us in Trinidad and Tobago that they are no longer senior and junior partners, President Obama lied to Latin America. Now there is not only a senior partner, there is a patron boss, a policeman... They told me not to trust Obama~-~-that the empire is the empire. To those who made this recommendation to me, I thank you. Truly, the empire is the empire. But thankfully, the battle will continue with the consciousness of not only the Bolivian people, but all of the peoples of Latin America. In a discussion with a New York audience in May, Uruguayan author Eduardo Galleano urged Obama, instead of restoring U.S. "leadership" in the region, to leave Latin America alone. While Obama would win a lot more favor with Latin American governments and populations were he to follow this advice, all signs point to an empire that is gearing up to reassert control in what it has long considered its backyard. But the increasing consciousness, organization and mobilization of Latin America's popular classes~-~-there to see on the streets of Honduras in recent weeks~-~-means that the U.S. won't be able to re-establish hegemony in Latin America without a fight.
The ROB is to evaluate which team forefronts the best methodology to construct a decolonial praxis in the face of US neoimperialism. Their radical openness leaves us unable to cope with the hostile other – true recognition of alterity necessarily must understand its inaccessibility. We should recognize that we’ve messed up and that Latin America wants us gone.
Naida Zuki?, 11-xx-2009, assistant professor in BMCC’s Department of Speech, Communications and Theater Arts, “My Neighbor’s Face and Similar Vulgarities,” http://liminalities.net/5-4/neighbor.pdf
Derrida’s examination of unconditional hospitality belongs to a discourse demanding that hospitality be extended—without anticipation, prejudice, or identification—to an unexpected visitor, foreigner, guest, immigrant, or stranger. This absolute openness to the newcomer on the principles of the heart, however, involves ethical risks and limitations inherent in the neighbor. Žižek locates the neighbor in its violent brutality over against Freud’s traumatic intruder (a thing that hystericizes us and disturbs the balance of our way of life). The presupposition to be resisted here, Žižek warns, is the ethical gentrification of the neighbor, “the reduction of the radically ambiguous monstrosity of the Neighbor-Thing into an Other as the abyssal point from which the call of ethical responsibility emanates” (“Neighbors” 163). That one must be radical in offering hospitality to the other stems from Derrida’s belief in overcoming violence and exclusion via pure openness and unconditional hospitality toward the Other. I am opposed to this Derridean notion of ethical hospitality. Crucial here, however, is an ideological shift from a neighbor in the simple sense, to the neighbor in its radical otherness. The neighbor in its radical otherness disturbs; the neighbor “remains an inert, impenetrable, enigmatic presence that hystericizes” (Žižek, “Neighbors” 140-1). Therefore, my meditation on the figure of the neighbor is a corrective move against unconditional hospitality that accentuates the limitation of ethical universality. This logic is implied in the critique of Derrida’s “opening without horizon,” and contextualized in representations of the Bosnian genocide in Peter Maass’s Love Thy Neighbor. 1 Ethnic cleansing, neighbor-on-neighbor violence, and dehumanization of the Other read as the portrayal of humankind at its worst. Complicating Derrida’s notion of ethical hospitality are narratives of mass atrocities within which lurks the neighbor—the unfathomable abyss, the radical otherness in all its intensity and inaccessibility. Against the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality An act of hospitality can only be poetic. – Derrida2 Stories orbiting the questions of ethics, violence, and the Bosnian war have faded from our public consciousness. Today, Bosnian political developments and survivors’ accounts of the atrocities receive occasional press coverage, largely through reporting about war crimes trials at The Hague (i.e., Slobodan Miloševi? and Radovan Karadži?’s trials for war crimes during the wars in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia). At the most basic level such questions about war and religious conflict highlight a revived sense of urgency within the context of ethics and violence. Furthermore, breakdowns of economic and familial structures, systemic violence, and human rights violations reflect a distinct scene shift that characterizes modern wars; a politico/ideological move from inter to intra-national conflict. Chaos, violence, and death that ensued in Bosnia in 1992 add to the complexity of intra-national conflicts, and more specifically highlight the atrociously orchestrated neighbor-to-neighbor violence. These systemic implementations of violence are never ahistorical or abstract, but always already part of concrete intersubjective, political, and ideological contexts within which they are mobilized. It is in this light that I revisit Derrida’s notion of ethical hospitality—the ideology that teaches us not to objectify the Other—and the vulgarity of Slobodan Miloševi? and Radovan Karadži?, the traumatic intruders, the neighbors. Derrida’s incalculable hospitality, the opening without horizon of expectation to the newcomer whoever that may be, is an aporia at best and an impossible demand at worst. Conditional hospitality is inscribed in the very possibility of unconditional hospitality and the opening to the “absolute arrivant,” the foreigner. He elaborates upon this newcomer who is not even a guest, who: surprises the host—who is not yet a host or an inviting power—enough to call into question, to the point of annihilating or rendering indeterminate, all the distinctive signs of a prior identity, beginning with the very border that delineated a legitimate home and assured lineage, names and language, nations, families and genealogies. The absolute arrivant does not yet have a name or an identity. (Aporias 34) It is precisely Derrida’s unconditional hospitality which remains conditioned by the histories, languages, and “the conditional laws of the right to hospitality,” imposed on the newcomer (On Cosmopolitanism 22). The possibility of impossible hospitality is therefore, purely theoretical and conceptual; conditioned by political inequalities, economic exploitation, injustice, war, homophobia, xenophobia, racism, and so on. Accordingly, the absolute arrivant without a name or identity, the foreigner, can always violate and extinguish these laws of hospitality. Within the unconditional hospitality to otherness, inscribed in the element of the foreigner are the unpredictable violent “visitations” that demonstrate the limit to incalculable hospitality. Although unconditional hospitality and exposure to the other requires the suspension of all discrimination, there is always a possibility that the foreigner will be the enemy of the host. Because such possibility exists, unconditional hospitality remains merely conceptual; it is impossible to require that the host not decide who does or does not enter the house. Unconditional hospitality is, therefore, a self-contradictory concept; it deconstructs itself precisely by being put into practice (“Hospitality” 8). Unconditional hospitality requires a host to open the door to a foreigner who might bring harm. This aporia of hospitality is necessarily political. The laws of political (conditional and exclusive) hospitality refer to the cultural and ideological structures, which preexist the subject, and interrogate the event of the contact with the other, the foreigner, the stranger. The premise of unconditional hospitality, however, is that the neighbor, someone whom I know from within, cannot be my enemy. Nevertheless, gross violations of hospitality, including massive atrocities and human rights abuses are occurring not between strangers, but between neighbors.3 The neighbor is one such figure of the Other toward whom my relationship is that of familiarity, common language, and proximity. Underlying Derrida’s unconditional hospitality is fear of the Other—the fear of the unfathomable abyss of radical otherness that transgresses, compromises, and disturbs from within. The neighbor. Fear Thy Neighbor What’s the moral difference between slitting a man’s throat or slicing off his balls? – Maass 51 To recognize the Other is thus not primarily or ultimately to recognize the Other in a certain well-defined capacity (“I recognize you as...rational, good, lovable”), but to recognize you in the abyss of your very impenetrability and opacity. – Žižek, “Neighbors” 138-9 | 904,629 |
365,472 | 379,556 | NOVDEC NEG | fear based deterrence fails; nuke war
[email protected] | 904,634 |
365,473 | 379,565 | Contact Info | Whats good ~-~- hit me up if u wanna disclose
preferably on fb messenger: Ben Kirsch
https://www.facebook.com/ben.kirsch.355
or j email me:
[email protected] | 904,645 |
365,474 | 379,570 | PLEASE READ Hawken EG views on disclosure | If you email us, like kind individuals, and ask us to disclose ([email protected] and [email protected]) we will, like kind gentlemen, disclose as well. We don't really like disclosure and would prefer not to disclose, but are willing to reciprocate. Email us at any time, 30 minutes before 10 minutes before, its all chill. If you send us your case in the same format as the version attached under the 'open source' page or if you just email us what you read verbatim we'll reciprocate in kind. Also we don't really read the wiki because we don't find it super useful and its often very confusing, so we won't have your case unless we get a flow of it somehow. We also generally don't paraphrase anything, so we'd prefer, if y'all disclose, to do the same.
"In the ninja world, those who break the rules are scum, but those who read disclosure theory are worse than scum" - Obito Uchiha | 904,651 |
365,475 | 379,572 | trigger disclosure | In order to hopefully make rounds safer this is a list of arguments that we need trigger warned before we debate-
1. Domestic or intimate partner violence
2. Suicide | 904,653 |
365,476 | 380,102 | NDF R2 - NEG Arctic drilling, coal | =NEG Drilling, coal=
===Collapse===
====Losing money now, collapse possible====
**Minxin Pei 19 of Nikkei Asian Review **~~2-15-2019, accessed 7-14-2019, https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Will-China-let-Belt-and-Road-die-quietly~~ NY
For starters, China's external environment has changed almost beyond recognition since Xi rolled out
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be reassessed. Some will have to be curtailed or even abandoned altogether.
====Need financing – source is EU====
**Alicia Herrero 17 of Bruegel **~~5-12-2017, accessed 7-14-2019, https://bruegel.org/2017/05/china-cannot-finance-the-belt-and-road-alone/~~ NY
There is no doubt that Asia needs infrastructure. The Asian Development Bank (ADB
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for Xi Jinping's Grand Plan. This should bring Europe closer to China.
====Changing propensity for private investment based on time of development – early injunctions into unproven markets means little return on investment but later stages around China's infrastructure are more certain ====
**David Ho 17 of South China Morning Post **~~9-27-2017, accessed 7-20-2019, https://www.scmp.com/special-reports/business/topics/special-report-belt-and-road/article/2112978/cost-funding-belt-and~~ NY
As China pushes development projects around the region through its "Belt and Road Initiative
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to create some tailwind that will bring in other investors," he says.
====Past abroad investments not turning profit – previous efforts had different purpose (resources), difficult in calculating returns, but China's current investment strategy is capturing foreign markets, increasing interest in investment returns. Other nations joining and creating multilateral credit rating reduces the cost of capital for newer investments====
**Jianmin Jin 15 of Fujitsu Research Institute **~~4-21-2015, accessed 7-20-2019, https://www.fujitsu.com/jp/group/fri/en/column/message/2015/2015-08-25.html~~ NY
3. Securing Multilateral Credit Functionality One might ask why China, after creating a
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Japan and the US, is partly underpinned by this purely economic calculation.
===Renewables cheap now===
====Lowering cost of renewables====
**Michael Taylor 19 of the International Renewable Energy Agency **~~7-12-2019, accessed 7-25-2019, https://energypost.eu/cheaper-than-coal-irenas-comprehensive-report-on-cost-declines-all-renewables-categories/~~ NY
The International Renewable Energy Agency's (IRENA) latest report Renewable Power Generation Costs in
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geothermal are all covered. IRENA's Michael Taylor writes exclusively for Energy Post.
===Drilling===
====BRI risks Arctic drilling====
**Hong Yang 19 of Nature **~~6-25-2019, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01977-y~~ NY
Infrastructure expansion and energy exploitation in the Arctic under China's Belt and Road Initiative (
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of raw materials will further exacerbate carbon emissions, requiring new mitigation measures.
====China financing Russian drilling projects====
**Sophie Hunter 18 of the Fair Observer **~~12-5-2018, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.fairobserver.com/more/international_security/arctic-shipping-passage-oil-exploitation-russia-china-us-global-warming-news-15241/~~ NY
As warming global temperatures opens up new sea lanes and economic opportunities, the new
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This strengthens China's hand not only in the Arctic, but also globally.
====Methane and black carbon====
**Clean Air Task Force 12** ~~Clean Air Task Force, 2012, CATF, "Best Practices for Reduction of Methane and Black Carbon from Arctic Oil and Gas Production", (), accessed 9-18-2018, http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/20130306-Arctic_Best_Practices.pdf~~ NY
Methane and black carbon have been identified as important short-term climate pollutants.
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the potential for fugitive and vented emissions of gas during production and distribution.
====Limiting methane and BC good====
**Schwartz 13 of Harvard** ~~Joel Schwartz, 12-15-2013, Science Magazine, "Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security", (), accessed 10-17-2018, http://sci-hub.tw/http://science.sciencemag.org/content/335/6065/183~~ NY
Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC) contribute to both degraded air quality and
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Implementing both substantially reduces the risks of crossing the 2°C threshold.
===Fossil fuels===
====No more coal financing====
**Jo Harper 19 of DW **~~2-27-2019, accessed 7-14-2019, https://www.dw.com/en/banks-around-the-world-opt-to-offload-coal/a-47708877~~ NY
One-hundred global financial institutions have introduced policies restricting coal funding, according to
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financial institutions continue to hold off on coal divestment, the report noted.
====BRI loaned for coal plant – China was their only option====
**Jacob Mardell 19 of Foreign Policy** ~~5-1-2019, accessed 7-14-2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/01/china-belt-road-partners-serbia-belarus-debt/~~ NY
A failed cartonboard factory in Dobrush, Belarus, shows Chinese development finance and management
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, but in many poorer countries, pragmatism is preferred to Western paternalism.
====China's exporting fossil fuel technology – poverty trap and environmental damages====
**Nagamalleswara Rao Dokku 18 of the East Asia Forum **~~9-25-2018, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2018/09/25/is-china-going-green-by-dumping-brown-on-its-bri-partners/~~ NY
The environmental impact of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been fraught
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at home and in its overseas businesses, this vision might never materialise.
====China exporting coal – 1600 plants====
**Hiroko Tabuchi 17 of the New York Times **~~7-1-2017, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html~~ NY
When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this
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cycle of coal dependency," said Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald.
====100x more than renewables====
Chris Wright 18 of Climate Tracker ~~9-5-2018, accessed 7-25-2019, http://climatetracker.org/chinese-overseas-investments-in-fossil-fuel-100x-bigger-than-renewables/~~ NY
Since Paris: Since 2015, China has received global acclaim for its domestic investments
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60.1 Billion in Fossil Fuels (Coal, Oil and Gas).
====BRI expansion empirically sends coal to countries without squo coal usage====
**Jackson Ewing 19 of TheHill **~~4-5-2019, accessed 7-18-2019, https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/437564-chinas-foreign-energy-investments-can-swing-coal-and-climate~~ NY
When blackouts roiled Pakistan in 2014-15, China stepped in to help the
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will accelerate health care demands and have rippling direct and indirect social costs.
====Deals can still be cancelled====
**Melissa Brown 19 of Institute for Energy Economics **~~7-25-2019, accessed 7-25-2019, http://ieefa.org/ieefa-china-lender-of-last-resort-for-coal-plants/~~ NY
The report finds that most coal funding outside China is being provided by public Chinese
AND
they are doing at home. Don't other countries deserve the same opportunity?"
====50 plants = 600m emissions====
**Lelyveld 19 of RFA **~~1-31-2019, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/energy_watch/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-blackened-by-coal-01312019115712.html~~ NY
BRI "is the biggest vehicle for foreign direct investment in the world, but
AND
said Gallagher. Over half of the generators were sub-critical plants.
====BRI nations will account for 50 emissions by 2050, locks in institutions and technology choices====
**Simon Zadek 19 of Brookings **~~4-25-2019, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2019/04/25/the-critical-frontier-reducing-emissions-from-chinas-belt-and-road/~~ NY
While every energy-saving bulb makes a difference, there are only a small
AND
-risked by public institutions, notably export credit agencies and development banks.
===Climate change impact===
====Linear impact====
**NRC 11 **~~NRC, 2011, National Research Council, "Impacts by degree", (), accessed 10-13-2018, http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/booklets/warming_world_final.pdf~~ NY
Many aspects of climate are expected to change in a linear fashion as temperatures rise
AND
; however, the costs of achieving particular emission reductions are not addressed.
====Storms! Bugs!====
**Science Daily 18** ~~Science Daily, 8-30-2018, ScienceDaily, "Climate change projected to boost insect activity and crop loss, researchers say", (), accessed 9-20-2018, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180830143058.htm~~ NY
Scientists have already warned that climate change likely will impact the food we grow.
AND
total losses of these three crops each year to approximately 213 million tons.
====Economic impacts of climate change====
**David Wallace-Wells 17 of NY Magazine **~~7-10-2017, accessed 7-25-2019, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html?gtm=top~~ NY
The most exciting research on the economics of warming has also come from Hsiang and
AND
keep in mind, costs the Arctic three more square meters of ice.
====Conflict impacts of climate change====
**David Wallace-Wells 17 of NY Magazine **~~7-10-2017, accessed 7-25-2019, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html?gtm=top~~ NY
Climatologists are very careful when talking about Syria. They want you to know that
AND
century, did little to solve the problem of the summer crime wave.
====Doubles lightning per degree====
**Williams 92 of Science Journal **~~5-22-1992, accessed 7-25-2019, http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.sci-hub.tw/pubmed/17795213~~ NY
At latitudes more distant from the equator but still within the tropics, the annual
AND
when 0, drops below about 23°C for tropical land stations.
====Death====
**Harmeet Kaur 19 of CNN **~~7-25-2019, accessed 7-25-2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/us/man-dies-lightning-strike-clearwater-beach-trnd/index.html~~ NY
"It was one of those bad Florida storms. It came, and now
AND
2018, including seven from Florida, according to the National Weather Service. | 905,391 |
365,477 | 380,076 | 0 - FINAL FEBRUARY CASE - AFF Universalism | =AFF 1.4 Universalism=
====Contextualization of negative squo – social welfare based on ineffective means-testing that fails to accurately categorize poor====
**MICHAEL LEWIS 06 of Oxford University **(Michael A. Lewis is an Associate Professor at the Stony Brook University, School of Social Welfare. His research interests are public policy, income/wealth distribution, civic participation and ecological economics. His articles have appeared in Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Journal of Socio-economics, and Journal of Poverty; Also, coauthor of Economics for Social Workers and coeditor of The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income. 2006, "An Efficiency Argument for the Basic Income Guarantee", doa 1-30-2020, http://www.widerquist.com/karl/Articles—scholarly/Efficiency_Argument—IJEWE.pdf) NY
The current social insurance system is based largely on the belief that there are not
AND
of workers and so it would help the unemployed and working poor alike.
====Requirements around MTW decreases participation, even when they significantly benefit them====
**KERRI NICOLL 15 of the Journal of Poverty **(7-15-2015, "Why Do Eligible Households Not Participate in Public Antipoverty Programs? A Review", doa 1-27-2020, https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/10875549.2015.1015069) NY
Scholarship on program factors has explored features of policy design and implementation hypothesized to affect
AND
, Zambrowski, and Cohen, 1999; Ratcliffe et al., 2008).
====Fewer than 20 of EITC-eligible people claim, thus poverty increased fourfold since 1980s====
**RICHARD CAPUTO 10 of the Journal of Social Services **(2010, "Prevalence and Patterns of Earned Income Tax Credit Use Among Eligible Tax-Filing Families: A Panel Study, 1999–2005", doa 1-27-2020, https://sci-hub.tw/10.1606/1044-3894.3950) NY
Findings of the study suggest that EITC eligibility is prevalent, while EITC participation is
AND
, and encourage those EITC-eligible non-filers to file accordingly.
====Means-tested welfare expanded significantly over past 40 years, but benefits to poorest drastically decreased ====
**ROBERT MOFFITT 16 of Johns Hopkins **(2016, "The Deserving Poor, the Family, and the U.S. Welfare System", doa 1-29-2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4487675/) NY
With this fairly extended background, let us address the first question of whether the
AND
, but between different types of families within the low income population.13
====People don't claim EITC, which hurts income====
**QUENTIN PALFREY 17 of the Governing Institute **(7-24-2017, "Getting Public Benefits to the People Who Need Them", doa 1-29-2020, https://www.governing.com/gov-institute/voices/col-improving-low-take-up-rates-benefit-programs-earned-income-tax-credit.html) NY
California's new budget expanded the state's Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), providing access
AND
challenging for families to calculate how much credit they should expect to receive.
====What doesn't this card say?====
**SCOTT SANTENS 19 of George Washington University **(7-22-2019, "There is No Policy Proposal More Progressive than Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend", doa 2-11-2020, https://medium.com/basic-income/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-72d3850a6245) NY
Primary season has begun and as Trump marches toward a possible second term, a
AND
proposed in American history, because you insist upon preserving paternalistically neoliberal conditionality?
====Transaction costs – administrative complexity consumes 50 percent of benefits granted====
**HENRIK KLEVEN 08 of the NBER **(9-2008, "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take Up of Social Benefits", doa 1-29-2020, https://www.nber.org/papers/w14301.pdf) NY
Second, the model is consistent with the occurrence of different take-up behavior
AND
it may also increase the likelihood that higher benefits are paid in equilibrium.
====Volatility bad for MTW====
**JENNIFER ROMICH 17 of the University of Washington **(5-2017, "Income Instability and Income Support Programs: Recommendations for Policy and Practice", doa 2-4-2020, file:///C:/Users/ndy15/Documents/Debate/2019-2020/PF/Files/Downloaded20cards/IB_Income20Instability_032417.pdf) NY
Whether or not the programs see stability as a goal, fluctuations in earnings pose
AND
/CHIP and child care subsidies, have more disenrollment and churning.12
====Ouch!====
**RICHARD MERTENS 17 of the University of Chicago **(9-2017, "Economic Instability and the Everyday Struggles of Families", doa 2-3-2020, https://ssa.uchicago.edu/ssa_magazine/economic-instability-and-everyday-struggles-families) NY
By devoting an entire issue to economic instability the SSR hopes to draw attention to
AND
strategies that families use to smooth consumption and compensate for changes in income.
====What doesn't this card say?====
**SCOTT SANTENS 19 of George Washington University **(7-22-2019, "There is No Policy Proposal More Progressive than Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend", doa 2-11-2020, https://medium.com/basic-income/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-72d3850a6245) NY
Primary season has begun and as Trump marches toward a possible second term, a
AND
proposed in American history, because you insist upon preserving paternalistically neoliberal conditionality?
====Increases redistribution====
**OLIVER JACQUES 18 of the Journal of Social Policy **(2-16-2018, "The case for welfare state universalism, or the lasting relevance of the paradox of redistribution", doa 1-29-2020, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0958928717700564) NY
Consider, first, bivariate correlations between the main variables of interest, as shown
AND
the effects of universalism across clusters remain significant, whatever country we exclude.
====What doesn't this card say?====
**SCOTT SANTENS 19 of George Washington University **(7-22-2019, "There is No Policy Proposal More Progressive than Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend", doa 2-11-2020, https://medium.com/basic-income/there-is-no-policy-proposal-more-progressive-than-andrew-yangs-freedom-dividend-72d3850a6245) NY
Primary season has begun and as Trump marches toward a possible second term, a
AND
proposed in American history, because you insist upon preserving paternalistically neoliberal conditionality? | 905,346 |
365,478 | 380,064 | 1 - Georgetown - AFF Infrastructure | =AFF 3.10 Infrastructure=
====Poverty in the EU====
**EUROSTAT 19 **(1-2019, "People at risk of poverty or social exclusion", doa 10-4-2019, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/People_at_risk_of_poverty_or_social_exclusion~~#targetText=In2020172C20112.820million20people,3B2022.4202520of20the20population.andamp;targetText=9.5202520of20the20population20aged,low20work20intensity20in202017.) NY
In 2017, there were 112.8 million people in the EU-28
AND
severely materially deprived; or living in households with very low work intensity.
====European infrastructure investment good – linear impacts====
**HEIKO AMMERMAN 15 of Energy and Infrastructure Center **(3-2015, "Squaring the circle - Improving European infrastructure financing?", doa 8-16-2019, file:///C:/Users/ndy15/Documents/Debate/2019-2020/PF/Septober/PDFs/AMMERMANN201520RB20Squaring20the20circle20-20Improving20European20infrastructure20financing.pdf) NY
The case for investing in infrastructure is strong. The International Monetary Fund (IMF
AND
.4 improvement in the EU's annual GDP between 2014 and 2023.
====Squo harms of infrastructure under-investment====
**BRUCE BARNARD 19 of the Journal of Commerce **(2-8-2019, "Europe infrastructure underinvestment hits shippers", doa 8-15-2019, https://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/europe-infrastructure-underinvestment-hits-shippers_20180208.html) NY
LONDON – Europe is a major player in global trade. It is home to
AND
are unlikely to place any bets on these figures and dates being met.
====Need BRI – main source of China's developmental finance which is key source of infrastructure funding====
**AUSTIN STRANGE 17 of Harvard University **(10-2017, "Aid, China, and Growth: Evidence from a New Global Development Finance Dataset", doa 8-27-2019, http://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/WPS46_Aid_China_and_Growth.pdf) NY
Evidence on the effects of aid on economic growth is mixed.1 Some studies
AND
on the effectiveness of financial support from more established donors and lenders. 9
====China significantly improved practices recently – stopped using second-rate contractors and can offer lower production costs thanks to EU regulations====
**CHRIS ELLIS 19 of the SRB **(7-23-2019, "How Chinese Contractors are Winning EU Infrastructure Projects", doa 10-4-2019, https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2019/07/23/chinese-contractors-winning-eu-infrastructure-projects/) NY
Although the vast majority of the multiple EU infrastructure development projects still go to EU
AND
and the Belt and Road should be a prerequisite when considering a bid.
====Limited EU BRI participation now – greater cooperation can generate wide-scale cooperation and integration====
**JOEL RUET 17 of the Institute for International Political Studies **(2017, "New Belts and Roads: Redrawing EU-China Relations", doa 8-28-2019, https://www.ispionline.it/it/EBook/Rapporto_Cina_2017/China_Belt_Road_Game_Changer.pdf~~#page=98) NY
The context of EU-China relations has dramatically changed over the past five years
AND
catalyst for deeper Eurasian trans-continental economic integration and greater regional security.
====Increased accessibility in Europe increases new businesses and employment====
**STEPHEN GIBBONS 19 of the Journal of Urban Economics **(3-2019, "New road infrastructure: The effects on firms", doa 8-15-2019, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119019300105) NY
The ward-level regressions provide strong evidence that road improvement schemes increase the number
AND
the number of destinations, are all highly correlated and yield similar results.
====Investment alone increases growth – economic underutilization====
**MARIO HOLZNER 18 of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies **(7-2018, "A 'European Silk Road'", doa 8-29-2019, https://wiiw.ac.at/a-european-silk-road—dlp-4608.pdf) NY
The estimates contained in Figure 14 illustrate the average effect of a change in public
AND
Abiad et al., 2015; Gechert, 2015; Heimberger, 2017).
====Economic benefits from BRI====
**MARIO HOLZNER 18 of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies **(7-2018, "A 'European Silk Road'", doa 8-29-2019, https://wiiw.ac.at/a-european-silk-road—dlp-4608.pdf) NY
For our calculations on the growth effects of investments in the European Silk Road,
AND
that this is a level effect over an investment period of one decade.
====High trade barriers now – travel times, transportation costs, general inefficiency====
**ALESSIA AMIGHINI 18 of the University of Milan **(2018, "Beyond Ports and Transport Infrastructure: The Geo-Economic Impact of the BRI on the European Union", doa 8-28-2019, http://sci-hub.tw/10.1007/978-981-10-7116-4_14) NY
What has been partly overlooked in the design of the EU TEN-T corridors
AND
times and improve the interconnectedness between the ports and the inland railway network.
====Haha====
**RICHARD BLUHM 18 of the Institute of Macroeconomics **(9-2018, "Connective Financing: Chinese Infrastructure Projects and the Diffusion of Economic Activity in Developing Countries", doa 10-11-2019, http://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/WPS64_Connective_Financing_Chinese_Infrastructure_Projects_and_the_Diffusion_of_Economic_Activity_in_Developing_Countries.pdf) NY
There are also several theoretical reasons to believe that China might be more effective than
AND
Myrdal 1957; Hirschman 1958; Boudeville 1966; Speakman and Koivisto 2014).
====Increased trade====
**ANNA KNACK 18 of the RAND Corporation **(2018, "China Belt and Road Initiative: Measuring the impact of improving transportation connectivity on trade in the region", doa 8-28-2019, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2600/RR2625/RAND_RR2625.pdf, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25088/9781464809910.pdf) NY
With regard to transport connectivity, we find that a lack of rail connection between
AND
infrastructure indices, which may absorb some effect of the trade variation among countries
====EU gets a bunch of trade====
**JIANWEI XU 17 of the Institute of World Economics **(2017, "China's Belt and Road Initiative: Can Europe Expect Trade Gains?", doa 10-11-2019, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-hub.tw/doi/pdf/10.1111/cwe.12222) NY
Figure 4a reports the simulated top 10 winners from the BRI, whose gains in
AND
and Asia clearly outweigh the loss felt by the rest of the world.
====BRI funding available – will increase economic growth linearly====
**CHAO WANG 18 of Borgen **(5-3-2018, "China's Belt and Road Initiative: Aid, Investment or Something Else?", doa 9-6-2019, https://www.borgenmagazine.com/defining-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-aid-investment-or-something-else/) NY
While many see the Belt and Road Initiative as a generous foreign aid package distributed
AND
of turning possible conflicts related to financial assistance into win-win contracts.
====Poverty reduction====
DAVID LAWDER 19 of Reuters (6-19-2019, "World Bank: China's Belt and Road can speed development, needs transparency", doa 10-12-2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-worldbank-china-belt/world-bank-chinas-belt-and-road-can-speed-development-needs-transparency-idUSKCN1TJ2IX) NY
The long-delayed report said that the Belt and Road - a string of ports, railways, roads and bridges and other investments connecting China to Europe via central and southern Asia - could lift 32 million people out of moderate poverty conditions if implemented fully. | 905,299 |
365,479 | 379,446 | Disclosure | We believe that argument accessibility, quality clash, and ethics are important for this activity. Therefore, at national circuit tournaments, we will disclose our previously broken positions if you message us on Facebook or email before our round and if you disclose as well. No one has to disclose new positions that they or their team have not used yet.
Our goal is not to run disclosure arguments, but we will in the following scenarios if judges are open to theory -
1) If you ask us or if we ask you to disclose and you do not, we might run disclosure theory.
2) If you run an argument your other teams have used but claim it as a new broken position, we will run mis-disclosure theory.
3) If you run disclosure without asking/giving us a chance to disclose, we will run mis-disclosure.
Email:
Julianne Sellers - [email protected]
Mimi Bhalla - [email protected] | 904,518 |
365,480 | 379,452 | 1 - durham lay nc toc | Disclosed Neg
Contention 1: Israel
Burchfield 19
Emily Burchfield, Georgetown Security Studies Review, Feb 15, 2019
https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2019/02/15/irans-security-strategy-forty-years-after-the-islamic-revolution/ // MH
“Iran values involvement in wars … Its behavior abroad forces engagement.”
Milani 20
Mohsen Milani, March 12, 2020, World Politics Review, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/28594/after-iran-elections-hard-liners-are-poised-for-political-dominance // MH
“Iran’s parliamentary elections last month … term-limited and unable to run for reelection.”
Weschler 19
William Weschler, Oct 30, 2019, Defense One, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/us-has-one-last-chance-halt-its-withdrawal-middle-east/160975/ // MH
“President Obama refused to engage in Syria … come into increasing conflict with one another.”
Ward 20
Alex Ward and Zach Beauchamp, Vox, Jan 13, 2020 https://www.vox.com/world/2020/1/13/21051794/us-iran-soleimani-ukraine-airline-questions // MH
“But as the US began to tire … Syria to Yemen to Afghanistan and beyond.”
France 20
France 24, 20 (No author, France 24, “Iran concedes de-escalation 'only solution' to end crisis with US”, Jan. 12., 2020, https://www.france24.com/en/20200112-iran-concedes-de-escalation-only-solution-to-end-crisis-with-us) // EL
“Tehran said it favoured an easing … de-escalation from everyone and dialogue.”
Sanger 9
David Sanger, Jan 2009, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/africa/11iht-airstrike.1.19248224.html // MH
“President George W. Bush deflected a … according to senior American and foreign officials.”
Aronheim 20
Anna Aronheim, Jan 3, 2020, Jerusalem Post https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/If-US-leaves-from-the-region-Israel-will-eventually-go-to-war-with-Iran-613446 // MH
“Under Soleimani’s command, Iran has been … Israel’s borders – are a major threat.”
Lavi 20
Anna Aronheim - citing Israeli Brig General Ilan Lavi, Jan 3, 2020, Jerusalem Post https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/If-US-leaves-from-the-region-Israel-will-eventually-go-to-war-with-Iran-613446 // MH
“Should the United States withdraw … and the Iranians will see and understand that.”
Avi-Hai 19
Avraham Avi-Hai, Dec 28, 2019, Jerusalem Post https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Preemption-has-always-been-part-of-Israels-military-doctrine-612377 // MH
“In Israel, David Ben-Gurion’s doctrine … Israel’s policy almost from day one.”
Brands 19
Hal Brands, Hoover Institute, Mar 21, 2019
https://www.hoover.org/research/why-america-cant-quit-middle-east // MH
“Today, calls for the United States to disengage militarily … and at higher costs, in the future.”
Cropsey 19
Seth Cropsey, Dec 17 2019, Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/17/us-withdrawal-power-struggle-middle-east-china-russia-iran/ // MH
“Washington could find itself fighting … would spawn more jihadist organizations,”
Contention 2: Allies
Kerr 20
Kerr 20 (Simeon Kerr, The Financial Times, “Warring parties in Yemen agree ceasefire to prevent coronavirus outbreak”, Mar 26, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/f715b4ce-32ff-4aa8-be3a-5ae83e17c929) // MH
“The warring parties in Yemen have … they would wait to see it applied practically.”
Rogan 18
Rogan 18 (Tom Rogan, The Washington Examiner, “Ending US support for Saudi Arabia would make things much worse in Yemen”, Nov 28, 2018, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ending-us-support-for-saudi-arabia-would-make-things-much-worse-in-yemen) // MH
“If the U.S. pulls its functional support … only decorate Yemen with more civilian blood.”
Brands 18
Hal Brands, Oct 9, 2018, “How to Make the Middle East Even Worse? A U.S. Withdrawal
It’s tempting to tell the Saudis to take care of themselves, but they have shown they are really bad at it.” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10-09/how-to-make-the-middle-east-even-worse-a-u-s-withdrawal // MH
“A post-American Middle East will … chaos will eventually reach out and touch the U.S.”
Roblin 19
Roblin 19 (Sebastien Roblin, Yahoo News, “The U.S. Military is Sending Thousands of Troops and Even B-1 Bombers into Saudi Arabia (To Counter Iran)”, Nov 3, 2019, https://news.yahoo.com/u-military-sending-thousands-troops-083000113.html) // MH
“But in the weeks since, … pulled out thousands of U.S. troops.”
UN 19
Reuters 19 (No Author, Reuters, “Saudi-led coalition air strikes in Yemen down 80: U.N. envoy”, Nov 22, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security/saudi-led-coalition-air-strikes-in-yemen-down-80-u-n-envoy-idUSKBN1XW1QO) // MH
“United Nations Yemen envoy Martin … Mansour Hadi from power in Sanaa.”
Raghavan 18
Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post, July 26 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-allies-have-killed-thousands-of-yemenis-from-the-air-after-22-died-at-a-wedding-one-village-asks-why-us/2018/07/25/3c3e4801-164e-42ae-ac08-bec09044e52a_story.html // MH
“An airstrike hit the wedding in … figures are likely to be far higher.”
Tamimi 13
Naser al-Tamimi, 2013, Middle East Forum, https://www.meforum.org/3509/saudi-arabia-nuclear-bomb // MH
“A major deterioration in U.S. … dissuade them from pursuing nuclear weapons.”
Chilton 20
Kevin Chilton, Feb 13 2020, Defense News, https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/02/13/avoiding-a-nuclear-arms-race-in-the-middle-east/ // MH
“Thus there is the so-called Islamabad option … France tested its first bomb.”
Kroenig 15
Matthew Kroenig, Nuclear Stability and Conventional Conflict, http://www.roberttrager.com/Research_files/KT2012.pdf // MH
“The “paradox” is that if they take … strategic selection into a position of nuclear stability.”
Allison 18
Vaugh Allison, Kent State University, April 2018, https://ratical.org/radiation/NuclearExtinction/StevenStarr022815.html // MH
“If either or both states in a dyad … engage in proxy war.” | 904,524 |
365,481 | 379,448 | aff D | WAHOO
0
\ / hey cody, nice to meet u :3
|
/ \
Our background: John Foster Dulles High School is a high school in Sugar Land, Texas. It was the first site purchase and new build, in the 1950s, of the newly formed Fort Bend Independent School District, which held its first graduation in 1960. The first class to graduate from Dulles itself was 1962.
MLA CITATION: “Dulles High School (Sugar Land, Texas).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulles_High_School_(Sugar_Land,_Texas).
C1: cLiMaTe cHaNgE
Nuke power ain’t doin so hot rn (????)??
Abdulah 18
Ahmed Abdulla, 8-21-2018, "US nuclear power is on the verge of collapse – and there are no solutions on the horizon," Energy Post, https://energypost.eu/us-nuclear-power-is-on-the-verge-of-collapse-and-there-are-no-solutions-on-the-horizon/
Nuclear power appears...canceled or delayed.
Still not hot (brrrrrrr) :(
Plumer 14
Brad Plumer@Bradplumerbrad@Vox, 5-2-2014, "US nuclear retirements are bad news for climate," Vox, https://www.vox.com/2014/5/2/5671394/nuclear-power-retirements-climate-change
if more reactors…additional 4 percent.
AFF kinda SOLVES uwuuu
Sustainability
Ppl like nuke energy (wth lmao)
Sang 15
Sanghyunhonga, 4-1-2015, "Global zero-carbon energy pathways using viable mixes of nuclear and renewables," No Publication, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261915000124?via3Dihub
the transition to...not an option.
In fact, Cody, various and plethora examples around the world actually prove that our, Dulles CL’s, argument is, in fact, surprisingly, TRUE!!!!
Bennet~-~- I could Not find the Date :(
Bennet, LL. No date. “Nuclear power and its role in limiting emissions” https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/publications/magazines/bulletin/bull35-4/35404782026.pdf
Countries that implemented...megatonnes per year
Decrease emissions
UCS 09
Union of Concerned Scientists, 7-14-08, "Benefits of Renewable Energy Use," https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/benefits-renewable-energy-use
Just 25 percent...by 81 percent.
People DIE!!!! :((
Milman 16
Oliver Milman, 2-22-2016, "295,000 US deaths may be prevented by 2030 with cuts to greenhouse gas," Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/22/us-deaths-greenhouse-gas-295000-emission-cuts-climate-change
295,000 premature deaths...we cut emissions.
Fossil fuels :((
Beitsch 19
Rebecca Beitsch, 5-28-2019, "Declining use of nuclear power may increase reliance on fossil fuels: study," TheHill, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/445815-collapse-of-nuclear-would-increase-reliance-on-fossil-fuels-study
many of the...on fossil fuels.
FF comes in :(
Plumer 16
Brad Plumer@Bradplumerbrad@Vox, 11-3-2016, "The US keeps shutting down nuclear power plants and replacing them with coal or gas," Vox, https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/11/3/13499278/nuclear-retirements-coal-gas
about 75 percent...electricity at once.
Shutdown bad
Stephen Jarvis, Olivier Deschenes, Akshaya Jha NBER, 3-7-2020, The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out, https://www.nber.org/papers/w26598
“the shutdown of nuclear… 12 billion dollars.
Shutdown bad (2.0)
Daniel Oberhaus Wired, 01-23-2020, Germany Rejected Nuclear Power—and Deadly Emissions Spiked, https://www.wired.com/story/germany-rejected-nuclear-powerand-deadly-emissions-spiked/
the release of … increase in emissions.”
Nuke power good
Sanglim Lee, Minkyung Kim, and Jiwoong Lee 2 MDPI, 8-12-2017, Analyzing the Impact of Nuclear Power on CO2 Emissions, https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/8/1428/htm
1 increase in nuclear … decrease in CO2 emissions.
Reduce emissions
Nuclear Energy Institute, Climate, https://www.nei.org/advantages/climate (no date)
No other source… off the road.
Emissions bad (???)?
Pushker A. Kharecha and James E. Hansen State of the Planet, 4-15-2013, Fossil Fuels Do Far More Harm Than Nuclear Power, https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/04/15/fossil-fuels-do-far-more-harm-than-nuclear-power/
this nuclear phaseout… GHG emissions globally
Bye cody 3:
(NOT A PART OF THE CASE) Just in case you’re too stressed…………………………………………….
Oh I'm a gummy bear
Yes I'm a gummy bear
Oh I'm a yummy tummy funny lucky gummy bear
I'm a jelly bear
'Cause I´m a gummy bear
Oh I'm a movin, groovin, jammin, singing gummy bear
Oh yeaoooh
Verse 1
Gummy Gummy Gummy Gummy Gummibär
Gummy Gummy Gummy Gummy Gummibär
Bai ding ba doli party
Bamm bing ba doli party
Breding ba doli party party pop
Bai ding ba doli party
Bamm bing ba doli party
Breding ba doli party party pop
Chorus
Ba Ba Bidubidubi Yum Yum
Ba Ba Bidubidubi Yum Yum
Ba Ba Bidubidubi Yum Yum
Three Times You Can Bite Me
Ba Ba Bidubidubi Yum Yum
Ba Ba Bidubidubi Yum Yum
Ba Ba Bidubidubi Yum Yum
Three Times You Can Bite Me | 904,520 |
365,482 | 379,469 | Epsilon DMN GT Paraphrasing Interpretation | Interpretation: When evidence is introduced in round it must be read as full cut card and not paraphrased. | 904,549 |
365,483 | 379,508 | R7 NDF prac rounds | Open Source | 904,594 |
365,484 | 379,489 | NC- drugs | =DA: Trappin like the Narco=
===First is the Uniqueness===
**Maduro has been surviving because of the narcotic operations he runs. Slowing the narcotic operations is key to creating pressure on Maduro. **
====Jackson Diehl, **5-12-2019,====**
/PJ "The Real Reason Venezuela’s Maduro Survives: Dirty Money," Washington Post, https://outline.com/cKY2Yj
**====Torres 19 furthers,====**
/PJ Nora Gámez Torres, 11-12-2019, "Drug Trafficking Through Venezuela Has Skyrocketed, Says U.S. Military Chief ~| Miami Herald," Miami Herald, https://outline.com/2GPbuX/
**But, the recent March indictments and Sanctions of the Maduro and the Cartel of the Suns has led to more drug busts.**
====Phillip Ewing of the NPR **reports this month that,====**
** **https://www.npr.org/2020/05/01/847547895/u-s-nets-trove-of-drugs-but-enhanced-operations-haven-t-budged-maduro-or-covid/ PJ
===The link is twofold: ===
====Venezuela will continue to funnel, cocaine into the United States.====
====Rashbaum from NYT 2 weeks ago contends, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/nyregion/venezuela-president-drug-trafficking-nicolas-maduro.html /PJ====
**====And John Hacinovech furthers, ====**
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331313327'Organized'Crime'and'the'State'in'Venezuela'under'Chavismo/ PJ
====cartels are taking advantage of the pandemic====
====A Global Security article last month reported that, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/ecno.htm/ PJ====
====There are two key impacts with the continuation of drug trafficking, ====
===First, Drugs Kill Americans===
====Many Americans use cocaine. The CDC reports in 2019 that====
====CDC '19====
**:** CDC, 8-12-2019, "Other Drugs," https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/otherdrugs.html/ PJ
=== The Second Impact is Terrorism===
==== Colin Clarke explains in 2019 that====
**====Clarke '19====**
**:** Colin P. Clarke, 2-9-2019, "Hezbollah Is in Venezuela to Stay," Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/09/hezbollah-is-in-venezuela-to-stay/ PJ
AND
" aimed at helping that country rebuild critical government institutions may be unfeasible.
====Troublingly
**====Gehrke '19====**
**:** Joel Gehrke, 12-29-2019, "Pompeo: Hezbollah using Venezuela drug trafficking to ‘make payroll’," Washington Examiner, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/pompeo-hezbollah-using-venezuela-drug-trafficking-to-make-payroll/ PJ
(2:30)
=Got dope like Pablo
===The key to this argument is that Oil Sanctions Increase Drug Trafficking ===
====1aJosé R. Cárdenas writes in 2019 that====
**Cárdenas '19:** José R. Cárdenas, 7-8-2019, "Trump Should Not Forget Venezuela," Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/08/trump-should-not-forget-venezuela/ PJ
S
====Remember judge, that all the affirmative evidence will say that sanctions cause drug trafficking.
===net-benefits
===First, is the Targeting the Source===
====Bruce Bagley contends that,
https://books.google.com/books?id=XHI1VnBjD-QCandpg=PA2andlpg=PA2anddq=the+us+militarizing+the+seas+to+stop+drug+traffickingandsource=blandots=3I8zZ9sPOxandsig=ACfU3U0xdjkCIQ2blhDZbMEFHV18ryEyJgandhl=enandsa=Xandved=2ahUKEwjGxLzX8tXpAhUDca0KHfpFC'EQ6AEwBHoECAoQAQ~~#v=onepageandq=the20us20militarizing20the20seas20to20stop20drug20traffickingandf=false/ PJ
====And, Steven McCloud of Dialogo last week explains that the increased pressure of drug-sanctions have led to, ====
https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/ship-with-cocaine-loaded-in-venezuela-seized-off-the-coast-of-spain/ PJ
===Second is Negotiations===
====Benjamin Gedan of World Politics Review 2 days ago proves that, ====
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/28790/what-will-maduros-indictment-mean-for-us-venezuela-relations/ PJ | 904,573 |
365,485 | 379,521 | 0 - Contact Details | Ian Mackey-Piccolo. He/Him. 412-670-8534. Ian MP#1878.
idk jackson's info im the only one who posts here. | 904,602 |
365,486 | 379,525 | UBI - DA - Child Poverty | Sherman 13 explains
Arloc Sherman, Danilo Trisi, and Sharon Parrott, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities CBPP, "Various Supports for Low-Income Families Reduce Poverty and Have Long-Term ... Number of Uninsured,” below.)
Unfortunately, the value of benefits far outstrips what a UBI could cover Emery 15 explains
Eugene Emery JR, Politifact, "Do ‘common welfare programs’ pay the equivalent of a $20.83-per-hour job? | PolitiFact Rhode Island", February 1st 2015, https://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2015/feb/01/rhode-island-center-freedom-and-prosperity/do-common-welfare-programs-pay-equivalent-2083-hou/
First we asked ... $20.83 an hou
Thus, a UBI of 1000$ a month would result in families losing money, pushing children into poverty. Goulden 18 explains
Chris Goulden, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, "Universal Basic Income - not the answer to poverty | JRF", 25 apr 2018, https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/universal-basic-income-not-answer-poverty
in research funded ... decisions about working). | 904,606 |
365,487 | 379,520 | PIK - Non Violence | PIK we advocate the 1ac absent their calls to violent revolution
Belief in the necessity of violent struggle to overcome oppression is not a neutral conception grounded in fact – it’s the result of an intentionally distorted history that privileges armed combat
Maciej Bartkowski 13, Senior Director at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Recovering Nonviolent History: Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles
Most people look ... of civil resistance.
reject instances of violence as a resistance strategy - Only a foundational grounding in clear principles of nonviolence can facilitate a successful struggle for liberation
William Domhoff 5, Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence, www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
Despite the effectiveness ... percent by 1980. | 904,601 |
365,488 | 379,554 | Disclosure | A Interpretation: Debaters must, on the page with their name and the school they attend, disclose all taglines, full citations, and the first and last three words of the pieces of evidence read in their cases on the NDCA wiki at least one hour before the round if they have read that case before.
B Violation: My opponent hasn’t posted cites: I can provide screen shots if necessary.
C Net Benefits:
1 Research – disclosure increases research and gets rid of anti-educational arguments because debaters are forced to prepare cases knowing that people will have answers AND people get the opportunity to research answers to disclosed cases.
Research skills is a voter because it’s key to our ability to a actually learn about the topic and become engaged in the real world and b process large amounts of information, which is a necessary portable skill in the digital age.
2 Clash – Disclosure is the best method for increasing clash in debates because it allows debaters to substantively engage positions rather than relying on sketchy tricks to avoid the discussion. It also allows for more specific clash because debaters can see specific arguments disclosed instead of trying to link generic arguments in. That’s a voter because a specific education also helps our ability to learn about the topic and engage in the real world and b clash is key to advocacy skills since it forces us to defend positions, which we need to actually promote social change to fix screwed up things in the real world. | 904,632 |
365,489 | 379,542 | Blackouts | Look at Doses AC
Currently, blackouts in Venezuela are getting worse as supply of electricity slowly depletes. Jones 19 of the Guardian finds that Venezuela’s best-managed and most productive electrical networks have recently been underfunded and overexploited, causing a decrease in the electricity supply in Venezuela. Unfortunately, when these unreliable main grids fail, the Venezuelan government relies on backup generators to supply electricity. However, sanctions have limited Venezuela’s ability to keep these backup generators running. Hetland 19 of the Nation finds that US sanctions have prevented Venezuela’s ability to import and produce the fuel required by the thermal power plants to back up the main grids. The impact is an energy crisis. Weisbrot 19 of the CEPR finds that Venezuela has suffered a severe electricity crisis, causing a 6.4 loss of GDP. The World Bank quantifies that every 1 increase in GDP decreases poverty by 1.7. By ending sanctions, this will end blackouts and allow the GDP of Venezuela to rebound, which decreases poverty. | 904,624 |
365,490 | 379,564 | 01 - Pharma Aff v21 | ==Aff 2.1 - Access==
====Contextualization of the negative status quo - corporatism causes issues and only single payer systems can solve====
Arno 20, Peter S. (Peter S. Arno, PhD, is an economist and senior fellow and director of health policy research at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance.,) 3-25-2020, "Medicare For All: The Social Transformation Of US Health Care," Health Affairs, https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200319.920962/full/ // BK
There is a large elephant in the room in the national discussion of Medicare for All: the transformation of the
...AND...
gle-payer system—truly the most effective way to reform our health care system for the benefit of the US people.
====Healthcare industry is just straight up bad people - they want you to be sick====
Elisabeth Rosenthal,2017, "How health insurance changed from protecting patients to seeking profit," Stanford Medicine, https://stanmed.stanford.edu/2017spring/how-health-insurance-changed-from-protecting-patients-to-seeking-profit.html // ZY
Then his doctor switched hospitals. The cost of Kivi’s infusions ballooned, soon surpassing $132,000 a month. H
...AND...
whether the claims go up or down 20 percent as long as they get their piece. They’re too big to care about you.”
====Covid has fucked American healthcare even wose====
Bob Herman, Axios, 5-13-2020 "Coronavirus likely forced 27 million off their health insurance" https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-27-million-lost-employer-health-insurance-c77fe46a-691d-49b3-9cd2-3ad6d19df159.html 6-29-2020 // EJ
Roughly 27 million people have likely have lost job-based health coverage since the coronavirus shocked the econ
...AND...
sign up for other sources of coverage, but millions are still doomed to be uninsured in the midst of a pandemic.
====Obamacare, more like O-gone-a care====
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT, 6-26-2020 "Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Strike Down Affordable Care Act" https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/obamacare-trump-administration-supreme-court.html?auth=login-google 6-28-2020 // EJ
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court late Thursday to overturn the Affordable Care Act
...AND...
ed more than 80,000 at the time of this writing would be a self-inflicted wound that could take decades to heal.”
====Cost sharing is NOT caring====
Natalie Shure, PNHP, 10-6-2017 "Why cost sharing should be abandoned" http://pnhp.org/news/why-cost-sharing-should-be-abandoned/ 6-29-2020 // EJ
“Cost-sharing” features like copays, coinsurance, and deductibles are major manifestations of market logic in th
...AND...
w that even meager copays make people seek less care, and that the poor suffer worse health outcomes as a result.
====Yes all means all - link card medicare for all does coverage====
Sanger-katz, Margot. “The Basics of 'Medicare for All'.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 26 Feb. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/upshot/medicare-for-all-basics-bernie-sanders.html#:~:text=Everyone20in20the20United20States,this20new2C20generous20government20system.andtext=Now2C20we20pay20for20health,pay20for20the20entire20system. // ZY
61 It’s possible you’ve tuned out when the Democrats running for president have tussled over “Medicare for all.”
...AND...
how the plan would affect different groups of Americans. How ‘Medicare for All’ Would Affect YouSept. 14, 2017
====Administration cost pre-empt====
Shira Tarlo, 10-20-2018, "We asked experts what healthcare would look like under Medicare for All," Salon, https://www.salon.com/2019/07/14/this-is-what-doctor-visits-would-look-like-under-medicare-for-all/ // ZY
Experts Salon spoke with said criticisms that patients would face long wait times to get a doctor's appointment
...AND...
enerous. It's really an aspirational bill — and that's not a bad place for starting a discussion," Hoffman said.
====What are we waiting forrrrrr====
Thomas Waldrop, 10-18-2019, "The Truth on Wait Times in Universal Coverage Systems," Center for American Progress, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/reports/2019/10/18/475908/truth-wait-times-universal-coverage-systems/ // ZY
Wait times in universal coverage systems Data from other nations show that universal coverage does not necessari
...AND...
e universal coverage proposals currently being discussed in Congress would not significantly increase wait times.
====Doctor spike====
Cutting Administrative, 9-11-2018, "Medicare for All and the Myth of the 40 Physician Pay Cut," PNHP, https://pnhp.org/news/medicare-for-all-and-the-myth-of-the-40-physician-pay-cut/ // ZY
The surge in support for improved Medicare for All—now up to 70 in recent polling—has single-payer opponents ra
...AND...
ring for patients. Dr. Carol Paris is a psychiatrist and president of Physicians for a National Health Program.
====Canada empiric for doctor spike====
Jacalyn Duffin,, 07-xx-2011, "The Impact of Single-Payer Health Care on Physician Income in Canada, 1850–2005," PubMed Central (PMC), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110239/ // ZY
This study traces the average net income of Canadian physicians over 150 years to determine the impact of medica
...AND...
f the Canadian system are used in US political arguments about the merits and demerits of a single-payer system.
====Saves lives!====
Emily Rappleye, 2-21-2020, "Study: 'Medicare for All' would save 68,000 lives, $458B annually. "Medicare for All" would save the U.S. more than $450 billion annually, and the increased access to healthcare would save more than 68,000 lives, compared to the current system, according to an analysis published by The Lancet.," No Publication, https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/study-medicare-for-all-would-save-68-000-lives-458b-annually.html
"Medicare for All" would save the U.S. more than $450 billion annually, and the increased access to healthcare w
...AND...
to promote wellbeing, enhance prosperity, and establish a more equitable health-care system for all Americans."
====Shoutout Alex Caruso====
Dominic F. Caruso, MD/MPH Candidate; David U. Himmelstein, MD; Steffie Woolhandler, MD, Harvard Public Health Review, Summer 2015 "Single-Payer Health Reform: A Step Toward Reducing Structural Racism in Health Care" http://harvardpublichealthreview.org/single-payer-health-reform-a-step-toward-reducing-structural-racism-in-health-care/ 6-26-2020 // EJ
With medical bills often reaching into the thousands for even routine care such as childbirth and appendectomy,
...AND...
asingly common under Medicaid may be prohibitive for poor families, many of whom have zero or negative net worth.
====And thats on Walecia ====
Walecia Konrad, CBS News, 9-14-2016 "Health care costs still push Americans into poverty" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-care-costs-still-push-americans-into-poverty/ 6-29-2020 // EJ
But one number buried in the Census Bureau report goes against the positive trend. It’s the Supplemental Poverty
...AND...
Security and tax credits. At the same time, it subtracts real-life expenses such as work costs and medical bills. | 904,644 |
365,491 | 379,571 | PLEASE READ Hawken EG views on disclosure | If you email us, like kind individuals, and ask us to disclose ([email protected] and [email protected]) we will, like kind gentlemen, disclose as well. We don't really like disclosure and would prefer not to disclose, but are willing to reciprocate. Email us at any time, 30 minutes before 10 minutes before, its all chill. If you send us your case in the same format as the version attached under the 'open source' page or if you just email us what you read verbatim we'll reciprocate in kind. Also we don't really read the wiki because we don't find it super useful and its often very confusing, so we won't have your case unless we get a flow of it somehow. We also generally don't paraphrase anything, so we'd prefer, if y'all disclose, to do the same.
"In the ninja world, those who break the rules are scum, but those who read disclosure theory are worse than scum" - Obito Uchiha | 904,652 |
365,492 | 379,573 | Hawken MW disclosure policy | Hey gang. If you email/text us at least 30 min prior to round and ask us to disclose, we will, so long as you reciprocate. We don't check wiki, so we wont have your case unless we somehow get a flow. Also, we don't paraphrase, so we'd prefer if any cases you send us aren't paraphrased either.
(216)-477-6014
[email protected]
[email protected]
Facebook: Alex Watson and Claire Marrie | 904,654 |
365,493 | 379,477 | Disclosure | A. Interpretation : Debaters must disclose taglines and full citations in their case prior to the start of the tournament.
B. Violation : They didn’t disclose, they didn’t meet specific parts (*say the specific parts they didn’t meet*****ex. Taglines**) despite the TOC invitation asking all teams to disclose in advance
C. Standards :
1. Argument Quality
No disclosure rewards debaters for running arguments that the opponents cant respond to. This kills argument quality because no disclosure disincentivizes thoughtful responses to the case.
Debaters can use each other's arguments and meta strats to figure out what the most educational arguments are.
i. IL to Fairness bc we are disadvantaged they’re running arguments we have no responses to
ii. IL to education cause we can’t have good responses that increase education
2. Inclusivity
Schools with bigger programs have access to more prep groups, coaches, judges, intel etc. Disclosure is an equalizer and allows access to better evidence, and strats.
i. IL to fairness cause no disclosure accentuates prep disadvantages
ii. IL to education because better strats give us better understandings of case
3. Evidence Ethics
Disclosure allows debaters to check each others evidence
Misconstruing evidence kills engagement with the literature because they can just lie
i. IL to education becuz fake or misconstrued evidence is uneducational
ii. IL to fairness because misconstrued evidence gives teams unfair advantages
D. Voters :
1. Fairness
Deb8 isn’t functional without fairness
2. Education
Only portable skill from deb8
3. No RVI’s
RVI’s allow debaters to be rewarded for being fair and educational instead of being punished for being unfair and non educational
4. Drop the debater
Its the same as dropping the argument cause the argument is the case
Sets a precedent that disclosure is good!
5. Competing Interps over Reasonability
Theres no brightline for reasonability. They should be forced to engage with our claims to maximize education
6. A Priori
You have to know the rules of the game before u can play it
Theory impx are the most proximal becuz they affect the debaters in round | 904,559 |
365,494 | 379,491 | disclosure | fb message me | 904,576 |
365,495 | 379,490 | Cites | None. | 904,575 |
365,496 | 379,492 | Diplomacy, Alliance Formation, and Securitization | Forign Policy 20’ "The Middle East Is More Stable When The United States Stays Away". Foreign Policy. Accessed March 31 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/ //MD
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole. Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished. It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it? Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a new doctrine: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region,” he stated, “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” In the context of the Cold War, preventing the Soviets—the main outside force Carter was worried about—from gaining control over the energy-rich region had a strategic logic. But over time, that logic shifted. In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan expanded the doctrine to include threats to the flow of oil originating from inside the region, too. As the geopolitical context changed still further, subsequent presidents found even more ways to justify America’s growing military presence in the Middle East. What started as a policy to prevent others from establishing hegemony over the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf morphed into a policy of asserting American hegemony in the region in order to “save” it. As long as U.S. allies lack the capability or competence to secure the region, the thinking went, Washington would have no choice but to shoulder this responsibility. U.S. President George W. Bush was explicit about that; without an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, he claimed, there would be chaos in the region. He missed the irony, of course, that his invasion of Iraq was the single most destabilizing event in the Middle East of the past decades. As the scholars Hal Brands, Steven Cook, and Kenneth Pollack wrote endorsing the Carter Doctrine and its continuation, “the United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” This account is accurate enough (although the last rule on the list always exempted Israel), but the story glosses over how the policy also gave cover to U.S. allies for some fairly destabilizing behaviors of their own. That’s an omission Brands makes in a Bloomberg article, too, where he points to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to argue that a “post-American Middle East will not be stable and peaceful. It will be even nastier and more turbulent than it is today.” And in the words of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2018, “If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.” All this without a nod to the fact that, if anything, the United States’ protection of the Saudi regime has enabled its promotion of terrorism and its destabilizing activities in the region, which have, in turn, prompted further Iranian response. Assertions about the United States’ pivotal role in the Middle East, no matter how often repeated, have not been proved true. Iran, ravaged by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement, is nowhere near establishing hegemony in the region. Saudi Arabia spends more than five times as much on its military than does Iran; the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE—outspends Iran by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, whereas Iran has no nuclear weapons yet undergoes more inspections than any other country, Israel has a nuclear weapons program with no international transparency whatsoever. Iran may have been adept at taking advantage of U.S. overextension and missteps in the last few decades, but establishing hegemony is a different matter altogether. Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons. Instead, recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks. Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times. Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression. An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security. It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy. Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted. Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments. In the wake of the U.S. assassination of Suleimani—which some former U.S. officials have called an act of war—the calculations may change once more. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Suleimani was in Iraq to bring him Tehran’s response to a message from Riyadh on how to defuse regional tensions, presumably as part of the House of Saud’s renewed interest in diplomacy. The Iraqis, according to him, were mediating between the two rivals, an initiative that has now been thrown into question. Iran may very well conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Saudi Arabia and the UAE conspired with Washington to assassinate Suleimani and as a result not only end the recent diplomacy but also target Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as part of the revenge for Suleimani’s death. This is yet one more instance, it seems, in which U.S. activities in the region have brought more turmoil than stability. To be sure, there is no guarantee that recent diplomatic efforts would have been successful. A more responsible Riyadh might not have begotten a more responsible Tehran. But it is noteworthy that diplomacy did not even begin in earnest until Washington clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to entangle itself in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And by returning to the region in a show of military force, Trump may once again disincentivize the United States’ allies from taking diplomacy seriously. They may even interpret Suleimani’s killing as a license to resume their recklessness—activities like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s purported kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister and ordering of the dismemberment of Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s imposition of a blockade on Qatar; and the two countries’ further destabilization of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. As in the past, in other words, it seems as if the Middle East’s descent into chaos is more likely with the United States than without it.
Hubbard 19’ "With U.S. Help No Longer Assured, Saudis Try A New Strategy: Talks". 2020. Nytimes.Com. Accessed March 31 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/world/middleeast/saudi-iran-qatar-talks.html //MD
In the months since a missile and drone attack widely seen as the work of Iran left two Saudi oil facilities smoldering, the Saudi crown prince has taken an uncharacteristic turn to diplomacy to cool tensions with his regional enemies. The prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has stepped up direct talks with the rebels he has been fighting in Yemen for over four years, leading to a decline in attacks by both sides. He has made gestures to ease, if not end, the stifling blockade he and his allies imposed on his tiny, wealthy neighbor, Qatar. He has even engaged in indirect talks with the kingdom’s archnemesis, Iran, to try to dampen the shadow war raging across the region. Fueling the shift from confrontation to negotiation, analysts say, is the sobering realization that a decades-old cornerstone of American policy in the Middle East — the understanding that the United States would defend the Saudi oil industry from foreign attacks — can no longer be taken for granted. Even though American and Saudi officials agreed that Iran was behind the Sept. 14 attacks on the petroleum processing plants at Abqaiq and Khurais, temporarily halving Saudi Arabia’s oil production, President Trump responded with heated rhetoric but little else. For the Saudis, the tepid response drove home the reality that despite the tens of billions of dollars they have spent on American weapons — more than $170 billion since 1973 — they could no longer count on the United States to come to their aid, at least not with the force they expected. Worried about having to fend for themselves in a tough and unpredictable neighborhood, analysts say, the Saudis have quietly reached out to their enemies to de-escalate conflicts. “I think we will look at Sept. 14 as a seminal moment in gulf history,” said David B. Roberts, a scholar of the region at King’s College London. With the presumption shattered that the United States would protect the Saudis, Dr. Roberts said, “they realize the need to be more accommodating.” For the United States, the shift toward diplomacy is an awkward paradox. The Trump administration and Congress have been pressing the Saudis to end the war in Yemen, and the administration has pushed them to reconcile with Qatar, largely in vain. Now, the presumed Iranian strikes may have done more to advance those goals than American pressure ever did. Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy turned more aggressive after Prince Mohammed, then 29, emerged as its driving force in 2015. He plunged the kingdom into a devastating war against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen; imposed a punishing boycott on Qatar, which he accused of supporting terrorism and cozying up to Iran; and vowed to confront Iran across the Middle East. Critics said the young prince was brash and headstrong, and a destabilizing force in the region. Moreover, the Yemen and Qatar campaigns failed to achieve the desired results. The war in Yemen settled into a costly stalemate with the side effect of a devastating humanitarian crisis, while Qatar employed its vast wealth and other international relationships to weather the blockade. Then the refinery attacks highlighted the vulnerability of the Saudi oil industry, the country’s economic jewel. Those events led to what Rob Malley, a top official for the Middle East in the Obama administration, describes as a “semi-recalibration” of Saudi policies. The sudden willingness to pursue diplomacy in Qatar and Yemen, he said, “reflects a Saudi desire to solidify its regional posture at a time of uncertainty and vulnerability.” Analysts saw the lack of a significant American response to the attacks as a blow to the policy known as the Carter doctrine, which dates to 1980, when President Jimmy Carter vowed to use force to ensure the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf after the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Subsequent presidents, Democrats and Republicans, upheld it, seeing Saudi oil exports as essential to the global economy and America’s interests. “For as long as I have been working on the Middle East, that’s why we were there: to protect the free flow of oil,” said Steven Cook, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to a period dating to the 1980s. After the attacks, Mr. Trump sent more American troops to Saudi Arabia to operate Patriot missile systems, support that fell far short of what the Saudis had expected from a president whom they considered a close friend and who shared their animosity toward Iran. Mr. Trump ordered, then abruptly called off, airstrikes on Iran. “What the Saudis didn’t understand,” Dr. Cook said, “was that Donald Trump is a lot closer to Barack Obama’s worldview than they realized. It’s about getting out of the Middle East.” The Saudis’ reputation in Washington had suffered gravely because of the war in Yemen, the Qatar blockade and the killing of the dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul last year. While anger spread in Congress and other parts of the government, Mr. Trump continued to support the kingdom as an important Arab ally and a reliable buyer of American arms. But as a presidential election looms, the Saudis realize that Mr. Trump could find that position to be a liability with voters, and a new president could take an entirely different approach. “It is a hard ask, even for Trump, to defend Saudi Arabia at every turn during a campaign,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “So I think the Saudis are smart enough to tone it down for a time.” Daylight also broke between Saudi Arabia and its closest regional ally, the United Arab Emirates. In June, the Emirates began withdrawing its troops from Yemen, leaving the Saudis with the burden of an ugly war that few believe they can win. In July, the Emirates hosted rare talks with Iran about maritime security, an effort to calm tensions in the Persian Gulf and safeguard the country’s reputation as a safe business hub. Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment on the recent diplomacy. While those overtures have yet to yield official agreements, they have eased pressures in the region. In Yemen, both sides have released more than 100 prisoners to show good will, and cross-border attacks by the Houthis have grown less frequent. Last month the United Nations envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition over the previous two weeks. Since then, no Yemeni civilians have been killed in airstrikes, said Radhya Almutawakel, the chairwoman of Mwatana, a Yemeni human rights group. The current de-escalation, she noted, is the first that resulted from direct talks with the Houthis. She suspected that the Saudis would not have chosen that route if the war had been going their way at the time of the Abqaiq attack.“They would not have chosen to speak with the Houthis,” she said. “They would have escalated the war.” In the standoff between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Qatar, demonstrable progress has been scarce but quiet talks between the countries’ leaders have softened the conflict’s rougher edges. Saudi social media accounts that often insulted Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, have toned it down. And while Qatar has not shut down its Al Jazeera satellite network as the Saudis demanded, criticism of Qatar from pro-government news outlets and social media accounts in Saudi Arabia has noticeably quieted in recent months, Qatari officials say. Instead of punishing citizens who travel to Qatar, Saudi Arabia now looks the other way, and has even sent soccer teams to play in tournaments in Doha, the Qatari capital. And although Qatar’s emir did not accept an invitation by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, to attend a regional summit meeting in Saudi Arabia this month, Qatar’s foreign minister did. The Qataris have also gained ground in Washington. While Mr. Trump initially cheered the blockade, endorsing the Saudi allegation that Qatar supported terrorism, he later switched tracks. Last year, he welcomed Qatar’s emir in Washington and this month sent his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, to a major conference in Doha. But the antagonism toward Qatar has not softened in the Emirates, which has been a leader of the embargo and which still sees Qatar as dangerously close to the region’s Islamists. The distrust is reciprocated by Qatar, where officials have spoken of possibly reconciling with Saudi Arabia but not the Emirates, effectively splitting their alliance. Concrete progress has been scarcest where the stakes are highest: between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But after years of heated statements and competing support for opposite sides in regional conflicts, officials from Pakistan and Iraq have stepped in as intermediaries for back-channel talks aimed at averting a wider conflict. It remains unclear how far such talks will go in reducing tensions, especially since an official Saudi opening with Iran could infuriate Mr. Trump, who has tried to isolate and punish Iran. “Washington would not look kindly upon a Saudi-Iranian channel at a time when the U.S. is trying to isolate Iran,” said Mr. Malley, the Obama administration official. “Not to fully trust the Trump administration is one thing. To openly defy it is another altogether, and Prince Mohammed is unlikely to do that.”
Forign Policy 20’ "The Middle East Is More Stable When The United States Stays Away". Foreign Policy. Accessed March 31 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/ //MD
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole. Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished. It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it? Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a new doctrine: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region,” he stated, “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” In the context of the Cold War, preventing the Soviets—the main outside force Carter was worried about—from gaining control over the energy-rich region had a strategic logic. But over time, that logic shifted. In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan expanded the doctrine to include threats to the flow of oil originating from inside the region, too. As the geopolitical context changed still further, subsequent presidents found even more ways to justify America’s growing military presence in the Middle East. What started as a policy to prevent others from establishing hegemony over the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf morphed into a policy of asserting American hegemony in the region in order to “save” it. As long as U.S. allies lack the capability or competence to secure the region, the thinking went, Washington would have no choice but to shoulder this responsibility. U.S. President George W. Bush was explicit about that; without an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, he claimed, there would be chaos in the region. He missed the irony, of course, that his invasion of Iraq was the single most destabilizing event in the Middle East of the past decades. As the scholars Hal Brands, Steven Cook, and Kenneth Pollack wrote endorsing the Carter Doctrine and its continuation, “the United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” This account is accurate enough (although the last rule on the list always exempted Israel), but the story glosses over how the policy also gave cover to U.S. allies for some fairly destabilizing behaviors of their own. That’s an omission Brands makes in a Bloomberg article, too, where he points to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to argue that a “post-American Middle East will not be stable and peaceful. It will be even nastier and more turbulent than it is today.” And in the words of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2018, “If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.” All this without a nod to the fact that, if anything, the United States’ protection of the Saudi regime has enabled its promotion of terrorism and its destabilizing activities in the region, which have, in turn, prompted further Iranian response. Assertions about the United States’ pivotal role in the Middle East, no matter how often repeated, have not been proved true. Iran, ravaged by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement, is nowhere near establishing hegemony in the region. Saudi Arabia spends more than five times as much on its military than does Iran; the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE—outspends Iran by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, whereas Iran has no nuclear weapons yet undergoes more inspections than any other country, Israel has a nuclear weapons program with no international transparency whatsoever. Iran may have been adept at taking advantage of U.S. overextension and missteps in the last few decades, but establishing hegemony is a different matter altogether. Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons. Instead, recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks. Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times. Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression. An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security. It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy. Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted. Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments. In the wake of the U.S. assassination of Suleimani—which some former U.S. officials have called an act of war—the calculations may change once more. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Suleimani was in Iraq to bring him Tehran’s response to a message from Riyadh on how to defuse regional tensions, presumably as part of the House of Saud’s renewed interest in diplomacy. The Iraqis, according to him, were mediating between the two rivals, an initiative that has now been thrown into question. Iran may very well conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Saudi Arabia and the UAE conspired with Washington to assassinate Suleimani and as a result not only end the recent diplomacy but also target Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as part of the revenge for Suleimani’s death. This is yet one more instance, it seems, in which U.S. activities in the region have brought more turmoil than stability. To be sure, there is no guarantee that recent diplomatic efforts would have been successful. A more responsible Riyadh might not have begotten a more responsible Tehran. But it is noteworthy that diplomacy did not even begin in earnest until Washington clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to entangle itself in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And by returning to the region in a show of military force, Trump may once again disincentivize the United States’ allies from taking diplomacy seriously. They may even interpret Suleimani’s killing as a license to resume their recklessness—activities like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s purported kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister and ordering of the dismemberment of Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s imposition of a blockade on Qatar; and the two countries’ further destabilization of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. As in the past, in other words, it seems as if the Middle East’s descent into chaos is more likely with the United States than without it.
Harb 19’ "Saudi Arabia And Iran May Finally Be Ready For Rapprochement". Aljazeera.Com. Accessed April 1 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/saudi-arabia-iran-finally-ready-rapprochement-191015103242982.html //MD
Still, only time will tell how the attack will impact the general atmosphere in the already-volatile Gulf region and the wider Middle East. What is apparent, however, is that the current state of uncertainty, mistrust and confusion cannot be sustained if Iran wants to rejoin the international community after decades of isolation and if Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies seek further economic and social development. Only a return to quiet and purposeful diplomacy - with the assistance of third parties - can bridge differences between the two sides and help prevent what could arguably be one of the most calamitous military confrontations in the region's history. Saudi Arabia is not interested in a confrontation It is improbable that Saudi Arabia is behind the attack on the Iranian tanker, despite its assumed desire to avenge the many attacks it sustained over the last few months. On September 14, for example, attacks on two of its main oil production facilities knocked out more than half of the kingdom's production. Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility but US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo swiftly accused Iran, which rejected the allegations. In light of all this, some argued that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who has come under much domestic criticism for failing to prevent the devastating attacks on the country's oil facilities, might have ordered the attack on the Iranian oil tanker to save face. This scenario, however, is highly improbable since a small-scale attack on an Iranian tanker like the one we witnessed last week is unlikely to yield significant positive results for MBS. First, if Iran concludes that Riyadh is indeed behind such an attack, it can easily find many overt and secret ways to retaliate. MBS is well aware that if he orders an attack on an Iranian vessel, he would be opening the kingdom to renewed attacks by Houthi insurgents. Second, despite the ongoing friction between the two sides, Riyadh does not want to rule out the possibility of a rapprochement with Tehran in the near future. MBS was clear, in a recent interview with CBS, about his preference for a political solution to the region's ongoing problems. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan's visits this week to Iran and Saudi Arabia can only be seen as an effort at reconciliation that he could not have undertaken without a green light from the leaders of both countries. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi is also known to have relayed messages between MBS and Iranian officials about de-escalation. Third, Saudi Arabia can no longer count on Washington's direct assistance in the event of a confrontation with Iran. Whatever existed of Saudi enthusiasm for such a confrontation has dissipated after US President Donald Trump aborted the mission to punish Tehran over its downing of an American spy drone last June. His latest decision to allow Turkey to attack Kurdish forces allied with the US and responsible for defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in northeastern Syria also gave the Saudis a signal that allies are not immune to Trump's whimsical foreign policy. The Saudi leadership cannot ignore the US president's reluctance to take on Iran and his betrayal of allies simply because he agreed to dispatch extra American troops to Saudi Arabia. Iran cannot remain a pariah in the region Despite the defiant rhetoric emanating from its leaders and institutions, the Islamic Republic is also interested in a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. Tehran understands that it cannot remain outside the confines of regional and international systems. It also understands that it needs to make compromises, both in the region and in the international arena, to find necessary accommodations. To be sure, its signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 clearly signalled its willingness to meet the international community's expectations if that helps it in preserving national pride and interests and escaping debilitating sanctions. However, on the regional front, Iran's insistence on interfering in the domestic affairs of Arab countries continues to stymie its good relations with its neighbours. To be sure, no other outside force has been able to secure the kind of influence that Iran maintains in Iraq and Lebanon. Yemen's Houthis, meanwhile, have become closer to Iran than ever before and have benefited from Iranian technology in manufacturing offensive weapons used against Saudi Arabia over the last few years. But Iran's role in Syria's war is the starkest example of overreach that makes it impossible for Tehran to join the current Saudi-led regional order. It is this last important part of Iran's regional policy that stands at the heart of its acrimonious relationship with Saudi Arabia, and it is here that the two may or may not find a compromise. Iranian officials have for quite some time now spoken of their desire for Iran to be considered a normal part of the regional subsystem, bearing equal responsibilities and sharing collective benefits. In a recent op-ed, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reiterated the Islamic Republic's view that "security in the region is a collective responsibility" and that "either everyone is safe or everyone is deprived of it." No one can find much fault with Zarif's statements, however, such words will only gain meaning and lead to meaningful change if Iran takes concrete steps to demonstrate that it is ready to respect the sovereignty of Arab states and in return, the Arab side agrees to treat Iran as an equal shareholder in the region's affairs. What is to come? In the current atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust, it is hard to accurately postulate what could be in store for Saudi-Iranian relations. But both Riyadh and Tehran have recently been talking about the dangers of escalation and expressing their desire to find a compromise that would allow for the two regional powers to peacefully co-exist. This, above anything else, signals a real possibility for sustainable peace in the Gulf. Friendly but neutral third parties can also assist in finding the means to bridge differences that have stymied a closer relationship between arguably the two most consequential states in the Muslim world. One thing is sure, however: peaceful co-existence can only work if Tehran scales down its interference in the affairs of Arab states and Riyadh accepts that Iran also has a say in regional issues. Iran should not expect to be allowed to continue controlling the fates of Iraq and Lebanon through affiliated militias or supporting the Houthis in their assault on Yemen's legitimate authority. It should also understand that it cannot re-join the regional system while insisting on supporting the thuggish regime of Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Reciprocally, Saudi Arabia must understand that Iran is of the region and that it cannot simply be excluded from the region's development. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia's apparent eagerness to de-escalate the situation following the October 11 attack on an Iranian tanker is perhaps the most significant sign yet that the two regional rivals are finally ready for a rapprochement. Peaceful co-existence, however, is difficult and requires the will to talk and compromise. If either party shows reluctance to change its ways, the region will continue to live with the possibility of a war that could make all past wars look minor in comparison.
Ashford 18’ Cato.Org. Accessed March 8 2020. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/ashford-ssq-november-2018.pdf //MD
Yet perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that American predominance in the region prevents states from balancing or bandwagoning in the face of threats, as they would do in the absence of US presence. As many scholars have noted, the Middle East has typically exhibited “underbalancing,” meaning that states that might be expected to form alliances have rarely done so. The most obvious example is the antiIranian axis of Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has also repeatedly failed to build joint military infrastructure. The recent GCC crisis between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates likewise suggests that these states prioritize ideological factors over security concerns. As long as the United States continues to act as a regional security guarantor, theory suggests that ideological factors will continue to inhibit alliances.47 In fact, though the Obama administration’s pivot away from the Middle East was more rhetoric than reality, it did encourage tentative attempts to build better regional alliances. Private rapprochement and cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the issue of Iran has been growing. The two countries disagree on a variety of issues, the most problematic of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet when retired top Saudi and Israeli officials spoke about the issue at a 2016 forum in Washington, DC, they were keen to highlight that cooperation is possible even if these issues go unresolved.48 The two states regularly hold informal meetings on security issues. Even the relative lack of criticism expressed by the Gulf States during the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah may be indicative of shifting opinion within the region.49 In providing security guarantees and by acting as a third party cutout, US involvement inhibits these developing ties.
Gause 17’ “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalancing in the New Middle East Cold War: PS: Political Science andamp; Politics.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, 12 June 2017, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/ideologies-alignments-and-underbalancing-in-the-new-middle-east-cold-war/739C0AB7ACDAD0E8ADE7D36C3CD37AA6 //MD
The pattern of alliances and alignments in the Middle East following the Arab uprisings challenges established theories of regional international relations (IR) in intriguing ways (Gause 2014; see also Lynch 2016; Ryan 2012; Salloukh 2013). One notable element of current regional geopolitics is the failure of other local powers to form effective blocking or balancing alliances against Iran, the state that has most clearly improved its regional position as a result of upheavals that go back to the 2003 Iraq War. Even as they fail to form new alliances, however, regional actors are taking steps domestically to increase their military power and cultivating non-state actors to increase their regional influence. This “underbalancing” (Schweller 2004, 2006) in terms of stateto-state alignment is best explained not by sectarianism or balance of power logic but rather by a variant of Walt’s (1987) balance-of-threat framework that emphasizes ideology and domestic-regime security issues. Explaining these patterns, therefore, requires grappling with constructivist theories of identity, the drivers of regime insecurity, and the relative importance of state-to-state and transnational policies. These patterns make for an interesting case not only for thinking through contemporary regional politics but also for testing more general theories about alliances. This effort is a response to Valbjørn’s (2017) call in this symposium for scholars of Middle East IR to engage more directly in the broader theoretical field and to use their empirical work on the region to suggest ways that more general IR theories can be amended to explain a wider array of cases. “UNDERBALANCING” AND THE NEW MIDDLE EAST COLD WAR Iran is the undoubted winner in regional-power terms in the past decade of Middle Eastern upheaval. For years, Iraq balanced against Iranian power in ways ranging from political competition to the massively destructive eight-year war in the 1980s. Today, Iran is the most influential player in Iraqi politics, having close relations with the Baghdad government, sponsoring if not controlling a number of Shi’i militias, maintaining a cooperative relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government, and indirectly fighting alongside the United States in the campaign against the Islamic State. Its client Hizballah remains the dominant force in Lebanese politics. Iranian support is essential to the preservation of the Assad regime in Damascus, even as other rulers challenged by the Arab Spring have fallen. Although Tehran’s relationship with the Huthi movement in Yemen is not as strong or as direct as that with Hizballah or the Iraqi militias, the success of the Huthis further contributes to the regional sense that Iran is “on the march.” Efforts by other regional powers to challenge Iranian gains have largely failed, whether Turkish and Saudi support for the Syrian opposition (although different elements of it), Saudi financing of the March 14 coalition in Lebanon and military aid to the Lebanese government (now cut off ), or half-hearted Saudi efforts to challenge Iran’s influence in Iraq. The Saudi–Emirati military campaign in Yemen against the Huthis succeeded in pushing them out of the southern part of the country but not (as of March 2017) out of San’a, the capital. Iran certainly has problems. Its Syrian ally is an increasing burden and will be for some time. Lower oil prices hurt Iran more than the Saudis because Tehran does not have the financial cushion that Riyadh built during recent years of high oil prices. However, it is difficult to argue with the fact that Iran is the regional state that gained the most from changes that commenced with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. By pure balance-of-power logic, the region should have witnessed a Turkish–Saudi–Israeli–Egyptian alignment aimed at checking and rolling back Iranian power. All four states have reason to be concerned about Iran, and all have taken steps to check Iranian power and interests. Israel and Saudi Arabia both identify Iran as their primary threat. Turkey has been a consistent supporter of the armed opposition to the Assad regime since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Three fourths of this hypothetical balancing alignment—a Turkish– Saudi–Egyptian understanding—makes perfect sense by the sectarian logic that many believe is driving regional politics because all three are overwhelmingly Sunni-majority states. However, neither the trilateral nor the quadrilateral balancing alignment against Iran has emerged. Instead, at most, Israel and Saudi Arabia have considered open coordination, whereas at various points, Turkey and Egypt have leaned toward Iran. Haas (2014) provided a framework to understand this example of regional “underbalancing.” He argued that it is not simply power that defines the structure of an international system; identity also plays a role in the way that states define friends and foes. States that share common ideas about appropriate and legitimate principles of governance tend to group together. In systems characterized by ideological bipolarity, in which the great powers divide between two overarching systems of governance, alliances tend to follow ideological lines and be stable. However, when there are more than two transnational ideological principles present in the system being advanced by great powers, the likelihood of underbalancing increases. Haas did not adequately appreciate how regimes that share those common ideas—at least rhetorically—also can be perceived as threats to one another’s security. The Communist USSR and the People’s Republic of China fell out in the 1960s. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser was as harsh with fellow “progressive” Arab nationalists who did not toe his line in the 1950s and 1960s as he was with the “reactionary” Arab monarchs (Kerr 1971). However, Haas’s argument can be refined to accommodate these anomalies. Common ideas about appropriate domestic governance will bring states together as long as respect for state independence and sovereignty underlies those ideas. If those common ideas call for hierarchical institutional forms (e.g., integral unity or formal subordination to a movement’s leader), they eventually will be perceived as threats by others in the same ideological camp. Haas (2014, 729) argued that in ideological multipolarity, state leaders will eschew alliances that seem logical from a power perspective because they dislike and fear the ideological stance of a potential ally: “Thus, all other things being equal, a shift from ideological bipolarity to multipolarity will make it more difficult for at least some states to form alliances because there are likely to be fewer ideologically acceptable allies in the system. The greater the impediments to alliance formation, the less efficient the balancing process will be against potential threats.” His paradigmatic example was the refusal of conservative politicians in Great Britain and France to consider an alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He added another impediment to effective balancing in ideological multipolarity, already recognized in more Realist accounts of alliance behavior (Christensen and Snyder 1990): that is, the greater incentives for buck passing. Why pay the price for balancing a threat if a third party will do it for free? Why cooperate with an ideological rival in balancing against a third party when cooperating with the rival could have negative repercussions at both home and abroad? In ideologically multipolar situations, therefore, the likelihood of underbalancing is considerable.
Ashford 18’ Cato.Org. Accessed March 8 2020. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/ashford-ssq-november-2018.pdf //MD
Yet perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that American predominance in the region prevents states from balancing or bandwagoning in the face of threats, as they would do in the absence of US presence. As many scholars have noted, the Middle East has typically exhibited “underbalancing,” meaning that states that might be expected to form alliances have rarely done so. The most obvious example is the antiIranian axis of Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has also repeatedly failed to build joint military infrastructure. The recent GCC crisis between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates likewise suggests that these states prioritize ideological factors over security concerns. As long as the United States continues to act as a regional security guarantor, theory suggests that ideological factors will continue to inhibit alliances.47 In fact, though the Obama administration’s pivot away from the Middle East was more rhetoric than reality, it did encourage tentative attempts to build better regional alliances. Private rapprochement and cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the issue of Iran has been growing. The two countries disagree on a variety of issues, the most problematic of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet when retired top Saudi and Israeli officials spoke about the issue at a 2016 forum in Washington, DC, they were keen to highlight that cooperation is possible even if these issues go unresolved.48 The two states regularly hold informal meetings on security issues. Even the relative lack of criticism expressed by the Gulf States during the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah may be indicative of shifting opinion within the region.49 In providing security guarantees and by acting as a third party cutout, US involvement inhibits these developing ties.
Leeds 03’, Brett Ashley. “Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Influence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science, Midwest Political Science Association, 12 June 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/3186107 //MD
The typical alliance that most imagine is a mutual defense pact. In such a treaty, the parties promise one another active military support in the event one or more is attacked. Based upon the informational theories discussed above, these alliances should have a deterrent effect. Potential aggressors know that if the alliance is reliable, they will find themselves in conflict with not only their intended target, but also the state or states allied with the target. If we assume that aggressors are more likely to initiate conflicts that they think they can win, and if we assume that usually aggressors are more optimistic about their ability to win a bilateral conflict than a multilateral conflict, it follows that potential aggressors should be more reluctant to challenge potential targets with allies committed to intervene on their behalf. This leads to a first hypothesis: HI: Potential challengers are less likely to initiate a militarized dispute against a potential target if the target has one or more allies committed to intervene on behalf of the target if attacked by this challenger.
Leeds 03’, Brett Ashley. “Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Influence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science, Midwest Political Science Association, 12 June 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/3186107 //MD
This is easiest to see by examining the bar graph pictured in Figure 1. This figure shows the percentage change in the probability of dispute initiation that can be attributed to outside allies when all other variables are held at their mean values. The first bar shows that when a target state has an ally committed to its defense, the probability of dispute initiation is 28 lower than the probability of dispute initiation in a dyad with the mean characteristics in the dataset but no outside allies. The second bar represents the case in which the challenger has an offensive ally; in this instance, the probability of dispute initiation is 47 higher than it is in the case in which neither the challenger nor the target has any allies committed to intervene. Finally, the bar on the right shows that when challengers have obtained promises of neutrality from outside states, the probability of dispute initiation is 57 higher than it is when neither state has any allies. Notably, these substantive effects are similar to those associated with variables like power relations and similarity in alliance portfolios, which scholars of international politics have long considered crucial to predicting and preventing dispute initiation. Given the rare occurrence and severe implications of military conflict, the substantive effects of outside alliance commitments to potential conflict initiators and targets are important enough that they should influence scholarship and policy.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis //MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Ahmed 12’ (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, . Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD), an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, 2012, “Islamophobia and Insecurity The Exclusionary Logic of Imperial Geopolitics”, PDF //MD
Here, the mainstream media plays a critical function in ideologically linking the international to the domestic, in particular, the trajectory of Western foreign policy in Muslim-majority theatres across the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as the processes of Islamophobia and radicalisation experienced within Muslim diaspora communities in the West. On the one hand, Islamophobic media narratives buttress anti-Muslim public opinion at home, alienating Muslims and fuelling the extremist rhetoric of far right groups. Simultaneously, images of devastation and destruction from Muslim-majority theatres of war such as Iraq and Afghanistan also distress and anger Muslim diaspora communities, further exacerbating alienation. In effect, the media acts as a symbiotic link between Islamophobia at home and abroad, as it mediates extremist rhetoric from neoconservative and right-wing factions and the official language of government and security agencies who attempt to pander to Islamophobic public opinion on political issues such as immigration and terrorism. Thus, there is perhaps no clearer instantiation of the security-dynamics of Islamophobia than the actual activities of Western security agencies. After the US Department of Justice passed a regulation allowing indefinite detention on 20th September 2001, nearly 1,200 Arabs and Muslims were secretly arrested and detained without charge.31 The US National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) “call-in” program required male visitors from twenty-four Arab and Muslim countries and North Korea to register with INS offices. No terrorists were found, yet over 13,000 of the 80,000 men who registered were threatened with deportation, and many were “detained in harsh conditions.”32 In the UK, more than a thousand Muslims have been detained without charge under anti-terror laws, out of which only a handful have been convicted of terrorist offences. Worldwide, more than 100,000 Muslim men – victims of the CIA?s extraordinary rendition programme – are being detained without charges “in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison” under conditions which violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners, and UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.33 Such practices accompany Anglo-American military engagements in predominantly Muslim theatres of war, regions often described as dangerous failed zones harbouring potential Islamist terrorists planning to inflict apocalyptic forms of mass destruction on Western civilization.34 Such military engagements also tend to result in the indiscriminate killings of predominantly Muslim civilians, and correlate invariably with their strategic location vis-à-vis contested energy reserves in the Middle East, Central Asia and Northwest Africa. Iraq provides a case-in-point. From 1991 to 2007, the total civilian death toll in Iraq as a direct and indirect consequence of Anglo-American invasions, socio-economic deprivation, infrastructure destruction, and occupation amounts to approximately 3 million over a period of sixteen years.35 The scale of this violence is thus larger than some of the most well-known cases of twentieth century genocide such as in Cambodia, Kampuchea, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. As Walt points out, estimating the number of Muslims killed directly and indirectly by U.S. forces over the last 30 years suggests at least 100 Muslim fatalities for every US one. He thus observes: “When you kill tens of thousands of people in other countries – and sometimes for no good reason – you shouldn?t be surprised when people in those countries are enraged by this behavior and interested in revenge.”36 This argument amply refutes the assumption that foreign policy has no relationship to terrorism and violent radicalisation. In particular, taking a broader historical view of the continuity of US-UK interventionism in the Gulf region going back to 1991 demonstrates not only the immense scale of the violence inflicted upon Iraqi civilians, but also illustrates that British interventionism in the region preceded the emergence and proliferation of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks against Western targets. Thus, Ralph argues that the massive military violence that has been inflicted predominantly on the civilian populations of Muslim-majority regions is only possible by their having been “Islamophobically” constructed as having lives that are of less value compared to those of Western citizens.37 But while the irrational fear of Islam and Muslims is clearly a significant factor in all these disparate phenomena, Islamophobia as a sociological concept offers little by way of a coherent causal explanation of how or why these phenomena are escalating simultaneously.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis //MD
In practice, this generates an excessive preoccupation not with the causes of global crisis acceleration and how to ameliorate them through structural transformation, but with their purportedly inevitable impacts, and how to prepare for them by controlling problematic populations. Paradoxically, this ‘securitisation’ of global crises does not render us safer. Instead, by necessitating more violence, while inhibiting preventive action, it guarantees greater insecurity. Thus, a recent US Department of Defense report explores the future of international conflict up to 2050. It warns of ‘resource competition induced by growing populations and expanding economies’, particularly due to a projected ‘youth bulge’ in the South, which ‘will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy’. This will prompt a ‘return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets’. Finally, climate change will ‘compound’ these stressors by generating humanitarian crises, population migrations and other complex emergencies.96 A similar study by the US Joint Forces Command draws attention to the danger of global energy depletion through to 2030. Warning of ‘the dangerous vulnerabilities the growing energy crisis presents’, the report concludes that ‘The implications for future conflict are ominous.’ 97 Once again, the subject turns to demographics: ‘In total, the world will add approximately 60 million people each year and reach a total of 8 billion by the 2030s’, 95 per cent accruing to developing countries, while populations in developed countries slow or decline. ‘Regions such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the youth bulge will reach over 50 of the population, will possess fewer inhibitions about engaging in conflict.’ 98 The assumption is that regions which happen to be both energy-rich and Muslim-majority will also be sites of violent conflict due to their rapidly growing populations. A British Ministry of Defence report concurs with this assessment, highlighting an inevitable ‘youth bulge’ by 2035, with some 87 per cent of all people under the age of 25 inhabiting developing countries. In particular, the Middle East population will increase by 132 per cent and sub-Saharan Africa by 81 per cent. Growing resentment due to ‘endemic unemployment’ will be channelled through ‘political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces’. More strangely, predicting an intensifying global against social divide between a super-rich elite, the middle classes and an urban under-class, the report warns: ‘The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.’ 99 3.3 Exclusionary logics of global crisis securitisation? Thus, the securitisation of global crisis leads not only to the problematisation of particular religious and ethnic groups in foreign regions of geopolitical interest, but potentially extends this problematisation to any social group which might challenge prevailing global political economic structures across racial, national and class lines. The previous examples illustrate how securitisation paradoxically generates insecurity by reifying a process of militarisation against social groups that are constructed as external to the prevailing geopolitical and economic order. In other words, the internal reductionism, fragmentation and compartmentalisation that plagues orthodox theory and policy reproduces precisely these characteristics by externalising global crises from one another, externalising states from one another, externalising the inter-state system from its biophysical environment, and externalising new social groups as dangerous ‘outsiders’. Hence, a simple discursive analysis of state militarisation and the construction of new ‘outsider’ identities is insufficient to understand the causal dynamics driving the process of ‘Otherisation’. As Doug Stokes points out, the Western state preoccupation with the ongoing military struggle against international terrorism reveals an underlying ‘discursive complex’, where representations about terrorism and non-Western populations are premised on ‘the construction of stark boundaries’ that ‘operate to exclude and include’. Yet these exclusionary discourses are ‘intimately bound up with political and economic processes’, such as strategic interests in proliferating military bases in the Middle East, economic interests in control of oil, and the wider political goal of ‘maintaining American hegemony’ by dominating a resource-rich region critical for global capitalism.100 But even this does not go far enough, for arguably the construction of certain hegemonic discourses is mutually constituted by these geopolitical, strategic and economic interests – exclusionary discourses are politically constituted. New conceptual developments in genocide studies throw further light on this in terms of the concrete socio-political dynamics of securitisation processes. It is now widely recognised, for instance, that the distinguishing criterion of genocide is not the pre-existence of primordial groups, one of which destroys the other on the basis of a preeminence in bureaucratic military–political power. Rather, genocide is the intentional attempt to destroy a particular social group that has been socially constructed as different. 101 As Hinton observes, genocides precisely constitute a process of ‘othering’ in which an imagined community becomes reshaped so that previously ‘included’ groups become ‘ideologically recast’ and dehumanised as threatening and dangerous outsiders, be it along ethnic, religious, political or economic lines – eventually legitimising their annihilation.102 In other words, genocidal violence is inherently rooted in a prior and ongoing ideological process, whereby exclusionary group categories are innovated, constructed and ‘Otherised’ in accordance with a specific socio-political programme. The very process of identifying and classifying particular groups as outside the boundaries of an imagined community of ‘inclusion’, justifying exculpatory violence toward them, is itself a political act without which genocide would be impossible.103 This recalls Lemkin’s recognition that the intention to destroy a group is integrally connected with a wider socio-political project – or colonial project – designed to perpetuate the political, economic, cultural and ideological relations of the perpetrators in the place of that of the victims, by interrupting or eradicating their means of social reproduction. Only by interrogating the dynamic and origins of this programme to uncover the social relations from which that programme derives can the emergence of genocidal intent become explicable.104 Building on this insight, Semelin demonstrates that the process of exclusionary social group construction invariably derives from political processes emerging from deep-seated sociopolitical crises that undermine the prevailing framework of civil order and social norms; and which can, for one social group, be seemingly resolved by projecting anxieties onto a new ‘outsider’ group deemed to be somehow responsible for crisis conditions. It is in this context that various forms of mass violence, which may or may not eventually culminate in actual genocide, can become legitimised as contributing to the resolution of crises.105 This does not imply that the securitisation of global crises by Western defence agencies is genocidal. Rather, the same essential dynamics of social polarisation and exclusionary group identity formation evident in genocides are highly relevant in understanding the radicalisation processes behind mass violence. This highlights the fundamental connection between social crisis, the breakdown of prevailing norms, the formation of new exclusionary group identities, and the projection of blame for crisis onto a newly constructed ‘outsider’ group vindicating various forms of violence
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis //MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Wæver 98’ Securitisation and Desecuritisation?, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995); Barry Buzan, Ola Wæver and Jaape de Wilde, Security: A New Framework
for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1998) p. 23 //MD
In a way, the most interesting about a speech act is that it might fail. And this is an essential part of its meaning. . . . In our context this is clearly the case: the invocation of "security" is only possible because it invokes the image of what would happen if it did not work. And not only this ( . . . ): the security speech act is only a problematic and thereby political move because it has a price. The securitizer is raising the stakes and investing some (real) risk of losing (general) sovereignty in order to fence off a specific challenge. In the present post-structuralist usage of speech act theory the meaning of the particular speech act is thus equally constituted by its possible success and its possible failure~-~-one is not primary and the other derived
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis //MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis //MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
González 18’ "Costs Of War: 17 Years After 9/11, Nearly Half A Million People Have Died In Global “War On Terror”". 2020. Democracy Now!. Accessed April 10 2020. https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/21/costs_of_war_17_years_after //MD
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with the costs of America’s endless war in the Middle East, as a new report reveals that nearly half a million people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001, when George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” in the wake of September 11th. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. … It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Bush referred to the war as a “crusade.” More than 17 years later, the war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history. A major new report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project has found that more than 480,000 people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, including soldiers, militants, police, contractors, journalists, humanitarian workers and civilians. Several times as many people have died indirectly because of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural problems, and war-related disease. The wars have uprooted 21 million Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani and Syrian people, who are now refugees of war or internally displaced.
NRC 18’ "12,000 People A Day Internally Displaced By Conflict Across The Middle East In 2017 | NRC". 2020. NRC. Accessed April 2 2020. https://www.nrc.no/news/2018/may/12000-people-a-day-internally-displaced-by-conflict-across-the-middle-east-in-2017/ //MD
12,000 people a day internally displaced by conflict across the middle east in 2017. New displacement associated with conflict doubled, largely due to Syria’s ongoing civil war. Almost 4.5 million people fled within their own countries to escape conflict and violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2017, according to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Key findings from the Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID 2018) show that the region accounted for 38 per cent of the global total of 11.8 million, with new displacements concentrated in Syria, 2.9 million; Iraq, 1.4 million and Yemen, 160,000. The figures for Yemen are not as high as expected for one of | 904,577 |
365,497 | 379,495 | Nuclear Middle East | Etzioni 20’ "Donald Trump Could Push Iran Toward Nuclear Weapons". 2020. The National Interest. Accessed March 30 2020. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/donald-trump-could-push-iran-toward-nuclear-weapons-129827 MD
To proceed, we need to realize that we have come to false conclusions. This belief that we lost the war in Afghanistan and are doing poorly in Iraq is based on a basic misconception. We have conflated the wars—which we won easily, in a few weeks, with few casualties on both fronts—with the eighteen years of nation-building, which is a failing effort. It is this vain attempt to turn these nations into democracies and U.S. allies that costs a great number of lives and half a trillion dollars. The United States would have little trouble taking on Iran militarily (though it is more powerful than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which, by the way, Iran was unable to defeat). Indeed, there is good reason to believe that threatening military action is the only way to bring Iran to the negotiating table. The United States should avoid making the same mistakes it made in Afghanistan and Iraq by seeking only to change the regime by use of force, without engaging in nation-building, leaving it to the people of Iran to fight for the kind of government they want. If Iran faces no forceful reactions to its provocations, then sooner or later it will either openly or clandestinely seek to expand its nuclear armament program. Iran has long-observed how well North Korea is treated compared to Libya, which gave up its program of building weapons of mass destruction. It has good reason to believe that nukes are the best guarantees to its national security and proactive shield, under which it can continue to dominate the region.
Sokolski 18’ "In The Middle East, Soon Everyone Will Want The Bomb". Foreign Policy. Accessed April 3 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/21/in-the-middle-east-soon-everyone-will-want-the-bomb/ MD
President Donald Trump’s recent decision to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and his offer to help Saudi Arabia build nuclear reactors raise the question of just how wild a nuclearized Middle East might get. The dangers of a regional arms race are real. If Iran resumes its nuclear weapons program, the Saudis will certainly pursue their own — and Algeria, Egypt, and Turkey might well follow. Fortunately, the worst is hardly inevitable. But avoiding it will require deference to energy economics (which, in the Middle East, favor nonnuclear over nuclear forms of energy) and promoting rules against enriching uranium and reprocessing spent reactor fuel (the keys to nuclear weapons development). Iran could get a bomb within a year. We already know it worked on a 10-kiloton bomb design. As for enriching weapons-grade uranium, Tehran could likely revamp its existing fleet of centrifuges to produce enough for its first bomb in eight to 10 months. Then, there is the unspoken option of culling plutonium from spent fuel generated from its power reactor at Bushehr. Assuming Iran currently lacks a small, crude chemical separation plant (which could be hidden within a moderate sized warehouse), Tehran could build one from scratch in as little as six months. (The design for such a plant was made public 40 years ago.) Such a plant could process one bomb’s worth of plutonium in about a week and a bomb’s worth per day after that. Given Tehran’s past work on weapons design, it’s reasonable to assume that Iran would have a working implosion device on the ready and could prepare plutonium or highly enriched uranium to place into the device’s core relatively quickly. Recent analysis also shows that even if Iran used “reactor-grade plutonium” from its power reactor at Bushehr, it could produce a compact 9- to 12-kiloton weapon, (which would accord with Iran’s earlier effort to perfect a 10-kiloton missile warhead) ) using 1950s weapons technology. If Iran unloaded Bushehr’s fuel before it was fully burned, as it did in 2012, it could build even more powerful weapons still. Tehran, though, is unlikely to sprint toward such bomb options if for no other reason than that Trump has warned it against doing so; the mullahs know that a rush to build a bomb could lead to U.S. military strikes. Iran also would like to keep China, Russia, Britain, and the European Union on its good side. Getting a bomb or rushing to build one would risk all this. Iranian nuclear or military provocations could prompt Riyadh to develop a nuclear weapons capability as a hedge. Indeed, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir both are on record saying that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapons capability, Saudi Arabia will do whatever it takes to “do the same.” This could mean a number of things. Riyadh could call on China, which sold the Saudis nuclear-capable missiles, or Pakistan, whose bomb program the Saudis funded, to base their nuclear weapons on Saudi soil. China and Pakistan could do this legally under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty so long as the nuclear weapons remained under Chinese or Pakistani control. The Saudis, however, would surely prefer to maintain control themselves, which gives rise to the possibility of China or Pakistan helping Riyadh acquire the means to enrich its own uranium. This could be done by sharing information that would allow the Saudis to get the parts and plans needed to complete a plant of their own. Based on an analysis of past centrifuge enrichment programs, the Saudis might perfect a plant in one to three years and produce their first bomb’s worth of uranium a year or so later at a cost of only tens of millions of dollars. As for perfecting a nuclear weapons design, this would likely be accomplished in parallel as has been done in nearly every other bomb program. Alternatively, Riyadh might buy a 1,000-megawatt reactor from one of the major nuclear suppliers — the Korea Electric Power Corporation, Westinghouse, EDF, Rosatom, or China — bring it online; build a crude, small reprocessing plant; and separate plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel. Judging from the recent nuclear experience of the United Arab Emirates, completing a large power reactor might take roughly a decade. If the Saudis made good on their promise to build a smaller South Korean-designed 100-megawatt electrical power reactor and decided to construct a small reprocessing plant, Riyadh could conceivably have its first batch of plutonium for use in weapons in as little as five years. The worry, then, would be that others might follow. Egypt has long operated a large Argentine-designed research reactor capable of producing more than a bomb’s worth of plutonium each year and has tinkered with reprocessing. Both Turkey and Egypt have begun construction of several large, Russian-built VVER pressurized-water reactors. Turkey is also developing a series of indigenous nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. If Egypt develops a weapons option, some fear that its traditional rival, Algeria, would then play catch-up. For decades, Algiers has operated a large research reactor that has generated tons of spent reactor fuel containing what could potentially be many bombs’ worth of plutonium. It also has hot cells — small labs that allow the safe handling of radioactive materials, which can be used to separate plutonium from the other hot spent reactor fuel waste products.
The New York Times 19’ "Israelis Watch U.S. Abandon Kurds, And Worry: Who’S Next?". 2020. Nytimes.Com. Accessed March 30 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/world/middleeast/israel-us-syria-kurds.html MD
Israel under Mr. Netanyahu has depended heavily on the Trump administration’s support in confronting Tehran over its nuclear ambitions and over its expansionist moves in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Israel believes Iran’s long-term strategy is to base missiles in those countries that can threaten Israel, as a deterrent to a pre-emptive strike — whether by Israel or the United States — on an Iranian nuclear weapons project. The White House came through for Mr. Netanyahu when Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, which President Barack Obama had negotiated over Mr. Netanyahu’s loud protests.
Horovitz 19’ "Trump’S New Actions, Inactions On Kurds, Syria, Iran Have Israel Deeply Worried". 2019. Timesofisrael.Com. Accessed March 30 2020. https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-new-actions-inactions-on-kurds-syria-iran-have-israel-deeply-worried/ MD
The concern in Israel, TV analyst Heller said Wednesday, is that the US president’s hands-off approach in the wake of the Abqaiq attack “will encourage the Iranians to act against Israel” in the same way, “with cruise missiles and drones.” Soleimani’s al-Quds force has “an account to settle with Israel,” because of Israeli strikes at Iranian targets in Syria and Lebanon, he noted. Uzi Even, one of the founders of Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility, wrote in Haaretz on Sunday that work at Dimona should be halted in the light of Iran’s demonstrable capabilities. “The Iranians, or their proxies, showed that they can hit specific targets with great precision and from a distance of hundreds of kilometers. We have to accept the fact that we are now vulnerable to such a strike.” Israel has missile defense systems and other capabilities that the Saudis do not, and the Israeli defense establishment is far less bleak than Even. A senior officer in the IDF’s Military Intelligence unit told Channel 13 TV on Monday that the Iranians “get a high mark, too high,” for the Abqaiq attack, but stressed that Tehran would “absolutely” not succeed if it attempted to launch a similar assault on Israel. Still, the IDF’s chief of staff, Aviv Kohavi, felt moved to issue a warning Monday that any attack on Israel would be met with a “forceful” response. “We are keeping our eyes open, having daily situation assessments, and taking professional decisions that lead to attacks and the thwarting of threats.” Finally, however, in terms of the dependability, or otherwise, of the Trump administration in an Israeli hour of need, the president’s latest policies — notably regarding what had been the US alliance with the Kurds — are causing overt dismay in some Israeli circles. Netanyahu has closely allied himself with Trump, hailing their friendship at the risk of alienating the president’s Democratic opponents, and being rewarded with presidential recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, and of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory this past March. Writing in Israel’s biggest-selling Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth on the eve of Yom Kippur, veteran diplomatic correspondent Shimon Shiffer warned that Trump’s decision on the Syrian withdrawal, and his “abandoning of the Kurdish allies, who believed that the US would stand with them… must set all our red lights flashing.” And the conclusion for Israel, Shiffer charged, “needs to be unequivocal: Trump has become unreliable for Israel. He can no longer be trusted.”
Horschig 19’ "Israel Could Strike First As Tensions With Iran Flare". 2019. The Conversation. Accessed March 30 2020. https://theconversation.com/israel-could-strike-first-as-tensions-with-iran-flare-119146 MD
“Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on June 17. Netanyahu also said Iran must be punished for violating the nuclear agreement. Israel, which has faced threats to its national security since its founding as a Jewish homeland in the Middle East in 1948, is known to take aggressive, preventive action to protect itself – including by launching preemptive strikes on neighboring nations it perceives as threatening. If international relations with Iran grow more volatile, Israel could take dramatic, unilateral action against its neighbor and longtime adversary. How the Begin Doctrine justifies preemptive strikes I’m an international security scholar who studies Israel’s proactive use of its military to prevent nuclear buildup in the Middle East. Israel has a counterproliferation policy, called the Begin Doctrine, which allows it to wage preventive strikes against enemies with weapons of mass destruction programs. Using the Begin Doctrine as a justification for preemptive strikes, the Israeli government has for decades quietly decimated nuclear and chemical facilities across the Middle East. When President Saddam Hussein’s potential nuclear military ambitions raised concerns in 1981, the Israeli government destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in a surprise attack called Operation Opera. “On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of Israel,” a government release stated at the time. “We shall defend the citizens of Israel in good time and with all the means at our disposal.” In 2007, Israel responded to Syria’s failure to report its uranium processing by striking a nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region. The United States, which was reportedly informed ahead of the attack, made no effort to stop Israel. Israel has also been accused of sponsoring the assassinations of at least four Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010. The incidents have never been fully investigated, and Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the targeted killings. Israel has also deterred nuclear proliferation in the Mideast using less lethal, more high tech strategies. In 2008 and 2009, Israel used computer malware called Stuxnet to disrupt Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The program infected the software that controlled centrifuge speed at the Natanz nuclear plant, alternately speeding up and slowing down the machines that produce enriched uranium to cripple production of the material. The Obama administration secretly supported the cyberattacks. Though the United States, United Nations and other world powers officially condemned some of these unprovoked Israeli military aggression, other preemptive Israeli attacks have been met with silence from the international community. The international community may even appreciate Israel’s role as a nuclear nonproliferation watchdog in the Middle East, my research suggests. Israel has never been punished for attacking its neighbors’ weapons programs. Decades after Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear plant, President Bill Clinton called it “a really good thing.” “It kept Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear power,” he said at the 2005 Davos World Economic Forum. “But it’s not clear to me they have that option in Iran,” he added. Israel vs. Iran That was 14 years ago. In 2005, Iran was just beginning its nuclear buildup. Today, Israel’s government seems strong in its belief that it has the option to strike Iran. Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist government is openly hostile to Israel. Citing fears that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, Netanyahu has warned, “Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be infinitely more costly than any scenario you can imagine to stop it.” He told Iran and other adversaries not to “test” Israel. If the nuclear deal ruptures further and Iran does restarting uranium enrichment, Israel might launch targeted airstrikes against it. Risks of an Israeli strike History suggests other countries are unlikely to actively deter Israeli military aggression in the guise of nuclear nonproliferation. The Trump administration has expressed anti-Iranian sentiment and is a staunch backer of Netanyahu’s government. And while European powers will recognize preemptive Israeli strikes on nuclear facilities as a violation of international law and of the sovereignty of Israel’s neighbors, they also see Iran’s nuclear program as a grave global security concern. A nuclear Iran could escalate ongoing Middle East conflicts into nuclear exchanges, and, as some commentators say, spur other regional powers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to develop nuclear weapons themselves. Of course, potential Israeli attacks on Iran present their own serious risks. Because most of Iran’s reactors are in full operations, air strikes may mean cutting off the power supply to Iranian citizens and could release large amounts of radioactive contaminants into the air. Iran, a militarily well-equipped country, would surely retaliate against any Israeli attacks. That, too, would trigger a conflict that would spiral throughout the Middle East. Of course, Israel faced similar dangers when it went after the weapons programs of Syria, Iraq and other neighbors. If history is any guide, Israel may strike Iran while the world quietly watches.
Farley 19’ "If Israel And Iran Go To War, Would Israel Launch A Nuclear War?". 2019. The National Interest. Accessed March 30 2020. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/if-israel-and-iran-go-war-would-israel-launch-nuclear-war-96296 MD
If a hostile power (let’s say Iran, for sake of discussion) appeared to be on the verge of mating nuclear devices with the systems needed to deliver them, Israel might well consider a preventive nuclear attack. In the case of Iran, we can imagine scenarios in which Israeli planners would no longer deem a conventional attack sufficiently lethal to destroy or delay the Iranian program. In such a scenario, and absent direct intervention from the United States, Israel might well decide to undertake a limited nuclear attack against Iranian facilities. Would it work? Nuclear weapons would deal more damage than most imaginable conventional attacks, and would also convey a level of seriousness that might take even the Iranians aback. On the other hand, the active use of nuclear weapons by Israel would probably heighten the interest of everyone in the region (and potentially across the world) to develop their own nuclear arsenals.
Mahdi Nazemroaya, Research Associate, Centre for Research on Globalization,” The Next World War: The ‘Great Game’ and The Threat of Nuclear War,” Global Research, 1—10—11, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-next-world-war-the-great-game-and-the-threat-of-nuclear-war/22169?print=1 MD
Any attack on Iran will be a joint operation between Israel, the U.S., and NATO. Such an attack will escalate into a major war. The U.S. could attack Iran, but can not win a conventional war. General Yuri Baluyevsky, the former chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff and Russian deputy defence minister, even publicly came forward in 2007 to warn that an attack on Iran would be a global disaster and unwinnable for the Pentagon. 97¶ Such a war against Iran and its allies in the Middle East would lead to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran as the only means to defeat it. Even Saddam Hussein, who during his day once commanded the most powerful Arab state and military force, was aware of this. In July 25, 1990, in a meeting with April C. Glaspie, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein stated: “But you know you meaning the U.S. are not the ones who protected your friends during the war with Iran. I assure you, had the Iranians overrun the region, the American troops would not have stopped them, except by the use of nuclear weapons.” 98¶ The diabolically unthinkable is no longer a taboo: the use of nuclear weapons once again against another country by the U.S. military. This will be a violation of the NPT and international law. Any nuclear attack on Iran will have major, long-term environmental impacts. A nuclear attack on Iran will also contaminate far-reaching areas that will go far beyond Iran to places such as Europe, Turkey, the Arabian Peninsula, Central Asia, Pakistan, and India.¶ Within the NATO alliance and amongst U.S. allies a consensus has been underway to legitimize and normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons. This consenus aims at paving the way for a nuclear strike against Iran and/or other countries in the future. This groundwork also includes the normalization of Israeli nukes.¶ Towards the end of 2006, Robert Gates stated that Israel has nuclear weapons, which was soon followed by a conveniently-timed slip of the tongue by Ehud Olmert stating that Tel Aviv possessed nuclear weapons. 99 Within this framework, Fumio Kyuma, a former Japanese defence minister, during a speech at Reitaku University in 2007 that followed the statements of Gates and Olmert, tried to publicly legitimize the dropping of atom bombs by the U.S. on Japanese civilians. 100 Because of the massive public outrage in Japanese society, Kyuma was forced to resign his post as defence minister. 101¶ The Uncertain Road Ahead: Armageddon at Our Doorstep? The March into the Unknown Horizon...¶ According to theChristian Science Monitor, Beijing is a barometre on whether Iran will be attacked and it seems unlikely by the acceleration in trade between China and Iran. 102 Still a major war in the Middle East and an even more dangerous global war with the use of nuclear weapons should not be ruled out. The globe is facing a state of worldwide military escalation. What is looming in front of humanity is the possibility of an all-out nuclear war and the extinction of most life on this planet as we know it.
Middle East Monitor 20’ "Saudi Warns Of Dire Consequence If US Withdraws From Iraq ". 2020. Middle East Monitor. Accessed March 21 2020. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200128-saudi-warns-of-dire-consequence-if-us-withdraws-from-iraq/ MD
Saudi Arabi has issued a striking warning over the return of Daesh if the US withdraws its troops from Iraq. In an interview with CNN yesterday, the country’s Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud said the American presence in the region played a crucial role in defeating the terrorist group and was key to preventing its resurgence in the region. “The US has proven time and again to be a reliable ally of the Kingdom, and this is also the case with the Trump administration,” Bin Farhan told CNN. “We work very well with President Trump and with the State Department and the Pentagon and we coordinate on issues of regional security,” he said. Regarding Daesh, Bin Farhan insisted that a US withdrawal could increase the risk of its return. “We believe that the defeat of ISIS was very much based on the contribution of the international coalition, including the US,” he said referring to the terror group with other widely used acronym. “We think that while ISIS is geographically defeated, they continue to pose a threat and it’s very important that the international community continue to support the Iraqi forces to remain vigilant and the American presence is of importance,” he added. There are said to be around 3,000 US troops currently stationed in the kingdom. It’s estimated that Saudi has paid the US roughly $500 million in compensation for the costs associated with stationing American forces in its territory. President Donald Trump, however, has boasted that he managed to extract $1 billion in return for deploying US troops. OPINION: Global protests reassert opposition to the US presence in the Middle East The presence of American troops in the region is vital to the kingdom’s security. Facing threats on three fronts, US security umbrella is thought to be more critical now than ever before. Riyadh has been locked in a stalemate with Houthis in Yemen, in a brutal conflict that was expected to last only a few months; it is at the centre of a dangerous escalation of tension with regional rival Iran. Simultaneously, the royals in Riyadh, with the aid of the UAE, have cast a wide net over potential threats to their rule, moved to crush calls for reform and democracy, domestically and across the region. Given Saudi’s estimation that the US is the primary guarantor of security in the region, Riyadh is very likely to have met calls for American troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, following the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, with deep concern. Following the death of Soleimani, the Iraqi parliament voted on a resolution calling on the Americans to pull their troops from the country. Iraqis have also expressed outrage at America’s presence with a series of protests demanding the withdrawal of US troops.
Edelman 11’ "The Dangers Of A Nuclear Iran". 2010. Foreign Affairs. Accessed March 26 2020. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/persian-gulf/2011-01-01/dangers-nuclear-iran MD
The Islamabad option raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how India would respond. Would it target Pakistan’s weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear weapons? How would this expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia? Regardless of India’s reaction, any decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means, would be highly destabilizing. It would increase the incentives of other nations in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do so by eroding the remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime, even if its particular method of acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the NPT.
Hägerdal 19’ "Should America Pull Out Of The Middle East? – Center For Strategic Studies". 2019. Sites.Tufts.Edu. Accessed April 12 2020. https://sites.tufts.edu/css/should-america-pull-out-of-the-middle-east/ MD
An abrupt U.S. withdrawal would most likely spur a regional arms race of conventional forces and intensify the temptation to develop a nuclear deterrent. A toxic cocktail of mutual insecurity, escalating arms races, and perceptions of a shifting regional power balance could spark military confrontations of various kinds. The U.S. presence reduces the risk of a military confrontation by preserving regional stability. A U.S. military presence is also the best insurance policy for containing the effects of a regional military confrontation if it occurred. U.S. interventions managed to keep oil markets relatively stable throughout the 8 years of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, partly by protecting and even reflagging oil tankers servicing Gulf ports.
Bar 13’ "The Danger Of A Poly-Nuclear Mideast". 2020. Hoover Institution. Accessed March 24 2020. https://www.hoover.org/research/danger-poly-nuclear-mideast MD
Nuclear aspirations in the Middle East have been motivated by a variety of considerations: deterrence, a need for a weapon of compellence, honor, regional and international stature, and others. The motivation to acquire nuclear weapons and the circumstances through which the state achieves nuclear weapons will influence the development of c3 and the considerations that will guide the operational concept. Some (such as Iran) may see nuclear weapons as a means to undermine the balance of power in the region. Others may see them as necessary in order to counterbalance the former. In any case, the strategic environment of a poly-nuclear Middle East will be exceedingly dynamic and even volatile. It will differ from the stability of the latter part of the Cold War — and will probably be more like the instability of its early years, but with many nuclear players. In such a volatile environment, the paradigms of command and control may mean the difference between controlled tensions and nuclear confrontation. Attitudes toward nuclear weapons The basic building block for command and control of nuclear weapons will be the country’s perception of their purpose; are they perceived as a sui generis weapon — so destructive and terrible that they must be controlled far past any other weapon? Or are they just more powerful manifestations of existing weapons?4 Will these countries assimilate the view of use of nuclear weapons as a “taboo” to be avoided at all cost? From the public discourse in the Middle East, there are few traces of the collective traumas of World War II and the fear of worldwide nuclear conflagration during the Cold War that brought most of the international community — and particularly the Western world — to subscribe to such a taboo. The perceived legitimacy for acquisition and use of nuclear weapons in Islamic discourse is not drawn from “international law” (these are frequently even seen as “discriminatory infidel conventions” imposed on the Muslims in order to weaken or exploit them), but from Islamic jurisprudence. In this context, nuclear weapons are perceived as latter-day manifestations of categories of weapons that existed in the early days of Islam; if the Prophet permitted use of the latter, use of the former must be permissible as well. The most common analogy in Sunni Islamic discourse on wmd is between nuclear weapons and the ancient use of catapults.5 The potential nuclear states in the region will not universally adopt the same attitude towards the role of nuclear weapons in their strategic posture. Schematically, we can portray two possible roles that nuclear weapons may be seen to play: As weapons of deterrence and last resort. This attitude resembles that of the West during most of the Cold War. The underlying assumption would be that the weapons will probably not be used, and that the country may not have to deal with a second strike scenario or a need to respond after the political leadership has been incapacitated or “decapitated.” They will serve as a “last resort” weapon only when attacked by nuclear weapons. This attitude may bring its proponents to place more emphasis on safeguards to prevent the weapons from being used by mistake. A regime which views nuclear weapons as purely a deterrent may have a greater tendency towards a centralized structure: deployment in few high security areas; direct lines of control to the political leadership cutting out intermediary echelons; simplification of the storage and operation of the arsenal and total separation of weapons and delivery systems, reliance on authentication systems and “fail-safe” mechanisms. As weapons of compellence as a means to achieve regional hegemony, or to realize religiously or ideologically deterministic victory. To adopt such an attitude, it would not be necessary for the regime leadership to be devoid of a sense of the enormity of use of nuclear weapons, or to be irrational; rather it would suffice for it to suffer from the hubris of the belief that it can “handle” nuclear brinksmanship situations. This scenario opens up a vast expanse of potential nuclear exchanges, war by catastrophic miscalculation. Countries that subscribe to this view may put the emphasis on facilitation of their operation in certain contingencies, including frequent or permanent high alert (defcon) levels. The above notwithstanding, the nuclear postures of such new nuclear powers will have a reciprocal influence over each other. Thus, while a country such as Saudi Arabia may view nuclear weapons as essentially a weapon of deterrence, and attempt to maintain a low profile accordingly, it may be forced to develop a higher profile that calls for more sophisticated levels of command and control in the face of provocations and nuclear “one-upmanship” of other powers in the region (e.g., Iran). Cultural, religious, and external and internal political factors will certainly have an influence on the crafting of these countries’ nuclear postures. Such factors may include: The Sunni or Shiite orientation of the regime. The clerical establishment in countries likes Saudi Arabia and Iran — or the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and potentially in other countries — may have a pivotal role in determining how the utility of nuclear weapons will be perceived. The relationship with the U.S. and the West. Pro-Western regimes will be more prone to respond to Western pressures to maintain strong controls over their weapons, and to accept Western guidance in this regard. Risk proclivity. Countries with a history of conventional brinkmanship are more likely to view nuclear weapons as additional tools in such a policy toolbox. Regional aspirations that are seen as being achievable through political use of nuclear weapons. Confidence that the regimes have it in their capability to operate the weapons on short notice, or to posture a plausible second-strike capability if attacked. An important issue in this regard will be the option for nuclear ambiguity, along the lines of the Israeli model. Although an ambiguous stance by Iran cannot be ruled out, due to its international obligations and considerations, it now seems that the chances of Iran acquiring a military nuclear capability and maintaining ambiguity are slim — both for reasons relating to the Iranian regime itself, and since Iran’s adversaries in the region will expose Iran’s capabilities. Therefore, it seems that the option for nuclear ambiguity for the rest of the countries in the region will not be on the table for long. Custody of weapons, security of assets A key issue will be the custody of nuclear assets. This includes: decisions regarding means of delivery, deployment of the weapons and delivery systems, separation of assets (weapons and delivery systems) to safeguard against unauthorized use; and the designation of the organization within the state that has physical possession of the assets. The choice of delivery means will influence a wide range of considerations for command and control: deployment, custody, and authority for delivery/launch. For most of these countries, the preferred means of delivery will most likely be surface-to-surface missiles, of which they already have significant capabilities. However, ssms are vulnerable to pre-emptive attacks, both in storage and in launching sites, and deployment considerations will have to take this into account. The Iranian regime has dispersed its strategic assets and installations, including nuclear production facilities and ssm assets. The logic for deployment in distant sparsely populated areas would (as in the Cold War) be to minimize the threat to the civilian population and to impose on the enemy counterforce strikes to deal with a large and widely dispersed number of targets. Such a deployment would render the enemy’s intelligence collection, building of target banks, and battle damage assessment more difficult. On the other hand, in many of the states in question, such areas (frequently populated by minorities) are, in many cases, perceived as a priori disloyal to the regime. This raises the dilemma (for example, the current dilemma of the current Syrian regime in Northern Syria in regards to its chemical weapons stockpiles) of the security of the installations in those areas. The Iranian regime, however, has dispersed its strategic assets and installations, including nuclear production facilities and ssm assets, over a wide geographical expanse, and shows relatively little concern regarding this consideration. This may not hold true for other, less confident, regimes in the region. Fear of infiltration and betrayal may encourage separation of weapons from delivery systems. However, keeping the two separate would extract a price in terms of operational flexibility, and would constrain flexibility of alert levels, undermining the credibility of deterrent threats and reducing escalation dominance. In some regimes, security considerations may be subordinated to the necessity for flexible response, and hair-trigger readiness. Keeping warheads unassembled or a step away from operational status would render the theft of fully operational weapons difficult, but would not solve the problem and the danger of the theft of near-operational weapons, materials and expertise and would contradict a credible deterrence or compellence posture. In most of the regimes in the region, custody of the weapons and the delivery systems will have to be put in the hands of organizations or family members whose loyalty to the leaders is beyond doubt. This may lead to weapons and delivery systems being under unified command. This will simplify command and control, but at the same time increase the risk of unauthorized or hasty use. Having acquired nuclear weapons in contravention to their npt obligations, Middle Eastern regimes will probably be extremely sensitive regarding the possibility of further unauthorized transfer — from ideological or material motives — of nuclear materials, expertise, hardware, components, or weapons from themselves to adversaries. This is a critical issue already today in the Pakistani context. The randd organizations in the Middle East — unlike their Cold War predecessors — may be more likely to emulate A.Q. Khan in Pakistan, not only maintaining a role in the decision-making processes after completing development of the weapons, but also becoming “back doors” to the weapons they devised, particularly in scenarios of breakdown of the states. Unlike the scientific institutions of the Soviet Union, which had little or no prior interaction with potential customers for their know-how, and whose efforts to capitalize on their access could be relatively easily monitored and disrupted by the successor state (Russia) and the West, these elements have wide access to potential clients. One of the ramifications of a common interest of a number of Sunni Arab states (Saudi Arabia, uae, Egypt) facing the need for a fast track to a nuclear randd joint custody and command and control of the nuclear weapons, possibly along the lines of the nato example as between allies. Theoretically, this could create a unique relationship of joint command, and unique problems of command and control. Authority over use In the veteran nuclear states civilian control of the nuclear arsenal was decided at the inception of the nuclear age and was, for the most part, not an issue for large-scale struggles within the respective regimes. The tendency throughout the Cold War was to lower the political profile of nuclear tests, exercises, and planning out of concern that publicity would result in possible escalation. Western (American, British, and French) systems of delegation of authority were based on the ex officio assumption of loyalty of the officers who received the orders, while the ethnic, regional, or family affiliation of the individual officers was deemed irrelevant. While the Soviet system did, apparently, take into account ethnic background of senior officers, this was not, so it seems, a constant concern of the political leadership. It was relegated to the security services to perform appropriate weeding and vetting. The Middle East in this regard will be fundamentally different. The nuclear capability, once achieved, will be an important lever for influence within the regimes. The very identification of the nuclear capability with the political leader is, in the Middle East, a source of legitimacy and public support. Therefore, we can expect that even technical issues relating to building, deploying, or training the nuclear force will receive a high profile and publicized reference in these regimes, to enhance the legitimacy of the leadership in the eyes of its constituents. All the regimes and military establishments in question are loath to delegate authority in matters relating to strategic weapons and strategic interests. The hyper-centralized structures of some of these regimes and the deep involvement in military affairs of the political leadership would probably extend to the latter’s direct involvement in vetting each link in the chain of command over nuclear weapons. We should expect a more personalized chain of command consisting of fewer — but highly trusted — individuals, with less compartmentalization between them. Collective identification — tribal, ethnic, and even social networks, such as affiliation with certain religious institutions — will probably influence who would have access to nuclear weapons, and to whom, and when, authority would be delegated. Similarly, the field units entrusted with nuclear assets are likely to be fiercely loyal, disciplined, and ideologically unshakable (e.g., the irgc in the case of Iran). Communication safeguards with nuclear units are far less advanced than in any of the existing nuclear states. The safeguards for communication with nuclear units are far less advanced in the military structures in the Middle East than in any of the existing nuclear states. Communicating a command authorizing the launch of nuclear weapons at an adversary would probably mandate redundancy, including both modern as well as primitive means, given that communications in a crisis or war might be vulnerable to disruption. The solution for a breakdown of communications — due to nuclear warfare, electronic warfare (ew) attacks or even intensive conventional strikes — can range from low-level physical communication (ptp telephone), through covert trusted civilian chains of communication (Iranian or Saudi clergy channels for those states), dependable runners, and others. Such measures would also reduce flexibility and escalation dominance. The key issue with respect to delegation of authority, though, is not the default authorization (Saddam Hussein’s example of delegating authorization of wmd and ssm use in 1991 and 2003 to field commanders) through the chain of command when the leader is alive and in the loop, but how to authorize use in case the authorized leadership is incapacitated and primary c3 assets are disrupted. The tendency of Middle Eastern regimes to personalize the state may lead to broad authorization to launch nuclear weapons in case the leader is presumed dead — even if no nuclear attack has taken place. A Soviet style “dead-man’s hand” system, would, theoretically, be attractive to many of the regimes in the region, and particularly to autocratic authoritarian regimes. However, the logic behind this system in the Cold War was a reflection of the assumptions that if the leadership were destroyed, it would mean that a large part of the country had been decimated and that only the other superpower could have executed such a blow. These assumptions will not be true in the Middle East. As opposed to the mutually assured destruction of the Cold War, nuclear war in the Middle East may be perceived as survivable, especially in the larger and more populous states, like Iran or Egypt. Therefore, the regime may fear that surviving elements to which authority was delegated (even family members or high level members of the ruling party) may opt not to automatically escalate to a full-fledged nuclear war in the case of the incapacitation of the top leadership. The solution might be a standing order for automatic launch if communication with the leadership is lost and it may be presumed to have been destroyed. Verification and authentication Prevention of deliberate unauthorized use will be a paramount concern for all the regimes in the region. Over the years, the means that have evolved for prevention of deliberate unauthorized use (and to prevent accidental use) have moved from the human to the electronic spectrum. Systems based on split codes held by separate senior officers may be problematic for reasons of regime structure noted above, and regimes may rightly fear that an entire nuclear unit may mutiny and take control over the weapons. Cold War technical means took decades to fully develop, including the evolution of Permissible Access Links (pals) to reduce the risk of deliberate or erroneous unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. Early Cold War technical intelligence capabilities were limited, and an early poly-nuclear Middle East may resemble this environment in some ways. c3 systems in the veteran nuclear powers have gradually moved towards the technological, leaving behind slow, cumbersome, and potentially compromising human methods. Authentication redundancies of the authority to launch nuclear weapons developed over the years in the existing nuclear powers (the American “football,” or the Russian Cheget). However, integration of such technologies into the c3 structures of regimes in the Middle East is doubtful, at least in the early stages. Each fledgling nuclear country will initially have small arsenals and a much larger set of enemy targets. This will encumber pre-designation of weapons for targets and exclude the use of pals, which preclude the accidental use of a weapon against targets that are not pre-defined. Furthermore, the inherent (and in the light of the cyberattacks on Iran not unjustified) suspicion that the enemy may be capable of planting Trojan horses in technological systems in order to manipulate them may inhibit use of highly technological means. This would have an adverse effect on the regime’s ability to maintain flexible time-sensitive response mechanisms and hence would influence other elements of the nuclear doctrine. The fact that the same types of delivery systems may be used for both conventional and nonconventional warheads will further complicate c3, as different standard operating procedures (sop) will probably be applied to those delivery systems which are dedicated for nuclear weapons. The defender will not know for sure whether the ssm launched against him is carrying a conventional or wmd warhead until it explodes, and the attacker may assume that the defender understands that he is only employing conventional warheads, or may deliberately allow the ambiguity involved to intimidate the defender and enhance the credibility of his deterrence. Furthermore, the possibility that nuclear weapons may be delivered in unorthodox ways (from civilian ships, neighboring countries’ territory) in order to obfuscate responsibility will also reduce the use of technological means of command and control. Human verification may be implemented at operational levels (for example, the need to combine codes held by more than one senior officer in order to override safeguards and arm weapons). However, it is very unlikely that any of the regimes in the region would be able to adopt human verification of the orders of the head of state. In the authoritarian regime model, the leader would probably not want restrictions on his authority to launch weapons — even authentication by a “trusted” deputy. In regimes such as the Iranian or future Jihadi-Salafi regimes in which the leader is perceived as the Amir al-Mu’minin (Commander of the Believers) or (as in Iran) the Vali-Faqih, the leader is thought to have inspiration from Allah, and restriction of his discretion by a lesser individual would be tantamount to imposing restrictions on the will of Allah. Even the argument that the verification is not meant for regular situations but for contingencies during which the leader may be incapacitated, for any reason, may be difficult to support in these regimes. Intelligence The confidence of a nuclear-enabled regime in its intelligence capabilities will play a pivotal role in determining the spectrum of alert levels, and the routine in regards to those levels. Such an operational nuclear deployment will require strategic early warning and intelligence capabilities covering all relevant threats: day and night airborne visual intelligence (visint) and signals intelligence (sigint) assets, ground sigint and radar deployment in effective ranges, an advanced satellite deployment, and more. The indigenous early warning capabilities of all these countries to ssm threats in general — conventional, cbw, and then nuclear, are either weak or nonexistent, and the potential for error is very high. Consequently, these new nuclear countries may opt to rely on intelligence allies: the U.S., Russia, and China. However, such reliance may bring about situations not dissimilar to the role the Soviet Union played in 1967, but with far more dire consequences, in which an external player feeds alarming information that provokes nuclear alert. Without the ability to assess such information, countries receiving it will have no choice but to go on nuclear alert. Much of the discussion relating to the potential dangers of a poly-nuclear Middle East focuses on the feasibility of deterrence to prevent premeditated intentional use of nuclear weapons. However, not enough attention is paid to the potential for nuclear confrontation during a multilateral spiral of escalation and absence of escalation dominance. In this context, the flexibility and robustness of the command and control structures of fledgling nuclear powers in the region will be critical. The factors that will influence the c3 paradigms of nuclear weapons in the region include a wide range of political, military, bureaucratic, religious and technological issues. In the early stages, such paradigms will probably be closer to the early structures of the veteran nuclear powers, with adaptations for regional cultural, political, and religious idiosyncrasies, and will not necessarily integrate the lessons learned by those veteran powers over time and in thoroughly different strategic and cultural contexts. Furthermore, it stands to reason that the new nuclear powers will not welcome imported solutions based on “off the shelf” Western technology, and will prefer local solutions, which will be, initially at least, less sophisticated. Among the considerations in crafting nuclear command and control paradigms, considerable weight will be given to the perception of the role of nuclear weapons and the acceptance of a cultural “taboo” on their use that developed in the international community. The integration of such a taboo would be a key factor in the motivation of the leaderships of the new nuclear states to prevent their use. Even ideologically, or religiously, highly charged leaderships may be aware of the dangers inherent in nuclear war and behave rationally. However, such awareness and rational decision-making processes are a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Nuclear confrontation may not be the result of some irrational but premeditated decision by leaders to initiate a nuclear strike, but of faulty intelligence, command, and control in escalatory situations. In such situations, it appears that the command and control structures that may develop in new nuclear states in the Middle East are likely to exacerbate the dangers inherent in escalation and brinkmanship, and to result ultimately in perennial nuclear instability or even nuclear war.
Harper 18’ "Could Donald Trump Start A Nuclear War?". 2020. British GQ. Accessed April 15 2020. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/trump-madman-theory-strategy MD
In 1961, a document from the most senior officers in the US military landed on President John F Kennedy's desk marked "For the president's eyes only". This document answered his question to the joint chiefs of staff: "How many people will be killed if plans for nuclear war are carried out?" Daniel Ellsberg, the man who helped end the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers, happened to see this document before it got to Kennedy's desk. In his chilling book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, which tells the story of the US's nuclear secrets, he recalls from memory what was on the first page: a line chart that estimated 275 million deaths on the first day of a global nuclear war, rising to 325 million after six months. If the US struck first, more than 600 million people would die, equivalent to "a hundred Holocausts". Today, we know that the reality of a nuclear war would be much worse. Even a limited exchange could cause a "nuclear winter", that would wipe out all human life on earth within a couple of years. The power to realise this horrible vision is now in the greasy hands of a volatile, paranoid narcissist who threatens foreign states with violent rhetoric, sends early-morning maniacal tweets and runs the White House in a constant state of crisis, full of inexperienced staffers.
Allison ‘18 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323457828_Proxy_War_as_Strategic_Avoidance_A_Quantitative_Study_of_Great_Power_Intervention_in_Intrastate_Wars_1816-2010 MD
Results from Model 2 demonstrate that the possession of nuclear weapons increases the chances of states engaging in proxy war. Dyads in which both states possessed nuclear weapons were more likely to experience proxy war than dyads in which only one or neither state had such weapons. In fact, when either or both states in a dyad possess nuclear weapons, there is a 54 increase in the likelihood that they will engage in proxy war. In a seeming contradiction of that finding, however, dyads with a greater disparity in nuclear arsenals are 11 less likely to experience proxy war.14 Unfortunately, there were no statistically significant results relating to this hypothesis in Model 1, and thus the present research cannot quantitatively assess the impact of nuclear weapons on direct conflicts. | 904,581 |
365,498 | 379,496 | Diplomacy, Alliance Formation, Securitization | Forign Policy 20’ "The Middle East Is More Stable When The United States Stays Away". Foreign Policy. Accessed March 31 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/ MD
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole. Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished. It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it? Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a new doctrine: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region,” he stated, “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” In the context of the Cold War, preventing the Soviets—the main outside force Carter was worried about—from gaining control over the energy-rich region had a strategic logic. But over time, that logic shifted. In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan expanded the doctrine to include threats to the flow of oil originating from inside the region, too. As the geopolitical context changed still further, subsequent presidents found even more ways to justify America’s growing military presence in the Middle East. What started as a policy to prevent others from establishing hegemony over the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf morphed into a policy of asserting American hegemony in the region in order to “save” it. As long as U.S. allies lack the capability or competence to secure the region, the thinking went, Washington would have no choice but to shoulder this responsibility. U.S. President George W. Bush was explicit about that; without an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, he claimed, there would be chaos in the region. He missed the irony, of course, that his invasion of Iraq was the single most destabilizing event in the Middle East of the past decades. As the scholars Hal Brands, Steven Cook, and Kenneth Pollack wrote endorsing the Carter Doctrine and its continuation, “the United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” This account is accurate enough (although the last rule on the list always exempted Israel), but the story glosses over how the policy also gave cover to U.S. allies for some fairly destabilizing behaviors of their own. That’s an omission Brands makes in a Bloomberg article, too, where he points to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to argue that a “post-American Middle East will not be stable and peaceful. It will be even nastier and more turbulent than it is today.” And in the words of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2018, “If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.” All this without a nod to the fact that, if anything, the United States’ protection of the Saudi regime has enabled its promotion of terrorism and its destabilizing activities in the region, which have, in turn, prompted further Iranian response. Assertions about the United States’ pivotal role in the Middle East, no matter how often repeated, have not been proved true. Iran, ravaged by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement, is nowhere near establishing hegemony in the region. Saudi Arabia spends more than five times as much on its military than does Iran; the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE—outspends Iran by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, whereas Iran has no nuclear weapons yet undergoes more inspections than any other country, Israel has a nuclear weapons program with no international transparency whatsoever. Iran may have been adept at taking advantage of U.S. overextension and missteps in the last few decades, but establishing hegemony is a different matter altogether. Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons. Instead, recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks. Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times. Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression. An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security. It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy. Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted. Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments. In the wake of the U.S. assassination of Suleimani—which some former U.S. officials have called an act of war—the calculations may change once more. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Suleimani was in Iraq to bring him Tehran’s response to a message from Riyadh on how to defuse regional tensions, presumably as part of the House of Saud’s renewed interest in diplomacy. The Iraqis, according to him, were mediating between the two rivals, an initiative that has now been thrown into question. Iran may very well conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Saudi Arabia and the UAE conspired with Washington to assassinate Suleimani and as a result not only end the recent diplomacy but also target Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as part of the revenge for Suleimani’s death. This is yet one more instance, it seems, in which U.S. activities in the region have brought more turmoil than stability. To be sure, there is no guarantee that recent diplomatic efforts would have been successful. A more responsible Riyadh might not have begotten a more responsible Tehran. But it is noteworthy that diplomacy did not even begin in earnest until Washington clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to entangle itself in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And by returning to the region in a show of military force, Trump may once again disincentivize the United States’ allies from taking diplomacy seriously. They may even interpret Suleimani’s killing as a license to resume their recklessness—activities like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s purported kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister and ordering of the dismemberment of Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s imposition of a blockade on Qatar; and the two countries’ further destabilization of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. As in the past, in other words, it seems as if the Middle East’s descent into chaos is more likely with the United States than without it.
Hubbard 19’ "With U.S. Help No Longer Assured, Saudis Try A New Strategy: Talks". 2020. Nytimes.Com. Accessed March 31 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/world/middleeast/saudi-iran-qatar-talks.html MD
In the months since a missile and drone attack widely seen as the work of Iran left two Saudi oil facilities smoldering, the Saudi crown prince has taken an uncharacteristic turn to diplomacy to cool tensions with his regional enemies. The prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has stepped up direct talks with the rebels he has been fighting in Yemen for over four years, leading to a decline in attacks by both sides. He has made gestures to ease, if not end, the stifling blockade he and his allies imposed on his tiny, wealthy neighbor, Qatar. He has even engaged in indirect talks with the kingdom’s archnemesis, Iran, to try to dampen the shadow war raging across the region. Fueling the shift from confrontation to negotiation, analysts say, is the sobering realization that a decades-old cornerstone of American policy in the Middle East — the understanding that the United States would defend the Saudi oil industry from foreign attacks — can no longer be taken for granted. Even though American and Saudi officials agreed that Iran was behind the Sept. 14 attacks on the petroleum processing plants at Abqaiq and Khurais, temporarily halving Saudi Arabia’s oil production, President Trump responded with heated rhetoric but little else. For the Saudis, the tepid response drove home the reality that despite the tens of billions of dollars they have spent on American weapons — more than $170 billion since 1973 — they could no longer count on the United States to come to their aid, at least not with the force they expected. Worried about having to fend for themselves in a tough and unpredictable neighborhood, analysts say, the Saudis have quietly reached out to their enemies to de-escalate conflicts. “I think we will look at Sept. 14 as a seminal moment in gulf history,” said David B. Roberts, a scholar of the region at King’s College London. With the presumption shattered that the United States would protect the Saudis, Dr. Roberts said, “they realize the need to be more accommodating.” For the United States, the shift toward diplomacy is an awkward paradox. The Trump administration and Congress have been pressing the Saudis to end the war in Yemen, and the administration has pushed them to reconcile with Qatar, largely in vain. Now, the presumed Iranian strikes may have done more to advance those goals than American pressure ever did. Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy turned more aggressive after Prince Mohammed, then 29, emerged as its driving force in 2015. He plunged the kingdom into a devastating war against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen; imposed a punishing boycott on Qatar, which he accused of supporting terrorism and cozying up to Iran; and vowed to confront Iran across the Middle East. Critics said the young prince was brash and headstrong, and a destabilizing force in the region. Moreover, the Yemen and Qatar campaigns failed to achieve the desired results. The war in Yemen settled into a costly stalemate with the side effect of a devastating humanitarian crisis, while Qatar employed its vast wealth and other international relationships to weather the blockade. Then the refinery attacks highlighted the vulnerability of the Saudi oil industry, the country’s economic jewel. Those events led to what Rob Malley, a top official for the Middle East in the Obama administration, describes as a “semi-recalibration” of Saudi policies. The sudden willingness to pursue diplomacy in Qatar and Yemen, he said, “reflects a Saudi desire to solidify its regional posture at a time of uncertainty and vulnerability.” Analysts saw the lack of a significant American response to the attacks as a blow to the policy known as the Carter doctrine, which dates to 1980, when President Jimmy Carter vowed to use force to ensure the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf after the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Subsequent presidents, Democrats and Republicans, upheld it, seeing Saudi oil exports as essential to the global economy and America’s interests. “For as long as I have been working on the Middle East, that’s why we were there: to protect the free flow of oil,” said Steven Cook, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to a period dating to the 1980s. After the attacks, Mr. Trump sent more American troops to Saudi Arabia to operate Patriot missile systems, support that fell far short of what the Saudis had expected from a president whom they considered a close friend and who shared their animosity toward Iran. Mr. Trump ordered, then abruptly called off, airstrikes on Iran. “What the Saudis didn’t understand,” Dr. Cook said, “was that Donald Trump is a lot closer to Barack Obama’s worldview than they realized. It’s about getting out of the Middle East.” The Saudis’ reputation in Washington had suffered gravely because of the war in Yemen, the Qatar blockade and the killing of the dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul last year. While anger spread in Congress and other parts of the government, Mr. Trump continued to support the kingdom as an important Arab ally and a reliable buyer of American arms. But as a presidential election looms, the Saudis realize that Mr. Trump could find that position to be a liability with voters, and a new president could take an entirely different approach. “It is a hard ask, even for Trump, to defend Saudi Arabia at every turn during a campaign,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “So I think the Saudis are smart enough to tone it down for a time.” Daylight also broke between Saudi Arabia and its closest regional ally, the United Arab Emirates. In June, the Emirates began withdrawing its troops from Yemen, leaving the Saudis with the burden of an ugly war that few believe they can win. In July, the Emirates hosted rare talks with Iran about maritime security, an effort to calm tensions in the Persian Gulf and safeguard the country’s reputation as a safe business hub. Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment on the recent diplomacy. While those overtures have yet to yield official agreements, they have eased pressures in the region. In Yemen, both sides have released more than 100 prisoners to show good will, and cross-border attacks by the Houthis have grown less frequent. Last month the United Nations envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition over the previous two weeks. Since then, no Yemeni civilians have been killed in airstrikes, said Radhya Almutawakel, the chairwoman of Mwatana, a Yemeni human rights group. The current de-escalation, she noted, is the first that resulted from direct talks with the Houthis. She suspected that the Saudis would not have chosen that route if the war had been going their way at the time of the Abqaiq attack.“They would not have chosen to speak with the Houthis,” she said. “They would have escalated the war.” In the standoff between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Qatar, demonstrable progress has been scarce but quiet talks between the countries’ leaders have softened the conflict’s rougher edges. Saudi social media accounts that often insulted Qatar’s emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, have toned it down. And while Qatar has not shut down its Al Jazeera satellite network as the Saudis demanded, criticism of Qatar from pro-government news outlets and social media accounts in Saudi Arabia has noticeably quieted in recent months, Qatari officials say. Instead of punishing citizens who travel to Qatar, Saudi Arabia now looks the other way, and has even sent soccer teams to play in tournaments in Doha, the Qatari capital. And although Qatar’s emir did not accept an invitation by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, to attend a regional summit meeting in Saudi Arabia this month, Qatar’s foreign minister did. The Qataris have also gained ground in Washington. While Mr. Trump initially cheered the blockade, endorsing the Saudi allegation that Qatar supported terrorism, he later switched tracks. Last year, he welcomed Qatar’s emir in Washington and this month sent his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka Trump, to a major conference in Doha. But the antagonism toward Qatar has not softened in the Emirates, which has been a leader of the embargo and which still sees Qatar as dangerously close to the region’s Islamists. The distrust is reciprocated by Qatar, where officials have spoken of possibly reconciling with Saudi Arabia but not the Emirates, effectively splitting their alliance. Concrete progress has been scarcest where the stakes are highest: between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But after years of heated statements and competing support for opposite sides in regional conflicts, officials from Pakistan and Iraq have stepped in as intermediaries for back-channel talks aimed at averting a wider conflict. It remains unclear how far such talks will go in reducing tensions, especially since an official Saudi opening with Iran could infuriate Mr. Trump, who has tried to isolate and punish Iran. “Washington would not look kindly upon a Saudi-Iranian channel at a time when the U.S. is trying to isolate Iran,” said Mr. Malley, the Obama administration official. “Not to fully trust the Trump administration is one thing. To openly defy it is another altogether, and Prince Mohammed is unlikely to do that.”
Forign Policy 20’ "The Middle East Is More Stable When The United States Stays Away". Foreign Policy. Accessed March 31 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/06/the-middle-east-is-more-stable-when-the-united-states-stays-away/ MD
It has been a mantra of U.S. foreign policy for a decade or more that, without the United States, the Middle East would descend into chaos. Or even worse, Iran would resurrect the Persian Empire and swallow the region whole. Yet when U.S. President Donald Trump opted not to go to war with Iran after a series of Iranian-attributed attacks on Saudi Arabia last year and declared his intentions to pull troops out of the region, it wasn’t chaos or conquest that ensued. Rather, nascent regional diplomacy—particularly among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and de-escalation followed. To be sure, the cards were reshuffled again in January, when Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, one of Iran’s most important military figures. Courtesy of Trump, the region is once more moving toward conflict, and the early signs of diplomatic progress achieved during the preceding months have vanished. It is thus time for Washington to answer a crucial question that it has long evaded: Has America’s military dominance in the Middle East prevented regional actors from peacefully resolving conflicts on their own? And in that way, has it been an impediment to stability rather than the guarantor of it? Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed a new doctrine: “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region,” he stated, “will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” In the context of the Cold War, preventing the Soviets—the main outside force Carter was worried about—from gaining control over the energy-rich region had a strategic logic. But over time, that logic shifted. In the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan expanded the doctrine to include threats to the flow of oil originating from inside the region, too. As the geopolitical context changed still further, subsequent presidents found even more ways to justify America’s growing military presence in the Middle East. What started as a policy to prevent others from establishing hegemony over the oil-rich waters of the Persian Gulf morphed into a policy of asserting American hegemony in the region in order to “save” it. As long as U.S. allies lack the capability or competence to secure the region, the thinking went, Washington would have no choice but to shoulder this responsibility. U.S. President George W. Bush was explicit about that; without an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq, he claimed, there would be chaos in the region. He missed the irony, of course, that his invasion of Iraq was the single most destabilizing event in the Middle East of the past decades. As the scholars Hal Brands, Steven Cook, and Kenneth Pollack wrote endorsing the Carter Doctrine and its continuation, “the United States established and upheld the basic rules of conduct in the region: the United States would meet efforts to interfere with the free flow of oil by force; uphold freedom of navigation; demand that regional powers give up their irredentist claims on other states or face grave consequences; and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.” This account is accurate enough (although the last rule on the list always exempted Israel), but the story glosses over how the policy also gave cover to U.S. allies for some fairly destabilizing behaviors of their own. That’s an omission Brands makes in a Bloomberg article, too, where he points to Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to argue that a “post-American Middle East will not be stable and peaceful. It will be even nastier and more turbulent than it is today.” And in the words of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham in 2018, “If it weren’t for the United States, they’d be speaking Farsi in about a week in Saudi Arabia.” All this without a nod to the fact that, if anything, the United States’ protection of the Saudi regime has enabled its promotion of terrorism and its destabilizing activities in the region, which have, in turn, prompted further Iranian response. Assertions about the United States’ pivotal role in the Middle East, no matter how often repeated, have not been proved true. Iran, ravaged by sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement, is nowhere near establishing hegemony in the region. Saudi Arabia spends more than five times as much on its military than does Iran; the entire Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE—outspends Iran by a factor of eight. Meanwhile, whereas Iran has no nuclear weapons yet undergoes more inspections than any other country, Israel has a nuclear weapons program with no international transparency whatsoever. Iran may have been adept at taking advantage of U.S. overextension and missteps in the last few decades, but establishing hegemony is a different matter altogether. Further, the region did not fall into deeper chaos as a result of Trump’s earlier refusal to get into a shooting war with Iran after attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi oil installations in September 2019. Critics lamented the president’s decision as an abandonment of the Carter Doctrine, calling it a disaster for the GCC and warning that it may even prompt Saudi Arabia to seek nuclear weapons. Instead, recognizing that the U.S. military was no longer at their disposal, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began exercising the diplomatic options that had always been available to them. For its part, Saudi Arabia stepped up direct talks with Houthi rebels in Yemen as a way to ease tensions with their backer, Iran. The level of violence on both sides declined as a result, and more than 100 prisoners of war were released. In November, the United Nations’ Yemen envoy, Martin Griffiths, reported an 80 percent reduction in Saudi-led airstrikes, and there were no Yemeni deaths in the previous two weeks. Riyadh also opted to reduce tensions with Qatar, a former ally that had become a nemesis. The Saudi government seemingly ordered its notorious Twitter army to tone down the insults against Qatar and its emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and some sporting events between the two countries resumed, according to the New York Times. Saudi officials also claimed that they had quietly reached out to Iran via intermediaries seeking ways to ease tensions. Tehran, in turn, welcomed the prospective Saudi-Qatari thaw and, according to the New York Times, floated a peace plan based on a mutual Iranian-Saudi pledge of nonaggression. An even stronger change of heart occurred in Abu Dhabi. In July, the UAE started withdrawing troops from Yemen. The same month, it participated in direct talks with Tehran to discuss maritime security. It even released $700 million in funds to Iran in contradiction to the Trump administration’s maximum pressure strategy. Some of these measures may have been more tactical than strategic. Saudi Arabia may have reduced tensions with Qatar and the Houthis in order to better situate itself for a confrontation with Tehran down the road or to offset international condemnation of its killing of Khashoggi, human rights abuses at home, and brutal tactics in Yemen. The UAE, too, may have felt that a tactical reduction of tensions was warranted. Nevertheless, as the United States appeared poised to back out of the region, its erstwhile allies’ calculations tilted toward diplomacy. The Saudis and Emiratis simply had no choice but to cease some of their recklessness because they could no longer operate under the protection of the United States. If stability in the Middle East is the United States’ main goal, Washington should have celebrated rather than bemoaned these developments. In the wake of the U.S. assassination of Suleimani—which some former U.S. officials have called an act of war—the calculations may change once more. According to Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Suleimani was in Iraq to bring him Tehran’s response to a message from Riyadh on how to defuse regional tensions, presumably as part of the House of Saud’s renewed interest in diplomacy. The Iraqis, according to him, were mediating between the two rivals, an initiative that has now been thrown into question. Iran may very well conclude, rightly or wrongly, that Saudi Arabia and the UAE conspired with Washington to assassinate Suleimani and as a result not only end the recent diplomacy but also target Riyadh and Abu Dhabi as part of the revenge for Suleimani’s death. This is yet one more instance, it seems, in which U.S. activities in the region have brought more turmoil than stability. To be sure, there is no guarantee that recent diplomatic efforts would have been successful. A more responsible Riyadh might not have begotten a more responsible Tehran. But it is noteworthy that diplomacy did not even begin in earnest until Washington clearly demonstrated its unwillingness to entangle itself in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And by returning to the region in a show of military force, Trump may once again disincentivize the United States’ allies from taking diplomacy seriously. They may even interpret Suleimani’s killing as a license to resume their recklessness—activities like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s purported kidnapping of the Lebanese prime minister and ordering of the dismemberment of Khashoggi; Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s imposition of a blockade on Qatar; and the two countries’ further destabilization of Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen. As in the past, in other words, it seems as if the Middle East’s descent into chaos is more likely with the United States than without it.
Harb 19’ "Saudi Arabia And Iran May Finally Be Ready For Rapprochement". Aljazeera.Com. Accessed April 1 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/saudi-arabia-iran-finally-ready-rapprochement-191015103242982.html MD
Still, only time will tell how the attack will impact the general atmosphere in the already-volatile Gulf region and the wider Middle East. What is apparent, however, is that the current state of uncertainty, mistrust and confusion cannot be sustained if Iran wants to rejoin the international community after decades of isolation and if Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies seek further economic and social development. Only a return to quiet and purposeful diplomacy - with the assistance of third parties - can bridge differences between the two sides and help prevent what could arguably be one of the most calamitous military confrontations in the region's history. Saudi Arabia is not interested in a confrontation It is improbable that Saudi Arabia is behind the attack on the Iranian tanker, despite its assumed desire to avenge the many attacks it sustained over the last few months. On September 14, for example, attacks on two of its main oil production facilities knocked out more than half of the kingdom's production. Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility but US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo swiftly accused Iran, which rejected the allegations. In light of all this, some argued that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who has come under much domestic criticism for failing to prevent the devastating attacks on the country's oil facilities, might have ordered the attack on the Iranian oil tanker to save face. This scenario, however, is highly improbable since a small-scale attack on an Iranian tanker like the one we witnessed last week is unlikely to yield significant positive results for MBS. First, if Iran concludes that Riyadh is indeed behind such an attack, it can easily find many overt and secret ways to retaliate. MBS is well aware that if he orders an attack on an Iranian vessel, he would be opening the kingdom to renewed attacks by Houthi insurgents. Second, despite the ongoing friction between the two sides, Riyadh does not want to rule out the possibility of a rapprochement with Tehran in the near future. MBS was clear, in a recent interview with CBS, about his preference for a political solution to the region's ongoing problems. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan's visits this week to Iran and Saudi Arabia can only be seen as an effort at reconciliation that he could not have undertaken without a green light from the leaders of both countries. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi is also known to have relayed messages between MBS and Iranian officials about de-escalation. Third, Saudi Arabia can no longer count on Washington's direct assistance in the event of a confrontation with Iran. Whatever existed of Saudi enthusiasm for such a confrontation has dissipated after US President Donald Trump aborted the mission to punish Tehran over its downing of an American spy drone last June. His latest decision to allow Turkey to attack Kurdish forces allied with the US and responsible for defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in northeastern Syria also gave the Saudis a signal that allies are not immune to Trump's whimsical foreign policy. The Saudi leadership cannot ignore the US president's reluctance to take on Iran and his betrayal of allies simply because he agreed to dispatch extra American troops to Saudi Arabia. Iran cannot remain a pariah in the region Despite the defiant rhetoric emanating from its leaders and institutions, the Islamic Republic is also interested in a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. Tehran understands that it cannot remain outside the confines of regional and international systems. It also understands that it needs to make compromises, both in the region and in the international arena, to find necessary accommodations. To be sure, its signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 clearly signalled its willingness to meet the international community's expectations if that helps it in preserving national pride and interests and escaping debilitating sanctions. However, on the regional front, Iran's insistence on interfering in the domestic affairs of Arab countries continues to stymie its good relations with its neighbours. To be sure, no other outside force has been able to secure the kind of influence that Iran maintains in Iraq and Lebanon. Yemen's Houthis, meanwhile, have become closer to Iran than ever before and have benefited from Iranian technology in manufacturing offensive weapons used against Saudi Arabia over the last few years. But Iran's role in Syria's war is the starkest example of overreach that makes it impossible for Tehran to join the current Saudi-led regional order. It is this last important part of Iran's regional policy that stands at the heart of its acrimonious relationship with Saudi Arabia, and it is here that the two may or may not find a compromise. Iranian officials have for quite some time now spoken of their desire for Iran to be considered a normal part of the regional subsystem, bearing equal responsibilities and sharing collective benefits. In a recent op-ed, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reiterated the Islamic Republic's view that "security in the region is a collective responsibility" and that "either everyone is safe or everyone is deprived of it." No one can find much fault with Zarif's statements, however, such words will only gain meaning and lead to meaningful change if Iran takes concrete steps to demonstrate that it is ready to respect the sovereignty of Arab states and in return, the Arab side agrees to treat Iran as an equal shareholder in the region's affairs. What is to come? In the current atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust, it is hard to accurately postulate what could be in store for Saudi-Iranian relations. But both Riyadh and Tehran have recently been talking about the dangers of escalation and expressing their desire to find a compromise that would allow for the two regional powers to peacefully co-exist. This, above anything else, signals a real possibility for sustainable peace in the Gulf. Friendly but neutral third parties can also assist in finding the means to bridge differences that have stymied a closer relationship between arguably the two most consequential states in the Muslim world. One thing is sure, however: peaceful co-existence can only work if Tehran scales down its interference in the affairs of Arab states and Riyadh accepts that Iran also has a say in regional issues. Iran should not expect to be allowed to continue controlling the fates of Iraq and Lebanon through affiliated militias or supporting the Houthis in their assault on Yemen's legitimate authority. It should also understand that it cannot re-join the regional system while insisting on supporting the thuggish regime of Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Reciprocally, Saudi Arabia must understand that Iran is of the region and that it cannot simply be excluded from the region's development. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia's apparent eagerness to de-escalate the situation following the October 11 attack on an Iranian tanker is perhaps the most significant sign yet that the two regional rivals are finally ready for a rapprochement. Peaceful co-existence, however, is difficult and requires the will to talk and compromise. If either party shows reluctance to change its ways, the region will continue to live with the possibility of a war that could make all past wars look minor in comparison.
Ashford 18’ Cato.Org. Accessed March 8 2020. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/ashford-ssq-november-2018.pdf MD
Yet perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that American predominance in the region prevents states from balancing or bandwagoning in the face of threats, as they would do in the absence of US presence. As many scholars have noted, the Middle East has typically exhibited “underbalancing,” meaning that states that might be expected to form alliances have rarely done so. The most obvious example is the antiIranian axis of Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has also repeatedly failed to build joint military infrastructure. The recent GCC crisis between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates likewise suggests that these states prioritize ideological factors over security concerns. As long as the United States continues to act as a regional security guarantor, theory suggests that ideological factors will continue to inhibit alliances.47 In fact, though the Obama administration’s pivot away from the Middle East was more rhetoric than reality, it did encourage tentative attempts to build better regional alliances. Private rapprochement and cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the issue of Iran has been growing. The two countries disagree on a variety of issues, the most problematic of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet when retired top Saudi and Israeli officials spoke about the issue at a 2016 forum in Washington, DC, they were keen to highlight that cooperation is possible even if these issues go unresolved.48 The two states regularly hold informal meetings on security issues. Even the relative lack of criticism expressed by the Gulf States during the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah may be indicative of shifting opinion within the region.49 In providing security guarantees and by acting as a third party cutout, US involvement inhibits these developing ties.
Gause 17’ “Ideologies, Alignments, and Underbalancing in the New Middle East Cold War: PS: Political Science andamp; Politics.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, 12 June 2017, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/ideologies-alignments-and-underbalancing-in-the-new-middle-east-cold-war/739C0AB7ACDAD0E8ADE7D36C3CD37AA6 MD
The pattern of alliances and alignments in the Middle East following the Arab uprisings challenges established theories of regional international relations (IR) in intriguing ways (Gause 2014; see also Lynch 2016; Ryan 2012; Salloukh 2013). One notable element of current regional geopolitics is the failure of other local powers to form effective blocking or balancing alliances against Iran, the state that has most clearly improved its regional position as a result of upheavals that go back to the 2003 Iraq War. Even as they fail to form new alliances, however, regional actors are taking steps domestically to increase their military power and cultivating non-state actors to increase their regional influence. This “underbalancing” (Schweller 2004, 2006) in terms of stateto-state alignment is best explained not by sectarianism or balance of power logic but rather by a variant of Walt’s (1987) balance-of-threat framework that emphasizes ideology and domestic-regime security issues. Explaining these patterns, therefore, requires grappling with constructivist theories of identity, the drivers of regime insecurity, and the relative importance of state-to-state and transnational policies. These patterns make for an interesting case not only for thinking through contemporary regional politics but also for testing more general theories about alliances. This effort is a response to Valbjørn’s (2017) call in this symposium for scholars of Middle East IR to engage more directly in the broader theoretical field and to use their empirical work on the region to suggest ways that more general IR theories can be amended to explain a wider array of cases. “UNDERBALANCING” AND THE NEW MIDDLE EAST COLD WAR Iran is the undoubted winner in regional-power terms in the past decade of Middle Eastern upheaval. For years, Iraq balanced against Iranian power in ways ranging from political competition to the massively destructive eight-year war in the 1980s. Today, Iran is the most influential player in Iraqi politics, having close relations with the Baghdad government, sponsoring if not controlling a number of Shi’i militias, maintaining a cooperative relationship with the Kurdish Regional Government, and indirectly fighting alongside the United States in the campaign against the Islamic State. Its client Hizballah remains the dominant force in Lebanese politics. Iranian support is essential to the preservation of the Assad regime in Damascus, even as other rulers challenged by the Arab Spring have fallen. Although Tehran’s relationship with the Huthi movement in Yemen is not as strong or as direct as that with Hizballah or the Iraqi militias, the success of the Huthis further contributes to the regional sense that Iran is “on the march.” Efforts by other regional powers to challenge Iranian gains have largely failed, whether Turkish and Saudi support for the Syrian opposition (although different elements of it), Saudi financing of the March 14 coalition in Lebanon and military aid to the Lebanese government (now cut off ), or half-hearted Saudi efforts to challenge Iran’s influence in Iraq. The Saudi–Emirati military campaign in Yemen against the Huthis succeeded in pushing them out of the southern part of the country but not (as of March 2017) out of San’a, the capital. Iran certainly has problems. Its Syrian ally is an increasing burden and will be for some time. Lower oil prices hurt Iran more than the Saudis because Tehran does not have the financial cushion that Riyadh built during recent years of high oil prices. However, it is difficult to argue with the fact that Iran is the regional state that gained the most from changes that commenced with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. By pure balance-of-power logic, the region should have witnessed a Turkish–Saudi–Israeli–Egyptian alignment aimed at checking and rolling back Iranian power. All four states have reason to be concerned about Iran, and all have taken steps to check Iranian power and interests. Israel and Saudi Arabia both identify Iran as their primary threat. Turkey has been a consistent supporter of the armed opposition to the Assad regime since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Three fourths of this hypothetical balancing alignment—a Turkish– Saudi–Egyptian understanding—makes perfect sense by the sectarian logic that many believe is driving regional politics because all three are overwhelmingly Sunni-majority states. However, neither the trilateral nor the quadrilateral balancing alignment against Iran has emerged. Instead, at most, Israel and Saudi Arabia have considered open coordination, whereas at various points, Turkey and Egypt have leaned toward Iran. Haas (2014) provided a framework to understand this example of regional “underbalancing.” He argued that it is not simply power that defines the structure of an international system; identity also plays a role in the way that states define friends and foes. States that share common ideas about appropriate and legitimate principles of governance tend to group together. In systems characterized by ideological bipolarity, in which the great powers divide between two overarching systems of governance, alliances tend to follow ideological lines and be stable. However, when there are more than two transnational ideological principles present in the system being advanced by great powers, the likelihood of underbalancing increases. Haas did not adequately appreciate how regimes that share those common ideas—at least rhetorically—also can be perceived as threats to one another’s security. The Communist USSR and the People’s Republic of China fell out in the 1960s. Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser was as harsh with fellow “progressive” Arab nationalists who did not toe his line in the 1950s and 1960s as he was with the “reactionary” Arab monarchs (Kerr 1971). However, Haas’s argument can be refined to accommodate these anomalies. Common ideas about appropriate domestic governance will bring states together as long as respect for state independence and sovereignty underlies those ideas. If those common ideas call for hierarchical institutional forms (e.g., integral unity or formal subordination to a movement’s leader), they eventually will be perceived as threats by others in the same ideological camp. Haas (2014, 729) argued that in ideological multipolarity, state leaders will eschew alliances that seem logical from a power perspective because they dislike and fear the ideological stance of a potential ally: “Thus, all other things being equal, a shift from ideological bipolarity to multipolarity will make it more difficult for at least some states to form alliances because there are likely to be fewer ideologically acceptable allies in the system. The greater the impediments to alliance formation, the less efficient the balancing process will be against potential threats.” His paradigmatic example was the refusal of conservative politicians in Great Britain and France to consider an alliance with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the 1930s. He added another impediment to effective balancing in ideological multipolarity, already recognized in more Realist accounts of alliance behavior (Christensen and Snyder 1990): that is, the greater incentives for buck passing. Why pay the price for balancing a threat if a third party will do it for free? Why cooperate with an ideological rival in balancing against a third party when cooperating with the rival could have negative repercussions at both home and abroad? In ideologically multipolar situations, therefore, the likelihood of underbalancing is considerable.
Ashford 18’ Cato.Org. Accessed March 8 2020. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/ashford-ssq-november-2018.pdf MD
Yet perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that American predominance in the region prevents states from balancing or bandwagoning in the face of threats, as they would do in the absence of US presence. As many scholars have noted, the Middle East has typically exhibited “underbalancing,” meaning that states that might be expected to form alliances have rarely done so. The most obvious example is the antiIranian axis of Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has also repeatedly failed to build joint military infrastructure. The recent GCC crisis between Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates likewise suggests that these states prioritize ideological factors over security concerns. As long as the United States continues to act as a regional security guarantor, theory suggests that ideological factors will continue to inhibit alliances.47 In fact, though the Obama administration’s pivot away from the Middle East was more rhetoric than reality, it did encourage tentative attempts to build better regional alliances. Private rapprochement and cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Israel on the issue of Iran has been growing. The two countries disagree on a variety of issues, the most problematic of which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet when retired top Saudi and Israeli officials spoke about the issue at a 2016 forum in Washington, DC, they were keen to highlight that cooperation is possible even if these issues go unresolved.48 The two states regularly hold informal meetings on security issues. Even the relative lack of criticism expressed by the Gulf States during the 2006 Israeli war against Hezbollah may be indicative of shifting opinion within the region.49 In providing security guarantees and by acting as a third party cutout, US involvement inhibits these developing ties.
Leeds 03’, Brett Ashley. “Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Influence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science, Midwest Political Science Association, 12 June 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/3186107 MD
The typical alliance that most imagine is a mutual defense pact. In such a treaty, the parties promise one another active military support in the event one or more is attacked. Based upon the informational theories discussed above, these alliances should have a deterrent effect. Potential aggressors know that if the alliance is reliable, they will find themselves in conflict with not only their intended target, but also the state or states allied with the target. If we assume that aggressors are more likely to initiate conflicts that they think they can win, and if we assume that usually aggressors are more optimistic about their ability to win a bilateral conflict than a multilateral conflict, it follows that potential aggressors should be more reluctant to challenge potential targets with allies committed to intervene on their behalf. This leads to a first hypothesis: HI: Potential challengers are less likely to initiate a militarized dispute against a potential target if the target has one or more allies committed to intervene on behalf of the target if attacked by this challenger.
Leeds 03’, Brett Ashley. “Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Influence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes.” American Journal of Political Science, Midwest Political Science Association, 12 June 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/3186107 MD
This is easiest to see by examining the bar graph pictured in Figure 1. This figure shows the percentage change in the probability of dispute initiation that can be attributed to outside allies when all other variables are held at their mean values. The first bar shows that when a target state has an ally committed to its defense, the probability of dispute initiation is 28 lower than the probability of dispute initiation in a dyad with the mean characteristics in the dataset but no outside allies. The second bar represents the case in which the challenger has an offensive ally; in this instance, the probability of dispute initiation is 47 higher than it is in the case in which neither the challenger nor the target has any allies committed to intervene. Finally, the bar on the right shows that when challengers have obtained promises of neutrality from outside states, the probability of dispute initiation is 57 higher than it is when neither state has any allies. Notably, these substantive effects are similar to those associated with variables like power relations and similarity in alliance portfolios, which scholars of international politics have long considered crucial to predicting and preventing dispute initiation. Given the rare occurrence and severe implications of military conflict, the substantive effects of outside alliance commitments to potential conflict initiators and targets are important enough that they should influence scholarship and policy.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Ahmed 12’ (Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, . Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development (IPRD), an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex, 2012, “Islamophobia and Insecurity The Exclusionary Logic of Imperial Geopolitics”, PDF MD
Here, the mainstream media plays a critical function in ideologically linking the international to the domestic, in particular, the trajectory of Western foreign policy in Muslim-majority theatres across the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as the processes of Islamophobia and radicalisation experienced within Muslim diaspora communities in the West. On the one hand, Islamophobic media narratives buttress anti-Muslim public opinion at home, alienating Muslims and fuelling the extremist rhetoric of far right groups. Simultaneously, images of devastation and destruction from Muslim-majority theatres of war such as Iraq and Afghanistan also distress and anger Muslim diaspora communities, further exacerbating alienation. In effect, the media acts as a symbiotic link between Islamophobia at home and abroad, as it mediates extremist rhetoric from neoconservative and right-wing factions and the official language of government and security agencies who attempt to pander to Islamophobic public opinion on political issues such as immigration and terrorism. Thus, there is perhaps no clearer instantiation of the security-dynamics of Islamophobia than the actual activities of Western security agencies. After the US Department of Justice passed a regulation allowing indefinite detention on 20th September 2001, nearly 1,200 Arabs and Muslims were secretly arrested and detained without charge.31 The US National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) “call-in” program required male visitors from twenty-four Arab and Muslim countries and North Korea to register with INS offices. No terrorists were found, yet over 13,000 of the 80,000 men who registered were threatened with deportation, and many were “detained in harsh conditions.”32 In the UK, more than a thousand Muslims have been detained without charge under anti-terror laws, out of which only a handful have been convicted of terrorist offences. Worldwide, more than 100,000 Muslim men – victims of the CIA?s extraordinary rendition programme – are being detained without charges “in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison” under conditions which violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners, and UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.33 Such practices accompany Anglo-American military engagements in predominantly Muslim theatres of war, regions often described as dangerous failed zones harbouring potential Islamist terrorists planning to inflict apocalyptic forms of mass destruction on Western civilization.34 Such military engagements also tend to result in the indiscriminate killings of predominantly Muslim civilians, and correlate invariably with their strategic location vis-à-vis contested energy reserves in the Middle East, Central Asia and Northwest Africa. Iraq provides a case-in-point. From 1991 to 2007, the total civilian death toll in Iraq as a direct and indirect consequence of Anglo-American invasions, socio-economic deprivation, infrastructure destruction, and occupation amounts to approximately 3 million over a period of sixteen years.35 The scale of this violence is thus larger than some of the most well-known cases of twentieth century genocide such as in Cambodia, Kampuchea, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. As Walt points out, estimating the number of Muslims killed directly and indirectly by U.S. forces over the last 30 years suggests at least 100 Muslim fatalities for every US one. He thus observes: “When you kill tens of thousands of people in other countries – and sometimes for no good reason – you shouldn?t be surprised when people in those countries are enraged by this behavior and interested in revenge.”36 This argument amply refutes the assumption that foreign policy has no relationship to terrorism and violent radicalisation. In particular, taking a broader historical view of the continuity of US-UK interventionism in the Gulf region going back to 1991 demonstrates not only the immense scale of the violence inflicted upon Iraqi civilians, but also illustrates that British interventionism in the region preceded the emergence and proliferation of Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks against Western targets. Thus, Ralph argues that the massive military violence that has been inflicted predominantly on the civilian populations of Muslim-majority regions is only possible by their having been “Islamophobically” constructed as having lives that are of less value compared to those of Western citizens.37 But while the irrational fear of Islam and Muslims is clearly a significant factor in all these disparate phenomena, Islamophobia as a sociological concept offers little by way of a coherent causal explanation of how or why these phenomena are escalating simultaneously.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
In practice, this generates an excessive preoccupation not with the causes of global crisis acceleration and how to ameliorate them through structural transformation, but with their purportedly inevitable impacts, and how to prepare for them by controlling problematic populations. Paradoxically, this ‘securitisation’ of global crises does not render us safer. Instead, by necessitating more violence, while inhibiting preventive action, it guarantees greater insecurity. Thus, a recent US Department of Defense report explores the future of international conflict up to 2050. It warns of ‘resource competition induced by growing populations and expanding economies’, particularly due to a projected ‘youth bulge’ in the South, which ‘will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy’. This will prompt a ‘return to traditional security threats posed by emerging near-peers as we compete globally for depleting natural resources and overseas markets’. Finally, climate change will ‘compound’ these stressors by generating humanitarian crises, population migrations and other complex emergencies.96 A similar study by the US Joint Forces Command draws attention to the danger of global energy depletion through to 2030. Warning of ‘the dangerous vulnerabilities the growing energy crisis presents’, the report concludes that ‘The implications for future conflict are ominous.’ 97 Once again, the subject turns to demographics: ‘In total, the world will add approximately 60 million people each year and reach a total of 8 billion by the 2030s’, 95 per cent accruing to developing countries, while populations in developed countries slow or decline. ‘Regions such as the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the youth bulge will reach over 50 of the population, will possess fewer inhibitions about engaging in conflict.’ 98 The assumption is that regions which happen to be both energy-rich and Muslim-majority will also be sites of violent conflict due to their rapidly growing populations. A British Ministry of Defence report concurs with this assessment, highlighting an inevitable ‘youth bulge’ by 2035, with some 87 per cent of all people under the age of 25 inhabiting developing countries. In particular, the Middle East population will increase by 132 per cent and sub-Saharan Africa by 81 per cent. Growing resentment due to ‘endemic unemployment’ will be channelled through ‘political militancy, including radical political Islam whose concept of Umma, the global Islamic community, and resistance to capitalism may lie uneasily in an international system based on nation-states and global market forces’. More strangely, predicting an intensifying global against social divide between a super-rich elite, the middle classes and an urban under-class, the report warns: ‘The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.’ 99 3.3 Exclusionary logics of global crisis securitisation? Thus, the securitisation of global crisis leads not only to the problematisation of particular religious and ethnic groups in foreign regions of geopolitical interest, but potentially extends this problematisation to any social group which might challenge prevailing global political economic structures across racial, national and class lines. The previous examples illustrate how securitisation paradoxically generates insecurity by reifying a process of militarisation against social groups that are constructed as external to the prevailing geopolitical and economic order. In other words, the internal reductionism, fragmentation and compartmentalisation that plagues orthodox theory and policy reproduces precisely these characteristics by externalising global crises from one another, externalising states from one another, externalising the inter-state system from its biophysical environment, and externalising new social groups as dangerous ‘outsiders’. Hence, a simple discursive analysis of state militarisation and the construction of new ‘outsider’ identities is insufficient to understand the causal dynamics driving the process of ‘Otherisation’. As Doug Stokes points out, the Western state preoccupation with the ongoing military struggle against international terrorism reveals an underlying ‘discursive complex’, where representations about terrorism and non-Western populations are premised on ‘the construction of stark boundaries’ that ‘operate to exclude and include’. Yet these exclusionary discourses are ‘intimately bound up with political and economic processes’, such as strategic interests in proliferating military bases in the Middle East, economic interests in control of oil, and the wider political goal of ‘maintaining American hegemony’ by dominating a resource-rich region critical for global capitalism.100 But even this does not go far enough, for arguably the construction of certain hegemonic discourses is mutually constituted by these geopolitical, strategic and economic interests – exclusionary discourses are politically constituted. New conceptual developments in genocide studies throw further light on this in terms of the concrete socio-political dynamics of securitisation processes. It is now widely recognised, for instance, that the distinguishing criterion of genocide is not the pre-existence of primordial groups, one of which destroys the other on the basis of a preeminence in bureaucratic military–political power. Rather, genocide is the intentional attempt to destroy a particular social group that has been socially constructed as different. 101 As Hinton observes, genocides precisely constitute a process of ‘othering’ in which an imagined community becomes reshaped so that previously ‘included’ groups become ‘ideologically recast’ and dehumanised as threatening and dangerous outsiders, be it along ethnic, religious, political or economic lines – eventually legitimising their annihilation.102 In other words, genocidal violence is inherently rooted in a prior and ongoing ideological process, whereby exclusionary group categories are innovated, constructed and ‘Otherised’ in accordance with a specific socio-political programme. The very process of identifying and classifying particular groups as outside the boundaries of an imagined community of ‘inclusion’, justifying exculpatory violence toward them, is itself a political act without which genocide would be impossible.103 This recalls Lemkin’s recognition that the intention to destroy a group is integrally connected with a wider socio-political project – or colonial project – designed to perpetuate the political, economic, cultural and ideological relations of the perpetrators in the place of that of the victims, by interrupting or eradicating their means of social reproduction. Only by interrogating the dynamic and origins of this programme to uncover the social relations from which that programme derives can the emergence of genocidal intent become explicable.104 Building on this insight, Semelin demonstrates that the process of exclusionary social group construction invariably derives from political processes emerging from deep-seated sociopolitical crises that undermine the prevailing framework of civil order and social norms; and which can, for one social group, be seemingly resolved by projecting anxieties onto a new ‘outsider’ group deemed to be somehow responsible for crisis conditions. It is in this context that various forms of mass violence, which may or may not eventually culminate in actual genocide, can become legitimised as contributing to the resolution of crises.105 This does not imply that the securitisation of global crises by Western defence agencies is genocidal. Rather, the same essential dynamics of social polarisation and exclusionary group identity formation evident in genocides are highly relevant in understanding the radicalisation processes behind mass violence. This highlights the fundamental connection between social crisis, the breakdown of prevailing norms, the formation of new exclusionary group identities, and the projection of blame for crisis onto a newly constructed ‘outsider’ group vindicating various forms of violence
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Wæver 98’ Securitisation and Desecuritisation?, in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1995); Barry Buzan, Ola Wæver and Jaape de Wilde, Security: A New Framework
for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1998) p. 23 MD
In a way, the most interesting about a speech act is that it might fail. And this is an essential part of its meaning. . . . In our context this is clearly the case: the invocation of "security" is only possible because it invokes the image of what would happen if it did not work. And not only this ( . . . ): the security speech act is only a problematic and thereby political move because it has a price. The securitizer is raising the stakes and investing some (real) risk of losing (general) sovereignty in order to fence off a specific challenge. In the present post-structuralist usage of speech act theory the meaning of the particular speech act is thus equally constituted by its possible success and its possible failure~-~-one is not primary and the other derived
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
Ahmed 11’ 2011, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development IPRD, an independent think tank focused on the study of violent conflict, he has taught at the Department of International Relations, University of Sussex "The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society" Global Change, Peace 26 Security Volume 23, Issue 3, Taylor Francis MD
Instead, both realist and liberal orthodox IR approaches focus on different aspects of interstate behaviour, conflictual and cooperative respectively, but each lacks the capacity to grasp that the unsustainable trajectory of state and inter-state behaviour is only explicable in the context of a wider global system concurrently over-exploiting the biophysical environment in which it is embedded. They are, in other words, unable to address the relationship of the inter-state system itself to the biophysical environment as a key analytical category for understanding the acceleration of global crises. They simultaneously therefore cannot recognise the embeddedness of the economy in society and the concomitant politically-constituted nature of economics.84 Hence, they neglect the profound irrationality of collective state behaviour, which systematically erodes this relationship, globalising insecurity on a massive scale – in the very process of seeking security.85 In Cox’s words, because positivist IR theory ‘does not question the present order it instead has the effect of legitimising and reifying it’. 86 Orthodox IR sanitises globally-destructive collective inter-state behaviour as a normal function of instrumental reason – thus rationalising what are clearly deeply irrational collective human actions that threaten to permanently erode state power and security by destroying the very conditions of human existence. Indeed, the prevalence of orthodox IR as a body of disciplinary beliefs, norms and prescriptions organically conjoined with actual policy-making in the international system highlights the extent to which both realism and liberalism are ideologically implicated in the acceleration of global systemic crises.87 By the same token, the incapacity to recognise and critically interrogate how prevailing social, political and economic structures are driving global crisis acceleration has led to the proliferation of symptom-led solutions focused on the expansion of state/regime military–political power rather than any attempt to transform root structural causes.88 It is in this context that, as the prospects for meaningful reform through inter-state cooperation appear increasingly nullified under the pressure of actors with a vested interest in sustaining prevailing geopolitical and economic structures, states have resorted progressively more to militarised responses designed to protect the concurrent structure of the international system from dangerous new threats. In effect, the failure of orthodox approaches to accurately diagnose global crises, directly accentuates a tendency to ‘securitise’ them – and this, ironically, fuels the proliferation of violent conflict and militarisation responsible for magnified global insecurity. ‘Securitisation’ refers to a ‘speech act’ – an act of labelling – whereby political authorities identify particular issues or incidents as an existential threat which, because of their extreme nature, justify going beyond the normal security measures that are within the rule of law. It thus legitimises resort to special extra-legal powers. By labelling issues a matter of ‘security’, therefore, states are able to move them outside the remit of democratic decision-making and into the realm of emergency powers, all in the name of survival itself. Far from representing a mere aberration from democratic state practice, this discloses a deeper ‘dual’ structure of the state in its institutionalisation of the capacity to mobilise extraordinary extra-legal military– police measures in purported response to an existential danger.89 The problem in the context of global ecological, economic and energy crises is that such levels of emergency mobilisation and militarisation have no positive impact on the very global crises generating ‘new security challenges’, and are thus entirely disproportionate.90 All that remains to examine is on the ‘surface’ of the international system (geopolitical competition, the balance of power, international regimes, globalisation and so on), phenomena which are dislocated from their structural causes by way of being unable to recognise the biophysically-embedded and politically-constituted social relations of which they are comprised. The consequence is that orthodox IR has no means of responding to global systemic crises other than to reduce them to their symptoms. Indeed, orthodox IR theory has largely responded to global systemic crises not with new theory, but with the expanded application of existing theory to ‘new security challenges’ such as ‘low-intensity’ intra-state conflicts; inequality and poverty; environmental degradation; international criminal activities including drugs and arms trafficking; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and international terrorism.91 Although the majority of such ‘new security challenges’ are non-military in origin – whether their referents are states or individuals – the inadequacy of systemic theoretical frameworks to diagnose them means they are primarily examined through the lenses of military-political power.92 In other words, the escalation of global ecological, energy and economic crises is recognised not as evidence that the current organisation of the global political economy is fundamentally unsustainable, requiring urgent transformation, but as vindicating the necessity for states to radicalise the exertion of their military–political capacities to maintain existing power structures, to keep the lid on.93 Global crises are thus viewed as amplifying factors that could mobilise the popular will in ways that challenge existing political and economic structures, which it is presumed (given that state power itself is constituted by these structures) deserve protection. This justifies the state’s adoption of extra-legal measures outside the normal sphere of democratic politics. In the context of global crisis impacts, this counter-democratic trend-line can result in a growing propensity to problematise potentially recalcitrant populations – rationalising violence toward them as a control mechanism.
González 18’ "Costs Of War: 17 Years After 9/11, Nearly Half A Million People Have Died In Global “War On Terror”". 2020. Democracy Now!. Accessed April 10 2020. https://www.democracynow.org/2018/11/21/costs_of_war_17_years_after MD
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with the costs of America’s endless war in the Middle East, as a new report reveals that nearly half a million people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2001, when George W. Bush declared a “war on terror” in the wake of September 11th. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This war on terrorism is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. … It is time for us to win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: President Bush referred to the war as a “crusade.” More than 17 years later, the war in Afghanistan is the longest in U.S. history. A major new report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project has found that more than 480,000 people have died from violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, including soldiers, militants, police, contractors, journalists, humanitarian workers and civilians. Several times as many people have died indirectly because of water loss, sewage and other infrastructural problems, and war-related disease. The wars have uprooted 21 million Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani and Syrian people, who are now refugees of war or internally displaced.
NRC 18’ "12,000 People A Day Internally Displaced By Conflict Across The Middle East In 2017 | NRC". 2020. NRC. Accessed April 2 2020. https://www.nrc.no/news/2018/may/12000-people-a-day-internally-displaced-by-conflict-across-the-middle-east-in-2017/ MD
12,000 people a day internally displaced by conflict across the middle east in 2017. New displacement associated with conflict doubled, largely due to Syria’s ongoing civil war. Almost 4.5 million people fled within their own countries to escape conflict and violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in 2017, according to a new report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Key findings from the Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID 2018) show that the region accounted for 38 per cent of the global total of 11.8 million, with new displacements concentrated in Syria, 2.9 million; Iraq, 1.4 million and Yemen, 160,000. The figures for Yemen are not as high as expected for one of | 904,582 |
365,499 | 379,500 | Contact Info | Reach out to either of us on FB Messenger (Satvik Mahendra or Brady Zeng). If you have any specific interps you would like us to meet, reach out to us with an appropriate amount of time (ie don't tell us 5 minutes before when you want us to disclose to start the process of disclosing because it takes time) and we will be glad to meet the interp. If this is not done, we automatically meet your interp. | 904,586 |
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